Grand Ducal Hessian Gendarmerie Corps

Gendarmes of the Grand Ducal Hessian Gendarmerie Corps 1902. Dark green tunic, dark blue trousers, gray in summer.

The Grand Ducal Hessian Gendarmerie Corps was the gendarmerie of the Grand Duchy of Hesse from 1822 to 1918 . In contrast to z. B. for the Bavarian and Prussian gendarmerie, it was not based on the model of the French gendarmerie impériale , but on the ( police ) hussar corps founded in 1763 and its successors, the land dragons and land rifle corps . In 1905 the corps had a staff of around 250 officials .

Forerunners: Land Hussars, Land Dragons and Land Riflemen

Considerations for the establishment of a landgrave police force in the form of a land hussar company arose in 1758. In 1762 the government in Giessen proposed to Landgrave Ludwig VIII to use a company of Garde de Dragons against deserters , sutlers and so-called rabble. On June 8, 1763, the first two officers were appointed, which was later adopted as the founding date of the gendarmerie. The "protection from predators and thieves rabble" was obviously due to the end of the Seven Years' War became necessary when the Landgraviate of dismissed soldiers and entourage members of various armies was crossed.

Although the hussar corps was organized militarily, it was not subordinate to the military authorities, but to the princely government and was not used for military purposes. In this respect, the hussar corps differed significantly from the later French gendarmerie and their German copies. The corps was financed by the hussar fund. The corps strength at the time of establishment was:

• 2 officers ,
• 2 constables ,
• 8 corporals and
• 52 hussars

Hessian police hussars 1763 to 1804

which were distributed over 10 stations. The uniform was light green with yellow lacing, the armament consisted of a saber , a carbine and a pistol . In 1764 an instruction appeared in which the duties of officers, NCOs and hussars were described in detail:

... 7. During the patrol , the sub- officers have to precisely examine all suspicious persons if they discover them or from whom they would like to receive news. However, to meet and treat no one in a modest and rough manner, but to bring the person, if they find suspicious, to the first and next official or sub-official who will further investigate and take action because of such. First and foremost, all gypsy people and other rabble like that should be attended to so that they are drafted immediately, no less the prowling country beggars are driven out of the Princely Hesse-Darmstadt lands, because of the latter, as well as the gypsy women and children, and other vagabonds , when if they are affected for the first time, whose names are noted, so that the breeding and stick houses are not filled up unnecessarily and the costs are increased, immediately expelled and expelled from the country, but can be evenly withdrawn in the event of repeated evacuation….

Instruction dated December 6, 1764

Another task of the hussars were escorts to protect the merchants from raids, which were financed by escorts . However, the "Lebendige or High Escort" was provided by the military, to which the hussars were only added to support. The Frankfurt fair was of particular importance for merchants who visited the Frankfurt trade fair . Furthermore, the hussars were instructed to take vigorous action against recruiters for foreign military service and to support the landgrave recruiters.

Hessian land dragons on horseback and on foot 1804

Due to the political restructuring, the Land Dragon Corps was set up by an order of February 17, 1804, which, unlike the Hussars, was subordinate to the military authorities. It was made of:

• the staff (1 commanding senior officer , 1 quartermaster , 1 trumpeter )
• Starkenburg Division (1 sergeant, 5 corporals, 30 dragoons)
• Division Hessen (same)
• Westphalia division (same)

Each division was to consist of 5 brigades with a strength of 1 corporal and 6 dragoons, which more or less corresponded to a French gendarmerie brigade made up of four to six gendarmes; a formation that later formed the smallest tactical unit in most of the German gendarmerie. The Prussian gendarmerie brigade, which consisted of a good 300 men and was commanded by a colonel , was an exception .

Similar to the Chevauleger regiment , the uniform was green with ponceau red, the kasquets ( caterpillar helmets ) had a horse tail and plume. When recruiting, served cavalrymen were given preference. In addition to the usual duties of the Dragoons, they were allowed to accompany mail vans for a fee. The "High Escort" was repealed in 1804. In 1806 the Landgraviate was occupied by French troops and Landgrave Ludwig was forced to join the Confederation of the Rhine .

In 1811 the corps was restructured by assigning the dragoons to a division of land rifles of 94 men; the corps was therefore given the name Landdragoner- und Landschützenkorps . Except for the headgear ( shako instead of caterpillar helmet), the uniform of the land riflemen corresponded to that of the land dragons.

During the Hep-Hep riots in 1819, the gendarmerie was apparently not used:

There were no actual clashes, probably mainly because the government held the communities responsible for all damage done to Jewish property if the perpetrators could not be identified.

The gendarmerie 1822 to 1918

Grand Ducal Hessian gendarmes on horseback and on foot around 1840

The conversion of the Land Dragon Corps on October 12, 1822 into a gendarmerie was purely of a formal nature; the riders were now, as in other German states, called gendarmes on horseback, the former land riflemen as gendarmes on foot.

Due to various serious disputes with criminals at night, it was decreed in 1829 that night patrols could only be carried out in pairs; a regulation that still existed in 1905.

In 1838 the previous flint rifles were replaced by a percussion double shotgun , which, according to Beck, corresponded more to “the peculiarity of the gendarmerie service”.

Strength of the corps in 1839:

• Commander: 1
• Division commanders: 3
• Subaltern officers: 2
• Calculator: 1
• Fourier : 1
• Gendarmes on horseback: 80 men
• Gendarmes on foot: 217 men

Total strength: 305 men.

