Abstract
The establishment of a permanent international secretariat is one of the great innovations of the League of Nations. The administrative apparatus of Geneva was not simply an international office with national representatives but gradually evolved into a new kind of authority beyond the individual member states. This development, however, was much less planned than it might have seemed. Since Article 6 of the League Covenant of 1919 avoided any details on the administrative machinery of the Secretariat, its institutional structure and functioning were essentially shaped by the first Secretary General, Sir Eric Drummond, and its staff. Among them was the Austrian Egon Ferdinand Ranshofen-Wertheimer (1894–1957), who, after 1945, wrote one of the first studies on this “great experiment” in international administration. This article revisits this publication and places it in its historical context.