Secret State Archives Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, Archive in Dahlem, Berlin, Germany

The Secret State Archives Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation occupies a purpose-built archive in Berlin-Dahlem, erected between 1914 and 1924 to a design by Eduard Fürstenau and renovated and expanded in 1999. The pale grey, two-storey building has a red tiled hipped roof, a triangular pediment with an eagle relief, and the inscription PREUSSISCHES GEHEIMES STAATSARCHIV above a wooden double door. It holds around 38,000 linear metres of records and a library of some 185,000 volumes.

The archives trace their origin to 1282, when a collection of official papers of the Margrave of Brandenburg was first documented. In 1598 Elector Joachim Friedrich appointed Erasmus Langenhain as the first official responsible solely for the archive, giving it institutional continuity. In 1803 the holdings were enlarged with Prussian governmental, judicial and regional documents and the institution was renamed the Prussian State Archives. The Dahlem building was erected between 1914 and 1924 to a design by Eduard Fürstenau.

The archive holds records of Masonic lodges and of Brandenburg-Prussian family archives, kept alongside state files. Its name goes back to the honorific "Privy State Archives" granted in the mid-17th century, when the holdings served as the personal repository of the first King of Prussia under archivist Christoph Schönebeck. The title was dropped in 1803, when the institution became the "Prussian State Archives", and was revived in 1963.

The archive is at Archivstraße 12–14 in Berlin-Dahlem, in the Steglitz-Zehlendorf district. The reading room is open to researchers who register in advance; the building was renovated and expanded in 1999. The entrance on the photograph is the wooden double door beneath the eagle relief and the inscription PREUSSISCHES GEHEIMES STAATSARCHIV.

The Dahlem building, designed by Eduard Fürstenau and erected between 1914 and 1924, carries a triangular pediment with a spread-winged eagle relief above the inscription PREUSSISCHES GEHEIMES STAATSARCHIV. During the Second World War most holdings were moved to abandoned mines at Stassfurt and Schönebeck in 1943–1944; the Königsberg State Archives went to Göttingen as the Soviet Army advanced.