“What the Personal Files Tell Us”

Civil servants’ s career between the two World Wars in the light of the Ministry of Interior personnel documents

Abstract

This paper intends to present the first results of an exploratory research on public service career. The civil service between the two World Wars comes alive from bottom-up perspective analysing the documents of the personnel commitment and excellence of civil servants. Among the Presidential Documents were examined the K 148 fond by Ministry of Interior with the title “Honors”. You can read in this item proposals related to the donation of various titles, ranks and other recognition, most of which have some attachment: detailed biographies, career path and other documents confirming excellent professional performance. Systematic sampling was carried out at 5-year intervals by reviewing documents classified under the same title on the national archive repository. The samples were taken in 1919, 1924, 1929, 1934 and 1939. In the exploratory phase of the research the goal is no more, than cognition, presentation with acceptance the subjective vision of the researcher. The genre is mixed accordingly: documentation and research report. In this study comes to life human fates, career paths in the context of social issues such as public health, population issues, war or charity work. However, we do not only include officials of the central administration, but also mayors, notaries, local and circular doctors, firefighters, paladin instructors and detectives. Along with them, the files are also show the careers and merits of university professors, engineers, lawyers, nuns and artists.