Ministerstvo financí I, Praha

It is a key fonds for the study of Czechoslovak economic history in the period 1918 to 1945. It concentrates material for the study of the state financial administration, state accounting, and the entire body of financial laws and government regulations. The focus, however, remains on the affairs of the monetary institutions, their formation, merger, organization, liquidation and, above all, their activities. During the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the Ministry of Finance adopted a number of regulations that discriminated against the Jewish population and excluded them from public and economic life, but in particular it implemented regulations based on the Reich Protector's Decree on Jewish Property of 21 June 1939 and others. Among the registry aids there are four books marked 'Securing of Jewish property (1940)', but the files for entries 60001 to 77500 are not in the fonds. Several name registers from 1940-1943 are also found under the same designation. Among the singles, we mention, for example, the implementation of the implementing decrees to the Ordinance on Jewish Property concerning the forced deposit of precious metal objects or the registration of securities, the booklet Securing Jewish Property (1940) (carton 307, no. 23800; carton 310, no. 46415; carton 1477, no. 39887). The Ministry of Finance was established in November 1918 on the basis of Act No. 2/1918 Coll., which established the highest administrative offices in the newly established Czechoslovak Republic. It was the central office of the state administration for state finances, taxes and levies, customs, banking and insurance and, until 1926, for monetary affairs. During the years of the German occupation, the Ministry of Finance was part of the autonomous administration of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. As part of the reorganisation of the Protectorate administration in January 1942, matters of currency and money (with the exception of the supervision of the National Bank for Bohemia and Moravia) were removed from its remit and transferred to the Ministry of Economy and Labour. Josef Kalfus remained as Minister from 1936 until the end of the war.