This subproject, carried out by Irina Stange, grapples with the personnel policy and networks at the Federal Ministry of the Interior. One area of focus here is the founding and staffing of the ministry through September 1949, centering on the question of who was responsible for the ministry’s initial staff placements and under what premise this was carried out. The study will secondly investigate the ministry’s personnel policy from 1949 to 1969 with regard to processes of change and factors exerting an influence there. This will be followed by a closer look at the role of ministers and secretaries of state and their influence on the “daily business” of the ministry. The in-depth dissertation project will, above all, deal with the life of the ministry’s first state secretary, Hans Ritter von Lex, whose eleven-year tenure there made him an important mainstay at the ministry during the 1950s. Beginning with his biographical background, and moving beyond personnel issues, his role in forming policy at the ministry will be more closely examined.