(Grand) ducal oldenburg land dragon corps

Landdragoner of the Grand Ducal Oldenburg Landdragoner Corps in 1865 with the so-called Russian cap introduced that year. Blue uniform, the pants with red stripes.

The Herzoglich Oldenburg Land Dragon Corps (from 1829: "Grand Ducal") was the institutional continuation of the Oldenburg Police Dragon Corps , which existed from 1786 to 1811 and was dissolved when the Duchy was occupied by the French occupation authorities. The corps was set up as a gendarmerie on April 1, 1817 based on the model of the Royal Hanoverian Land Dragon Corps . The French term gendarmerie was apparently avoided due to bad experiences from the occupation. It is not to be confused with the Oldenburg Dragoon Regiment No. 19 , a military unit.

Emergence

During the occupation until 1813, the Imperial Gendarmerie ( Gendarmerie impériale ) acted as state police. After the Herzoglich Oldenburg Dragoon Corps had acted as a military force and also as state police from 1813 to 1817 , Duke Peter Friedrich Ludwig was forced to reform the police system as part of a general state reform. The result was the Dragoon Corps, which operated as the state police in the Oldenburg part of the Duchy. The details were regulated in the regulation on the formation and establishment of the Land Dragoon Corps of April 14, 1817.

Territorial jurisdiction, duties and legal status

Although the state police were grand-ducal, the territorial jurisdiction of the corps did not extend to the entire state territory, but only to the Oldenburg heartland (Duchy of Oldenburg). In the Birkenfeld part of the country , the gendarmerie of the Principality of Birkenfeld was responsible, in the Principality of Lübeck it had its own gendarmerie, which was not organized militarily in Birkenfeld.

The Landdragoner belonged legally to the military class , but in peacetime they belonged to the "Collegium, which is responsible for maintaining public order and security", ie according to today's standards the Ministry of the Interior. Their task was to support the "civil authorities". They could be requested for this from the cities and offices or from the district judicial authorities or the local police. In this case, legal responsibility for their use lay with the authority that requested the Dragoons. Ordinary service consisted of "maintaining public and current security" and reporting "wrongdoings" and crimes which the Dragoons were either reported to or discovered. In particular, the dragoons were instructed to protect travelers from raids and to intervene in fights. He was not allowed to conduct his own investigations, but was required to report suspicious facts and then to act on the instructions of the local police authority. The patrols should be set up by the brigade commanders in such a way that places where “disorder” could occur were constantly broken into.

structure

The corps consisted of a staff in the Oldenburg residence and seven gendarmerie brigades . The staff consisted of a captain (captain), a second lieutenant (lieutenant) as a representative and a sergeant for accounting. A gendarmerie brigade, based on the French model, consisted of a corporal, four mounted dragoons and one unmounted dragoons. The brigade locations were subdivided into quarters, observation stations and correspondence locations. The quarter was the main location of the district in which the brigade was regularly stationed, the observation stand was the place where the brigade or parts of it were staying for official reasons, the place of correspondence was the village or house where the patrols met to deliver reports , but there was no permanent billeting .

The locations of the seven brigades were Oldenburg (strength 1/8), Delmenhorst , Vechta , Cloppenburg , Neuchâtel , Jever and Ovelgönne (1/3 each) and the observation brigades Wildeshausen , Apen , Ellenserdamm and Neuenkirchen with two dragoons each.

staff

The personnel should preferably be recruited from former military personnel and be at least 25 and no more than 40 years old. The prerequisite was strong stature and good health as well as good certificates. The dragoons had to either raise the guarantee of 300 Reichstalers themselves or guarantee them through a surety ; with his own guarantee, the dragoon received interest on the sum. The service period was six years. The salary for a mounted dragoon was 25 Reichstaler per month including forage and mounting (uniform); the dragoon had to provide the horse himself. He could also receive it on advance payment of three Reichstalers a month. In addition, there were 12 Groten diets daily for their own food. Payment was made monthly. However, considerable sums of money for uniforms and equipment were deducted from his salary. Conversely, the communities in which the Dragoons were quartered had to finance most of their upkeep. In the event of illness, the dragoons were fed in the garrison or in the military hospital; in the event of disability, they received a pension based on 20 years of service. The quarters consisted as a rule of one or two rented houses, in which there should be a guardroom, a room for the corporal and a room for the dragoons. Observation brigades could be rented in a room, the patrols for the correspondence locations were quartered in inns. The workforce remained the same for decades and was between 40 and 50 men.

Reforms

The commander of the corps was Rittmeister Lehmann until his departure in 1827, who had already led the ducal dragoon corps between 1813 and 1817. The new commander was the first lieutenant (first lieutenant) Johann Ludwig Mosle (1794–1877), later major general, envoy and minister. Mosle was already adjutant of the Oldenburg infantry regiment. Despite his retirement in 1857, he was to command the corps until January 1, 1870, when it had already been converted into the gendarmerie corps.

Mosle himself liked to spread the word that he probably only got the post of commander of the land dragons because "he smelled something about horses, riding and stable service". Under Mosle, the corps was structured and trained more militarily. Some of the dragoons had meanwhile been hired who had no military training whatsoever; the number of horses, equipment and uniforms were sometimes poor to miserable. There was also uncertainty about the duties, rights and responsibilities of the Dragoons. Mosle therefore partly personally managed the training of the dragoons and ensured a suitable number of horses within a very short time.

