Secret police association

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The cooperation between the larger German states from 1851 in the era of reaction is known as the Secret Police Association (also known as the Police Cartel or Seven Association ) . The aim was to suppress efforts that campaigned, among other things, for freedom of the press and freedom of association . Above all, the formation of political parties should be prevented.

Austria and Prussia had initially tried to establish a federal central police. With this police opposition groups in the German Confederation should be pursued more effectively. The project had to be abandoned due to opposition from medium-sized countries. The Federal Central Police was replaced by the Secret Police Association of the seven largest states with secret police conferences. The cooperation worked until the end of the German Confederation in 1866.

Plan of a federal central police

Caricature about the suppression of the revolution , with Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia

Since the Federal Reaction Decision of August 23, 1851, the restored Bundestag saw itself as the highest authority to control the constitutional conditions in the individual states. Efforts that advocated freedom of the press and the right to organize (for political parties) were considered revolutionary and dangerous. Since October 1851 there was a reaction committee to which the constitutions and other laws of the individual states had to be submitted for examination. The measures, some of them of a military nature, were directed primarily against the small and medium-sized states.

On October 11, 1851, Austria and Prussia even applied for a federal central police force. According to their secret draft, this police should have its headquarters in Leipzig and examine the organization of the state police. Defects should be reported to the Bundestag. The police should collect and combine police data and then search for revolutionary phenomena. The federal government had to bear the costs. According to Article 4, however, the Federal Central Police should also have the right to bypass the central state authorities and to contact the lower state authorities directly. The commissioners of the Federal Central Police "should carry out investigations on the spot and, if necessary, be allowed to 'intervene", according to the historian Wolfram Siemann.

The project failed because of this far-reaching determination. For example, the Bavarian Prime Minister Ludwig von der Pfordten warned his king that this would mediate the states, that is, they would have limited their sovereignty. The Federal Central Police would then have been allowed to arrest people in Nuremberg or Würzburg without the knowledge of the Bavarian government, search apartments etc. In secret talks with Saxony, Hanover, Württemberg, Baden and both Hesse, von der Pfordten brought down the project. Austria and Prussia waived the enforcement. They were replaced by the Secret Police Association, a cooperation between the state police.

Organization and activity

Hinckeldey's grave bust in Berlin

The driving force behind the collaboration was Karl Ludwig Friedrich von Hinckeldey , the Berlin police chief. In Prussia he had developed the political police into a combat instrument against all efforts that were deemed to be subversive or dangerous to the state. His additional position as general police director in the Ministry of the Interior was equivalent to a police ministry. He was allowed to speak directly to the king, which made him largely independent of the interior minister. Above all, he persecuted Democrats, but also ultra-conservatives.

On April 8, 1851, there had already been a secret police conference in Dresden, at which Austria, Prussia, Saxony and Hanover were represented. After negotiations, Bavaria , Württemberg and Baden joined this secret police club (or seven club). The Secret Police Association had no formal legal basis. There was no open contract between the governments involved, and the organization of the state police forces was not noticeably changed. Nevertheless, the association developed its own structure with a large number of files, "this is the coagulated business activity of the police association". Police conferences were held in the royal cities of the seven states in rotation, annually or more frequently until 1866. In fifteen years there were 20 meetings.

At these conferences, messages were exchanged on which the police measures of the states were based: expulsion of political suspects, book bans, dissolution of associations, the suppression of propaganda that was smuggled from exile to Germany. There were also weekly reports: every state had a police superintendent who collected and forwarded the relevant news for his state. The files of the Siebenerverein have also preserved a lot of material: confiscated letters, pamphlets, books, brochures, diary notes, lists of names of refugees, etc.

In order to get information about the exiles, the authorities themselves evaluated small exile sheets and used informers who also stole letters and other documents. The relatives of those affected were also monitored, especially the wives, who were usually allowed to stay in Germany. According to Christian Jansen, they appear "in the surveillance files as key figures in police conspiracy theories." Eveline Löwe, for example, the wife of the last president of the rump parliament Wilhelm Loewe , had to see house searches several times and was finally expelled from her hometown of Minden. The surveillance of relatives and friends stigmatized numerous citizens who were not politically active themselves.

The police association observed the most diverse groups: Liberal hereditary imperialists , ultramontanes , German Catholics , Freemasons , the former workers ' clubs , gymnastics clubs , actors' societies, choral societies, also the Economic Congress in Gotha in 1858 and the German National Association of 1859. Everyone could be insinuated, rightly or wrongly to want to be politically effective. Ordinary crime, on the other hand, was excluded from the weekly reports; it could not have been dealt with at all. So it was a political police force.

In the files, a valuable treasure trove for party historians, there is, for example, the following song, which was confiscated as political propaganda:

"On! to die for the fatherland,
Who swore the oath of freedom
The domination raises us to corruption
Your bloody banner. [...] "

The melody for it was the Marseillaise , the song of the French Revolution . Siemann: "What today may seem like hollow, paper-like, at the same time gruesome pathos, looked like a threatening reality at the time, since there had been attacks on the princes." The material accordingly influenced the police's perception of reality.

Weakening and late 1866

There is no organizational bridge between the parties or political associations of 1848 and the formation of parties in the 1860s. The Siebenerverein had effectively suppressed the German party system. The contemporaries felt the effects of the police system, but did not know it.

Eventually, however, individual states began to tolerate political associations because they wanted to use them for their own purposes. So Prussia tolerated the expansion of the German National Association. In 1866 the activities of the Siebenerverein finally ended with the German War , when the rivalry between Austria and Prussia came to a head.

See also

supporting documents

  1. ^ Wolfram Siemann: 1848/49 in Germany and Europe. Event, coping, memory. Schöningh, Paderborn u. a. 2006, pp. 220/221.
  2. ^ Wolfram Siemann: 1848/49 in Germany and Europe. Event, coping, memory. Schöningh, Paderborn u. a. 2006, pp. 222/223.
  3. ^ Ernst Rudolf Huber: German constitutional history since 1789. Volume III: Bismarck and the realm. 3. Edition. W. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart a. a. 1988, pp. 169/170.
  4. ^ Wolfram Siemann: 1848/49 in Germany and Europe. Event, coping, memory. Schöningh, Paderborn u. a. 2006, pp. 223/224.
  5. ^ Wolfram Siemann: 1848/49 in Germany and Europe. Event, coping, memory. Schöningh, Paderborn u. a. 2006, pp. 225/226.
  6. ↑ Christian Jansen: Unity, Power and Freedom. The Paulskirche left and German politics in the post-revolutionary epoch 1849-1867 . Droste, Düsseldorf 2000, pp. 70/71.
  7. ^ Wolfram Siemann: 1848/49 in Germany and Europe. Event, coping, memory. Schöningh, Paderborn u. a. 2006, pp. 228/229.
  8. ^ Wolfram Siemann: 1848/49 in Germany and Europe. Event, coping, memory. Schöningh, Paderborn u. a. 2006, pp. 230/231.
  9. ^ Wolfram Siemann: 1848/49 in Germany and Europe. Event, coping, memory. Schöningh, Paderborn u. a. 2006, p. 229, p. 231/232.