The Royal Military Museum houses the historical archives of the Ministry of Defence up till the outbreak of the Second World War. Archives after this date are to be found at the Belgian Armed Forces documentation centre in Evere: Quarters Queen Elisabeth, rue d’Evere1, B-1140 Evere; info.ca@mil.be .

The Royal Military Museum also keeps private archives relating to Belgian military history. The RMM archives are accessible through both published and unpublished inventories, to be consulted in the reading room. Some of these inventories are digitalized.(see below)

The Moscow archives

The archives brought back from Moscow in 2002 constitute a rich source of information about Belgian military history (especially for the First World War and the interwar era). They are accessible through a database available in the reading room.

Personal military files

Many visitors are interested in family history and come to look for an ancestor in the Belgian armed forces. The RMM keeps the personal files of all officers born before 1900, as well as the files of non-commissioned officers and privates born between 1845 and 1888. The database of these files is online. Click here to check and for more information on what is kept where.

Consultation of files for officers born less than 120 years ago is subjected to authorization by the above mentioned documentation centre in Evere, where the files for officers born after 1900 are also kept.

Files for non-commissioned officers and privates born after 1888 are also kept in Evere.

Contact:

Ministry of Defence – DGHR: HRG-A/N (Section “Notariat”)

Quarters Queen Elisabeth, rue d’Evere 1, 1140 Evere; arch@mil.be

Notices and proclamations

The documentation centre safeguards an extensive collection of notices and proclamations from the 18th century till the end of the Second World War. The part with the greatest historic value concerns the Austrian era, the Brabant Revolution and the two world wars.

As a reminder: an official notice, a proclamation or a warning is a document published by legal or actual (occupier) authorities to the attention of the population. A bill, on the other hand, has an iconographic content.