The Royal State Archive in Gdańsk
(Kgl. Staatsarchiv für Westpreußen in Danzig)

Design of the main building of the Gdańsk Archive at Hansaplatz 5 approved by the Office of the Supervision of Construction in Gdańsk (Bau-Polizei Danzig).

In 1898 the decision was made to establish the State Archive for the West Prussia Province of the German Empire in Gdańsk. One year later Regierung Danzig (local state administration office) signed the agreement with the municipal authorities in which the latter transferred the building ground for the future Gdańsk Archive to Prussia at no cost. The first and most important part of the holdings of the Gdańsk Archive were the historical records of Gdańsk dating from XIV century and later, transferred to the Archive by the City of Gdańsk. The first commissioner who prepared the establishment of the Gdańsk Archive was the archivist from Wiesbaden Dr Otto Meinardus who came to Gdańsk in July 1900.

Max Bär the Executive Director of the Archive in 1901-1912

The Royal State Archive in Gdańsk, located temporarily in the City Hall, officially celebrated its opening on April 1, 1901, with its first Executive Director, an experienced archivist Max Bär. In 1902 the construction of the building at Hansaplatz 5 was completed.
The holdings of the Archive included records coming from the Gdańsk Pomerania, which at that time was the West Prussia Province of the German Empire. The Archive acquired the records of Pomeranian towns, records of the City of Gdańsk, the collection of the documents of Pomeranian princes as well as many precious holdings from the area in the delta of the Vistula River. A large part of these holdings was transferred from the Archive in Königsberg. The transferred holdings were quickly processed and the access for researchers was provided.
Max Bär was the Executive Director of the Archive to 1912. His successors were Dr Adolf Warschauer (1912-1915) and Dr Joseph Kaufmann (1915-1921), who became the Executive Director of the State Archive of the Free City of Gdańsk in 1921.

State Archive of the Free City of Gdańsk
(Staatsarchiv für Freie Stadt Danzig)

As a result of the Treaty of Versailles over 70% of the West Prussia Province became part of Poland and the rest of it - the Free City of Gdańsk. Archivists obey the rule that records should be stored in a place they were originally created in the past. That is why they decided to divide the holdings stored in Gdańsk and transfer the records of other Pomeranian towns to Poland.
In 1921-1929 the Executive Director of the Staatsarchiv für Freie Stadt Danzig was Dr Joseph Kaufmann who as a matter of fact performed as such since 1915 when the Archive was still Prussian. The next Executive Director was Dr Walther Recke (1929-1941).
Before the Free City of Gdańsk was established many precious holdings were taken away to Berlin, some of which have never returned to Gdańsk. This process lasted from 1918 to 1938. Long-lasting negotiations to return part of the holdings of the Gdańsk Archive to Poland were fruitless. The only small success achieved was the return of Old Polish records to a few Pomeranian towns which had transferred their holdings to the Gdańsk Archive as deposits. These holdings were put into the State Archive in Poznań in 1936. It was not easy for Polish researchers to access the records held in the Gdańsk Archive. Restrictions and refusals often affected well-known Polish historians of the inter-war period.

Reichsarchiv Danzig

The burnt down storage building of the Gdańsk Archive in 1945.

After the outbreak of World War II and the annexation of Gdańsk by the Reich the name of the Gdańsk Archive was changed again. In the beginning of 1940 it became the Reichsarchiv Danzig.
The Germans enriched the holdings of the Archive with the records of closed down Polish institutions and the institutions of the Free City of Gdańsk. At the end of the war the management of the Archive evacuated a large part of its most valuable holdings located in the building at Hansaplatz 5. The evacuation was supervised by the Executive Director Dr Ulrich Wendland, who held this position in 1941-1945.
During the fights in Gdańsk in March 1945 the building of the Archive burnt down together with the holdings which were still left inside. Only those records which were evacuated by German archivists to various family estates in Pomerania, to schools in Nowy Dwór Gdański and Nowy Staw and to Lower Saxony in Germany were saved. The holdings hidden in Gdańsk and in the Castle of Malbork either burnt down or were taken away by the Russians. The records found in Gdańsk in spring 1945 were secured in the building of the City Library that outlasted the war. Now this building is the seat of the Gdańsk Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences..

The State Archive in Gdańsk

Dr Marcin Dragan Executive Director of the State Archive in Gdańsk from 1945 to 1961

The storage rooms of the Gdańsk Archive burnt down in March 1945. In April 1945 Gdańsk librarians together with Dr Marcin Pelczar excavated buried holdings from the cellar of the devastated administrative building of the Archive. In August 1945 Marcin Dragan, former Polish language teacher of the Polish High School in the Free City of Gdańsk and the Deputy of the General Commissioner of Poland in Gdańsk returned to Gdańsk. He was appointed the Executive Director of the State Archive in Gdańsk by the Minister of Education on December 16, 1945 and held this position until 1961. In 1946 the reconstruction of the building of the Archive and the search for the missing holdings began, as well as the search for the records of German institutions left in vacated buildings. The devastated administrative building was reconstructed and on October 17, 1947 the Archive was officially opened for researchers. The Archive regained a larger part of its holdings, including ten railway cars of records revindicated from the British Occupation Zone in Germany, among them the most precious old records of the cities of Gdańsk and Elblag. In 1957-1958, 1963 and 1965 the Soviet Union returned part of the archives of the City of Gdańsk taken away from Pomerania in 1945.
Thanks to the support of the Plenipotentiary for the Reconstruction of the Coast, Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski, archival storage buildings were reconstructed in 1948 - 1950. Since 1953 the State Archive in Gdańsk has begun to collect systematically records generated by administration, local government, courts of law and selected institutions from the Gdańsk region.

Professor Czesław Biernat Executive Director of the State Archive in Gdańsk from 1969 to 1991.

In the post-war period the position of the Executive Director of the State Archive in Gdańsk was held by: Dr Roch Morcinek (1961-1968), Dr Maria Sławoszewska (1968-1969), the researcher of the history of Gdańsk and the educator of young archivists Professor Czesław Biernat (1969-1991)and Dr Aniela Przywuska (1991-2004). In the last decade of the XX century the Gdynia Division of the State Archive in Gdańsk was established with a large and modern storage room to preserve valuable records of the history of our region.
Nowadays the State Archive in Gdańsk is one of the Polish archives educating future archivists and introducing new, computer network-based methods of cataloguing records.