Bernhard von Richthofen

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Bernhard Ludwig Ernst Freiherr von Richthofen (born June 8, 1836 in Cammerau , Schweidnitz district , Silesia , † June 5, 1895 in Berlin ) was a Prussian administrative officer. From 1868 he was district administrator of Buck , from 1875 to 1885 district administrator of the Stolp district in the province of Pomerania and from 1885 until his death the chief of police in Berlin.

Life

Bernhard von Richthofen was a son of the coal mine owner and sea lieutenant Eduard von Richthofen (1801–1863) and his wife Amalie von Schmettau (1809–1843). He studied law at the Friedrichs University in Halle and became active in the Corps Marchia Halle in 1856 .

In 1858 he entered the internal administration of the Kingdom of Prussia . He began his career at the Glogau Regional Court and in 1868 became district administrator in the Buck district ( Posen ). In 1874 he became the successor of the controversial district administrator Hans von Gottberg in Stolp, who had been put into temporary retirement for political reasons. In the Stolp district , which was considered difficult due to its size and political reasons, only selected officials were deployed. Richthofen was supposed to enforce the government's position there.

In October 1885 Richthofen became police chief of Berlin . Allegedly, according to a rumor spread by Hans von Tresckow , Richthofen owed his promotion to Otto von Bismarck's wish to use Richard von Puttkamer, a relative of his wife Johanna von Puttkamer, in Stolp. Tresckow described his unmarried superior not only as gruff and inaccessible, but hardworking, but also attributed a "preference for the male sex" to him. Leopold von Meerscheidt-Hüllessem , head of the homosexual department of the Berlin police, had Richthofen secretly observed without finding out anything directly incriminating. Richthofen noticed the surveillance and confronted Hüllesem.

Sodom's End (1890). Caricature by Gustav Brandt on the police licensing of Hermann Sudermann's play of the same name.

Philipp zu Eulenburg , Friedrich von Holstein and Alfred von Kiderlen-Waechter considered Richthofen incompetent, "phlegmatic" and unreliable. According to its own statements, Eulenburg in particular operated Richthofen's discharge. At the same time, the State Secretary in the Foreign Office , Adolf Marschall von Bieberstein , tried to force Richthofen out of office because, according to Tresckow, he had not complied with his request to observe Herbert von Bismarck . The historian Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller suspects that Richthofen's sudden and unexpected death was a disguised suicide.

As police chief, Richthofen supervised the implementation of the socialist law in Berlin. In 1892 he ultimately unsuccessfully banned the Freie Volksbühne Berlin , which he viewed as a dangerous propaganda organization for the socialist movement.

Richthofen's judgment on the dramas of naturalism became almost proverbial . When he forbade the premiere of Hermann Sudermann's play Sodom's End, planned for October 1890 , he justified this to the director of the Berlin Lessing Theater , Oscar Blumenthal , with the words: The Janze direction does not suit us. After further interventions by Blumenthal with the Prussian Interior Minister Ernst Ludwig Herrfurth and slight cuts, Richthofen lifted his ban on the instructions of the Minister.

In Berlin-Friedrichshain today's Auerstraße was named Richthofenstraße after Bernhard von Richthofen from 1898 to 1951.

literature

  • Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller: Man for man. A biographical lexicon. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / Main 2001, p. 585.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kösener corps lists 1910, 99 , 247
  2. ^ Ilona Buchsteiner : Continuity and change in the social structure of the Pomeranian district administrators between the founding of the empire and the First World War. In: Kurt Adamy, Kristina Hübener (eds.): Nobility and state administration in Brandenburg in the 19th and 20th centuries. A historical comparison. Akademie Verlag, Potsdam 1996, p. 372.
  3. ↑ a b c Quoted from Hergemöller: Mann for Mann , p. 585.
  4. ↑ Cecil William Davies: Theater for the People. The Story of the Volksbühne. Manchester UP, Manchester 1977, pp. 35-37.
  5. ^ Gary D. Stark: Banned in Berlin. Literary Censorship in Imperial Germany, 1871-1918. Berghahn Books, NY 2009, pp. 210-212, cit. 211; Dieter Breuer, The history of literary censorship in Germany, Heidelberg 1982 ( DNB ), p. 190, according to Ernst Zeitter: “The janze direction doesn't suit us”. Biographical fragments of a history of media censorship in Germany, part 8 , in: tv diskurs issue 25 (2003/3), pp. 18-25 (22 f.).
  6. ↑ Richthofenstrasse . In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein
personal data
SURNAME Richthofen, Bernhard von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Richthofen, Bernhard Ludwig Ernst Freiherr von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Prussian administrative officer and police chief of Berlin
DATE OF BIRTH June 8, 1836
PLACE OF BIRTH Cammerau , Schweidnitz district , Silesia
DATE OF DEATH June 5, 1895
Place of death Berlin