Prussian Privy State Archives

A Federal statutory body, it is one of the largest repositories of primary source documents in Germany and spans the history of Prussia, Brandenburg, the House of Hohenzollern and the Prussian Army.

The address is Archivstraße 12-14, D - 14195 Berlin, Germany The origins of the Archives can be directly traced back to 1282, when a collection of official papers under the auspices of the Margrave of Brandenburg was first documented.

Formal organization of the stocks occurred in 1468, and in 1598 the Elector of Brandenburg appointed Erasmus Langenhain "Registratura Archivorum" to bring systematic order to the sovereign's documents, official records and files.

In the middle of the 17th century the holdings became a personal repository of the first King of Prussia under archivist Christoph Schönebeck [de] and granted the honorific title "Privy State Archives".

After the war, holdings that wound up in the Soviet occupation zone were moved relatively unscathed to a newly created German Central Archive housed in Merseburg, East Germany.