Bureau

Bureau (pronounced byoor-oh)

(1) A chest of drawers, sometime with a mirror atop.

(2) A division of a government department or an independent administrative unit.

(3) An office for collecting or distributing news or information, coordinating work, or performing specified services; agency; typically a travel or news bureau.

(4) A desk or writing desk with pigeonholes, drawers etc, against which the writing surface can be closed when not in use, the best known form of which is the roll-top (historically chiefly British but now widely used in the international antiques trade).

1710-1720 (some sources claim instances from the 1690s): A borrowing from the French bureau, the earlier meaning of which was "coarse cloth (as desk cover), baize", from the Old French burel (woolen cloth), and a diminutive of bure (related were the Middle French bure (coarse woolen cloth) and the French bourre (hair, fluff)) from the Late Latin burra (wool, fluff, shaggy cloth, coarse fabric).  It was akin to the Ancient Greek βερβέριον (berbérion) (shabby garment) and a doublet of burel and borrel, taken from the Old French.  The Latin burra remains of unknown origin.

Bureau desks were once common office furniture of offices, rather the cubicles of their day and the meaning expanded by 1720 to "office or place where business is transacted" and by 1796 to "division of a government."  The meaning "chest of drawers for clothes etc" is from 1770, said to be American English but was most associated with British use.  The modern view is that bureaus and bureaux (both pronounced byoor-ohz) are the acceptable plurals but the former is probably preferable for most purposes.

Squabbles on the Wilhelmstrasse

Most historical analysis of the Third Reich has understandably focused on the evil and the damage done but for structuralists, the bureaucratic state is an interesting study.  Although assuming office in 1933, the Nazis didn’t immediately become the totalitarian regime familiar in later years because there were too many other power centres over which their control was either incomplete or non-existent.  For that reason, the party, while attempting to take control of the machinery of the state, also sometimes maintained, within any sphere or activity, one or more party institutions in a competition for influence.  Sometimes these organizations would run in parallel, sometime in opposition.

Although the Nazi hierarchy was beset by internecine hatreds and jealousies, one of the few things on which most agreed was the stupidity, incompetence and unsuitability for his role of Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946), foreign minister between 1938 and the end of the war.  Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945), ever ready with a memorable phrase, noted in his diary “… von Ribbentrop bought his name, married his money and swindled his way into office.”  Hitler however, was an admirer and in 1934 permitted Ribbentrop to create a party organization called the Büro Ribbentrop (later the Dienststelle Ribbentrop (Dienststelle best translated as office or department)) which, bizarrely, operated as a kind of alternative foreign ministry.

The Büro Ribbentrop also operated as a dirty-tricks outfit with some effort devoted to undermining the authority of the Foreign Ministry which, in a nice touch, operated from offices on Berlin’s Wilhelmstrasse, just over the road from the Buro.  The Buro served as Hitler’s personal tool for the implementation of his foreign policy, the traditional institutions and diplomatic channels often sidelined although, Ribbentrop himself had to fend of intrusions from yet more party units with interests in international affairs.  Ribbentrop however prevailed and was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1938, serving in the position until the end of hostilities; convicted of planning & waging aggressive war, war crimes and crimes against humanity, he was hanged in 1946.

Victorian (circa 1870) English cylinder roll-top writing bureau: mahogany with burr walnut fitted interior and a trio of leather skivers.