Classification:

• Corps staff (4 men)
• Starkenburg Division (74 men)
• Upper Hesse division (103 men)
• Rheinhessen Division (57 men)

1848-49 were the tunic instead of Kolletts introduced and the Tschako replaced by a helmet, presumably the Raupenhelm the Chevaulegers.

In 1855 a city gendarmerie with a brigadier and 16 foot gendarmes was set up in Darmstadt . The strength of the corps was increased accordingly. With the cabinet order of March 7, 1862, the gendarmerie was formally renamed the Gendarmerie Corps, but this did not result in any organizational or formal changes. On January 8, 1863, the corps celebrated the 100th anniversary of its founding.

In the German War of 1866, the Grand Duchy and with it its military contingent fought on the southern German side. The gendarmerie therefore assigned 24 men to the field gendarmerie and received replacements from the Hessian division . When the Grand Duchy was occupied by Prussian troops , the gendarmerie remained in service, but was now subordinate to the Prussian gendarmerie captain Eltester in consultation with the grand ducal government. Eltester apparently did not leave a good impression in Hessen-Darmstadt because “he did not lack presumptuousness and torture of all kinds,” said Beck.

Due to the Hessian-Prussian Military Convention of April 7, 1867, the Hessian troops joined the Prussian Army as a division. In 1869 it was agreed that in the event of mobilization , Hessen-Darmstadt should provide 25 men for the field gendarmerie, 13 gendarmes and 12 cavalrymen from the two dragoons regiments. For this service they were supposed to wear Prussian uniforms that were laid out in the chambers of the Hessian dragoons. The Franco-German War proceeded accordingly . After a new military convention with Prussia on June 13, 1871, the Hessian division became part of the XI as the Grand Ducal Hessian (25th) Division . Army Corps .

For the status of the gendarmerie, it was important that the new military convention was not applied to it, but that the rights of the Grand Duke remained intact, i.e. That is, the corps commander was directly subordinate to him and not to the Prussian military authorities of the XI. Army Corps. Despite this, the corps retained its military character. The uniforms were based on that of the Prussian gendarmerie. Both the officers and the gendarmerie men were removed from the Hessian division in consultation with the Prussian War Ministry . The details were regulated in a special agreement of March 25, 1872.

On January 1, 1876, the Darmstadt Gendarmerie Brigade was dissolved and a protection team was founded (as before in Berlin and later in Munich ), which was directly subordinate to the Grand Ducal Police Office in Darmstadt.

In 1879 there was a regulation regarding uniform uniformity of the corps. The - theoretically - uniform uniform showed partly considerable deviations in cut and style due to the production by different district tailors. From this point on, the uniforms were made centrally by a military tailor in Darmstadt, who was controlled by the administration of the Gendarmerie Corps.

On May 23, 1879, new service regulations were introduced on probation that were finally introduced on May 23, 1880. The military service was now the responsibility of the general adjutantur of the Grand Duke. Following the Prussian model, the designation division by district and the ranks of the brigadiers were changed to sergeants and sergeants.

In 1895 the foot gendarmes were armed with the army revolver M 84, which, with the exception of the back office, was to be carried in all official matters. Alone, d. H. without a saber, the revolver was to be carried during house searches, prisoner transports and all kinds of events. The rifle and the revolver should be carried together in the pursuit of poachers and escaped prisoners, as well as in civil unrest.

In 1897/98 the estates of the Grand Duchy of Hesse tried to fundamentally change the character of the gendarmerie and transform it into a civil, i.e. That is, to convert only the security service corps subordinate to the state authority, since the military character of the gendarmerie is no longer up to date. The attempt failed. However, the new civil servants law of 1897 was now also applied to the gendarmerie, who were no longer considered civil servants on revocation , but were given the rights and obligations of the other civil servants. Civil servants in particularly expensive residential areas such as Darmstadt or Mainz received local allowances for the first time.

In 1901, an agreement between the Prussian War Ministry and the Grand Ducal Hessian Ministry of the Interior stipulated, among other things, that if the Hessian troops were mobilized, the corps to supplement the field gendarmerie should provide 1 constable and 12 gendarmes on horseback. According to a service regulation of December 14, 1904, the gendarmes were appointed auxiliary officers of the public prosecutor's office. The subordination relationship to the district offices with regard to the police service and the subordination to the military superiors in military terms remained unaffected.

Dissolution or renaming

In the course of the November Revolution of 1918, Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig abdicated and the Grand Duchy was converted into the People's State of Hesse . In a note dated June 22, 1920, the so-called “Boulogner Note”, the Allies forbade maintaining the security police and the gendarmerie corps. The gendarmerie was then subordinated to the Ministry of the Interior in a modified form as part of the general police.

literature

• Fritz Beck: History of the Grand Ducal Hessian Gendarmerie Corps 1763-1905 , H. Hohmann, Darmstadt, 1905.
• Heinrich Ambros Eckert / Dietrich Monten : The German army. After the uniform work from the years 1835 to 1843 edited by Georg Ortenburg , Harenberg, Dortmund, 1990 ISBN 3-611-00132-5
• Service regulation for the Hessian state gendarmerie of June 25, 1926. In the version of the addendum of May 13 , 1927, Darmstadt (Staatsverlag) 1927.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ quoted from Beck, p. 12.
2. ↑ Beck, p. 52.
3. ↑ p. 93
4. ↑ p. 112
5. ^ Hesse police