Archiwum Państwowe w Gdańsku

The Royal State Archive of Western Prussia in Gdańsk (Königliche Staatsarchiv für Westpreussen in Danzig) came into existence April 1st, 1901. In 1902 it has relocated from the temporary localization in the Main City Town Hall to its own building at Hansaplatz 5 (actually 5 Wałowa street). It gathered documents from the city archive and documents concerning West Prussia from the Königsberg State Archive. After the World War I, part of the archival holdings concerning the German state administration was transferred to the archives in Berlin, Königsberg and Stettin. The Gdańsk archive functioned till 1939 as the State Archive of the Free City of Danzig (Staatsarchiv für Freie Stadt Danzig). In 1939 it was reorganized as Reichsarchiv Danzig. The documents concerning the Free City of Danzig authorities and international institutions supervising the city were transferred to the Foreign Office archive in Berlin. In 1944 part of the holdings was evacuated by German authorities and hidden in rural estates in Western Pomerania. The rest of the holdings, left in the archive building, was destroyed during military operations in1945. The Polish State Archive in Gdańsk was created December 17th, 1946. It’s primary aim was to restore the burnt building and to gather again the holdings of the German archive (they managed to do it in 50%). The archive gathered also the documents created by the new Polish institutions in Gdańsk region. From 1952 to 1983 the archive functioned under the name of the Gdańsk Voivodship State Archive. In 1997 the Gdynia branch of the Gdańsk archive was reorganized and became a separate archive.  

The holdings of the German State Archive before the World War I consisted of the holdings of the Municipal Archive and of the collections transferred from Königsberg (state, chuch and economy administration as well as the judiciary documents). The archivists managed to collect many old documents, books and manuscripts deposited in the State Archive by towns, guilds, societies, monasteries and churches. The holdings developed thanks to activity of German, and later Polish state and local government institutions. 

The access is regulated by Instruction No. 4 of the Head Office of State Archives in Poland, dated February 1, 2013.