Registry office

The Evidenzbüro , previously Evidenzbureau , was the name of the headquarters of the military intelligence service of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy . The term is used in Austria as a name for the intelligence service to this day.

Surname

Austrian German has a special way of expressing it with the phrase keep something in evidence in the sense of keeping an eye on something . The evidence office took on this task for the Austro-Hungarian armed forces: It collected reports from numerous sources that had evidence and were militarily relevant.

The word evidence also refers to files, filing and filing. The term Evidenzbüro is therefore still used in Austrian official German. For example, the documentation offices of the three Austrian supreme courts, the Supreme Court , the Constitutional Court and the Administrative Court , are called Evidenzbüro.

activity

The intelligence service records office was a staff unit of the Austro-Hungarian War Ministry . The office was located in the War Ministry building in Vienna. A summary of his findings had to be presented to the Chief of Staff every day and Emperor Franz Joseph once a week. This was done by hand until 1913. The chief of staff was responsible for interpreting and evaluating the reports to the emperor and the war minister.

For the collection and evaluation of incoming information at headquarters were fifteen officers of the Army (status of 1907). Reports were made by the officers of the customer service centers and main customer service centers set up throughout the monarchy, and the Austro-Hungarian military attachés from abroad .

Compared to the German and Russian general staff, they had extremely modest resources. The lack of staff and money was mainly due to the fact that the registry office drew a large part of its budget from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where it relied on the gathering of intelligence in its own area of ​​competence. The Foreign Ministry, in turn, was financed as a joint ministry by Cis and Transleithania ; the Magyar politicians generally only granted the smallest possible resources to common institutions.

Other intelligence bureaus of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, for example, were busy opening and reading the mail from the Vienna embassies, which was a common practice at the time.

history

With the Evidenzbureau , the first permanent military secret service was created in 1850 and used in the Sardinian War of 1859 and in the Prussian-Austrian War of 1866, albeit with little success. More than 100 years earlier, people in Austria had been convinced that such a service was necessary.

At the end of the 19th century, the competition between the great powers of Europe intensified, which also led to an increased use of the secret services against each other. In accordance with the political interests of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the attention of their spies was directed from the beginning mainly to the south and east, therefore to Italy , the Balkans and Russia .

Conversely, the attention of the Russians with their intelligence service of the Ochrana naturally turned to their western neighbor Austria-Hungary. After 1900, Russia succeeded in recruiting the general staff officer and deputy head of the records office, Alfred Redl . Its exposure in 1913 led to a serious political and military crisis in the Danube monarchy.

During the First World War , the registry office gained greater importance. The clarification of opposing radio messages was added to the previous tasks. In the last year of the war, 1917/18, the registry office under Maximilian Ronge and the domestic secret service, the State Police (StaPo), are said to have employed a total of 300 officers, 50 officials, 400 police agents , 600 soldiers and 600 informers.

resolution

On November 12, 1918, the State Council of German Austria decided, at the request of the Renner I State Government , to dissolve the Austro-Hungarian War Ministry, from then on the liquidating War Ministry , and thus also the registry office. Staff unit manager Ronge was commissioned to hand over all documents to the newly founded secret service (Department 1 / N) subordinate to the State Office for the Interior (from 1920: Ministry of the Interior) and to disband the apparatus. On July 12, 1919, the liquidating registry ceased operations.

Heads of the registry office

• Major Anton Ritter von Kalik , 1850–1864
• Colonel Georg Ritter von Kees , 1864–1866
• Colonel Josef Pelikan von Plauenwald , 1866–1869
• Lieutenant Colonel Franz Weikhard , 1869–1870
• Colonel Ludwig Edler von Cornaro , 1870–1871
• Colonel Rudolf Ritter von Hoffingen , 1871–1876
• Colonel Adolf Ritter von Leddihn , 1876–1879
• Colonel Karl Freiherr von Ripp , 1879–1882
• Colonel Hugo Ritter Bilimek von Waissolm , 1882–1886
• Colonel Edmund Ritter Mayer von Wallerstein and Marnegg , 1886–1892
• Lieutenant Colonel Emil Freiherr Woinovich von Belobreska , 1892–1896
• Lieutenant Colonel Desiderius Kolosvary de Kolosvar , 1896–1898
• Colonel Arthur Freiherr Giesl von Gieslingen , 1898–1903
• Colonel Eugen Hordliczka , 1903–1909
• Colonel August Urbański von Ostrymiecz , 1909–1914
• Colonel Oskar von Hranilovic-Cvetassin , 1914–1917
• Colonel Maximilian Ronge , 1917-1919

Deputy boss 1908–1912:

• Colonel Alfred Redl , exposed as a double spy in 1913

See also

• Army News Office of the Austrian Armed Forces
• Kuk customer service

literature

• Verena Moritz , Hannes Leidinger , Gerhard Jagschitz : In the center of power. The many faces of the head of the secret service, Maximilian Ronge . Residenz-Verlag, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-7017-3038-4 .
• Albert Pethö: Agents for the double-headed eagle. Austria-Hungary's secret service in the World War . Leopold Stocker Verlag , Graz 1998, ISBN 3-7020-0830-6 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Duden: The Foreign Dictionary, Mannheim 2007, Lemma Evidenz; also in the Austrian dictionary
2. ^ OGH: Evidenzbüro
3. ^ VfGH: Evidenzbüro
4. ↑ Management and administration of justice. VwGH, archived from the original on January 4, 2014 ; accessed on May 22, 2018 .