Administration
The Staatssekretär 'Secretary of State' Herbert Backe was personally nominated by the Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, Alfred Rosenberg. His ministry produced the "Instruktion fur einen Reichskommissar in der Ukraine" for the direction of future administrators of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine.
"Die Reichskommissare unterstehen dem Reichsminister fur die besetzen Ostgebiete und erhalten ausschliesslich von ihm Weisungen..." ( translat.: The Reich's Commissioners are subordinated under the Reich's minister for the occupied eastern territories and receive only orders from him) was the "Führer" decree for the administration of the new eastern territories, the Reichskommissars reported to the Eastern Affairs Ministry.
The capital of this German administration was in Rivne in Western Ukraine.
The German Administration gave the role of "Chief of Ukrainian Principal Commission" to Professor Wolodomyr Kubijowytsch, an early local supporter.
The civil and criminal justice local administration, apart from the local SS and Wehrmacht military justice branches, was staffed by "Parteien Chef", "Bailiffs", "Mayors", with supervision of German "Schoffen" (Advisers) and "Schlichten" (Arbiters) with ample legal powers. The most important cases or situations which affected "natural rights" of any "Aryan" subject, were managed in Rivne or Berlin.
The Wehrmacht introduced reforms in Ukraine allowing limited religious liberty. In January 1942, Bishop Polikarp Sikorsky of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church became the temporary administrator of church lands in the German-occupied Ukraine and he was granted the title of Archbishop of Lutsk and Kovel. He also had authority over Bishoprics at Kiev, Zhytomyr (Bishop Hryhorij Ohijchuk), Poltava, Kirovohrad, Lubny (Bishop Sylvester Hayevsky), Dnipropetrovsk and Bila Tserkva (Bishop Manuyil Tarnavsky) by decree of the Civil German Administration of limited religious liberty in Ukraine. The German Administration also allowed Archbishop Alexander of Pinsk and Polesia to maintain the religious authority he wielded before the war and the same permission was granted to Archbishop Alexander of Volhynia.
Read more about this topic: Reichskommissariat Ukraine