Rostock – Yellowed paper, old stamps and handwritten notes: some files from the history of road construction are more than 300 years old – and even the cover page added much later often is a piece of administrative history.

At the moment, we are working with documents from a time around 100 years ago, when road construction was still organised in ministerial sub-divisions. A collection from the “Mecklenburg-Strelitz Ministry, Department of the Interior, Sub-Department for Civil Engineering Works” is being processed. It consists of around 13 linear metres of files. One linear metre of files refers to the amount of documents that can stand upright next to each other on one metre of shelf space.

The small details in the margins are often particularly fascinating: old registry numbers, historical terms or handwritten additions that hardly anyone uses today.

(State Office for Roads and Transport MV)