An important external feature for progress in the corps was the construction of its own barracks (Landdragoner barracks) in Heiligengeiststrasse in Oldenburg, which the company moved into in 1837. This accommodation, known as the Gendarmerie Barracks from 1867, was also used by the Gestapo during World War II . Until the 1970s, it was used by the Lower Saxony intelligence police in Lower Saxony , a state security department that was independent of the criminal police until 1974 . In 1974 the barracks were demolished; In its place was the Oldenburg tax office until 2019.

In 1829 the corps was named Großherzoglich Oldenburgisches Landdragonerkorps, as the son of Peter Friedrich Ludwig, Paul Friedrich August , had held the title of Grand Duke since he took office, which his father had refused. His government endeavored to reduce the workforce and thus the costs of the corps and, on the other hand, to make the dragoons more available to the local authorities by redistributing them to the offices.

The government itself was critical of the military organization of the corps; mainly because of the high cost. But the "dual position" of the Dragoons among the military and civil authorities was also viewed as ineffective. In general, stronger cooperation between the lower police authorities and the Dragoons was called for.

In 1830 there were 106 parishes in the Oldenburg region, each with one or two paid field guards . In addition, there were urban and stain police sub-employees, so that a good 118 police sub-employees were expected, whereby the official messengers as quasi auxiliary police were not yet included. In addition, every peasant bailiff, parish bailiff or governor should have rifles ready who could be used to transport prisoners, etc. The field guards should lead the riflemen as corporals. All field guards of an office should be subordinate to a sergeant of the Dragoon Corps. It was intended to provide the field guards with “some kind of military clothing”. The government's goal was to encourage local and state police to cooperate more effectively. For this purpose, the brigades were to be disbanded and only in Oldenburg a force of over 12 men were to be kept ready as a state reserve or for activities in the residence.

These government proposals were rejected; apparently from Grand Duke Paul Friedrich August personally. Strengthening the local police force was considered important, but the corps should retain its military character

1. the gendarmerie of the neighboring states, z. B. the Hannoversche Landdragonerkorps, were structured similarly,
2. In the event of war, when the Oldenburg troops marched out, no armed corps would remain in the country and the remaining recruits would not be able to guarantee peace and security in the country.

The reform efforts dragged on until 1835, when the so-called normative of April 25, 1835 came into force. In addition to formal changes, the most important new regulation was that a “reserve police department” was actually set up at the Oldenburg site at the disposal of the government, which could be deployed nationwide practically immediately, which also made sense because Oldenburg was already centrally located in the state. The military character of the troops was expressly emphasized, at the same time the police tasks were more clearly defined.

The dragoons were stopped from strangers

"Vagabonds, beggars, people without trade, craft boys, house traders and Jews who should not be allowed into the local country",

to prevent. They should also take action against poachers, gamblers, thieves or gangs of thieves and carry out prisoner transports. They were expressly urged to provide assistance in the event of fires and accidents of all kinds; also to provide first aid. They were also used to support the customs inspectors.

Raw and wanton behavior was prohibited, as was heavy alcohol consumption; especially the participation in "feasts" and "excesses". The dragoons were expressly authorized "in special cases" to request military aid for their support and to contact the nearest military commanders. This also applied to the lower police authorities, such as parish bailiffs, peasant bailiffs and field guards, who were required to give the dragoons every possible help and were said to be by raising a contingent to which the peasant bailiffs were entitled. The dragoon should only use armed force in an emergency; the “fire rifle” should only be used with “extreme caution”.

The establishment of a prison in Vechta made it necessary to strengthen the brigade there in the early 1840s.

Brake presented a special police problem completely unexpectedly , as the Lower Weser town was planned at short notice as the port of the future imperial fleet in 1848/49 . At times, 70 military men had to be quartered in the city as a kind of military police in order to be able to control the crews of the fleet units lying in the port and to support the port police. Apparently 12 dragoons were stationed there for a long time and the military withdrew.

Dissolution or restructuring as a gendarmerie corps

Due to the Oldenburg-Prussian military convention of 1867 as a result of the German war of unification of 1866, the Oldenburg contingent of the former federal army was dissolved and now subordinated to the Prussian king as federal ruler within the framework of the new federal army of the North German Confederation. This also affected the Land Dragon Corps, which has now been renamed the Grand Ducal Oldenburg Gendarmerie Corps. The internal structure of the corps remained unchanged and Major General a. D. Mosle was its commander until 1870. The new corps now formally received a Prussian commander, but was generally subordinate to the Grand Ducal Ministry of the Interior.

See also

• Royal Hanoverian Land Dragon Corps
• Kk Gendarmerie

literature

• Hans Friedl: Mosle, Johann Ludwig. In: Hans Friedl u. a. (Ed.): Biographical manual for the history of the state of Oldenburg . Edited on behalf of the Oldenburg landscape. Isensee, Oldenburg 1992, ISBN 3-89442-135-5 , pp. 483-486.
• Dr. Heinrich Lankenau , Police Captain: The Oldenburg Land Dragon Corps (1817-1867) , Oldenburg i. O. 1928.
• Ders .: The Police Dragon Corps of the Duchy of Oldenburg (1786–1811) - The history of the oldest association of the Oldenburg state police . In: Oldenburg Yearbook of the Association for Archeology and Regional History , Vol. 30, Oldenburg i. O. 1926, pp. 5-128.
• Staff Oberwachtmeister Wintermann: Grand Ducal Oldenburg Gendarmerie Corps 1817-1917. Memorandum for the centenary of the corps , Oldenburg i. Size 1918.
• Udo Elerd (Ed.): From the vigilante to the armed forces . On the history of the garrison and the military in the city of Oldenburg , Oldenburg 2006.