ARHIVSKI VJESNIK 42. (ZAGREB, 1999.)

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M. Kehrig, The position of military archives in the frame of archival service Independence or integration?, Arh. vjesn., god. 42 (1999), str. 113-128 chives in a special department, much as happened in Prussia. The archives opened their doors to the public in 1882. In 1926 the Royal Military Archives assumed responsibility for the records of the Swedish Air Force and in 1943 for those of the navy. Whoever is concerned with European history generally and military history in particular will continually encounter the valuable and extensive holdings of the Royal Swedish War Archives, which represent a veritable goldmine of sources for the researcher. Not many years ago the Swedish Ministry of Defence transferred its responsibility for the records of the Swedish Armed Forces to the National Archives. This means (if I may so formulate it) that the military has let go of its responsibility for its own memory purely out of financial considerations and has as a result given priority to the idea of professionalism and efficiency in the military sphere over the stewardship of the intellectual foundations of military service. This has surely also got something to do with the completely different nature of the contemporary armed forces' self-perception, just as historical consciousness is currently rather neglected across Europe and today's fighting services are little concerned with the foundations on which they stand and with their history, and believe that they can best discharge their duties by concentrating on the present and on the short-term future. I believe that the developments in Sweden are symptomatic of those in the European military institutions generally, and I am of the opinion that the latter will increasingly assume a mercenary character. We thus have a situation in Sweden where the Military Archives are part of the Imperial Archives, whose director is present today in the person of Dr Eric Norberg, where the basis of its activities is the Swedish Archive Law, but where the Swedish Ministry of Defence has come to an agreement wih the Imperial Archives to satisfy its professional needs in this area. Let us now look at the German situation, which has a complicated history. In 1918 the four kingdoms which dominated Germany (Prussia, Saxony, Württemberg and Bavaria) had their own military-historical department and war archives alongside their own General Staffs. The German Empire itself had no Imperial Archive. This situation changed after the First World War, when the Chief of the Troop Office (Truppenamt), Major General Hans von Seeckt, presented a memorandum to the Reich Cabinet in which he demanded the creation of an Imperial Archive in which to hold the large quantity of records accumulated by the demobilising army; this archive was to have the primary function of documenting the war on sea, land and in the air, but was also to function as an Imperial Archive in the wider sense. It is not surprising that this idea originated with the military, as the latter had always demanded the creation of a strictly organised central imperial authority. As the documentation of the First World War was to be the Reich Archive's principal immediate task, it was proposed that its President was always to be a retired general. In 1919 the Reich Cabinet approved General von Seeckt's ideas and the Imperial Archive was founded 121