The article reports on the workshop »born digitals und die historische Wissenschaft – Annäherungen an eine Quellenkunde für genuin elektronisches Archivmaterial«, which was organized by the State Archives of North Rhine-Westphalia in Duisburg on August 30th and 31st, 2022. The workshop established a dialogue between archivists and historians to address the epistemological, methodological, and technological challenges and opportunities of archiving and analyzing digital administrative records. The article situates these debates in a longer history of efforts to document administrative practices. Thus, the article highlights that the established archival order of written records was the contingent outcome of three interlinked transformation processes that occurred around 1900 in administrations and archives: 1) loose paper files started to replace records bound together in books transforming the file as the primary medium for documenting administrative practice, 2) the chronological organization of records in the registry gave way to an order based on subject categories, 3) archivists started to establish the principle of provenance as a principle of structuring archival collections. Thus, rather than treating digitalization as a crisis, it is seen as a transformative period of documentation practices, which brings its specific opportunities and challenges.

The social sciences have shaped how the science of public administration perceives innovations. Therefore, economic concepts of productivity and competitiveness frame the way innovations in public administrations are perceived. In contrast, this introduction develops a model for the historical analysis of innovations in administrative organizations. Using the concept of innovation, this model focuses on three levels of change processes that are analytically distinct but often occur together: (1) discourses of novelty, (2) actors of change, and (3) administrative practices.

Files may seem an obvious topic for historians of public administration, but that is by no means self-evident. Despite the interest in files from sociologists and archival scientists in the early 20th century, historians have engaged more with the contents of files than with their genres, materialities and functions. After tracing the theoretical and methodological engagements with files from Max Weber and Heinrich Otto Meisner to Cornelia Vismann and Bruno Latour, we argue firstly that files are defined by their relation to other records they compile. At the same time, they transmute these documents into cases and bureaucratic objects. Secondly, just as files bring documents together, they connect the activities of individuals and organizations. However, we argue that the degree to which files are instruments of formal administrative control and organizational coherence has been exaggerated, obscuring the agency of users and the potential for files to serve other ends.

Spezialeinheiten sind elementarer Bestandteil gegenwärtiger militärischer Interventionen und häufiges Motiv in der Populärkultur. Dieser strategische und symbolische Bedeutungsgewinn wird oft als Militarisierung und Maskulinisierung gedeutet. Im Beitrag argumentiert der Autor dafür, die Pluralisierung militärischer Männlichkeiten in den Blick zu nehmen, die Spezialeinheiten mit sich brachten. Dies wird anhand einer Analyse der Konflikte dargelegt, die die Einführung eines Spezialeinheitentrainings im österreichischen Bundesheer der 1960er-Jahre auslöste. Die unmittelbare Nachkriegszeit war in Österreich von einem Prozess der Konstruktion einer nationalen Identität geprägt, in dem staatsbürgerliche und militärische Männlichkeiten eng miteinander verflochten wurden. Anhand zeitgenössischer Fernsehreportagen werden breitere gesellschaftliche Diskurse zum Verhältnis von Staat und Militär ausgeleuchtet, um zu zeigen, wie das „Jagdkampf“-Training als eine gefährliche Pluralisierung militärischer Männlichkeiten gesehen wurde, die einen Bruch zwischen staatsbürgerlicher und militärischer Männlichkeit darstelle. In einem Ausblick wird anhand einer gegenwärtigen PR-Kampagne des Bundesheeres gezeigt, welche diskursive Arbeit das Bundesheer in die positive Neubesetzung des Jagdkommandos als Eliteeinheit investiert. Es integrierte daher plurale militärische Männlichkeiten und ist bemüht, dies für die gesellschaftliche Anerkennung des Militärdienstes nutzbar zu machen.

This contribution examines the role of trust in disabled veteran welfare in Bohemia during the First World War. It places this concern for disabled veterans’ trust in a wider political context as trust emerged as a specific concern in Cisleithanian political discourses on administrative reform around 1900. In the context of welfare for disabled veterans in Cisleithania, trust gained novel importance. Medical and occupational experts deemed it imperative to gain disabled veterans’ trust to maintain their role as experts and developed specific strategies of emotionally engaging with disabled soldiers to gain their trust. Karl Eger, a military official, emerged as an influential actor in Bohemian welfare for disabled veterans. He propagated a welfare administration based on local welfare boards, which would supposedly possess disabled veterans’ trust. His idea of trust was, however, based on concepts of national communities and he implemented it to re-organize disabled veteran welfare based on nationality.