Hans von Tresckow

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Hans von Tresckow (1910). Drawing by Fritz Wolff

Hans von Tresckow (born May 3, 1863 or 1866 in Neisse , Province of Silesia , † April 3, 1934 in Rinteln ) was a German detective and for many years in Berlin was responsible for criminal offenses in connection with Section 175 .

biography

Family and education

Hans von Tresckow came from the extensive aristocratic family Tresckow ; he himself was the oldest of seven children. His father Karl von Tresckow (1829-1889) was a Prussian lieutenant general. Tresckow attended grammar school, most recently in Darmstadt , where his father had been transferred. Tresckow did his military service from 1883-1884 as a one-year volunteer and later became a reserve officer . Financed by a family scholarship , he began studying law and economics , first in Koenigsberg , then in Berlin , where an influential uncle introduced him to the highest circles. In 1889 Tresckow applied to the police and in 1892, after completing his training, joined the criminal police (Germany) . Due to lack of money, he also gave private lessons and wrote crime and hunting stories under the pseudonym Hans von Buckow for various magazines such as Westermanns Monatshefte . In April 1894 he married; the marriage had two daughters and one son.

Professional

As a commissioner Tresckow was from 1896 in Inspection B under Leopold von Meerscheidt-Hüllessem (1849-1900), whose management he took over after his death (by suicide). This inspection was also responsible for the homosexuality- related crimes , literally for " pederasty and related extortion". One of his co-workers was the later Kriminalrat Ernst Gennat .

Allegedly Tresckow hadn't even known that there were homosexuals before he worked there. In his memoirs he wrote: "It was [...] my duty to deal more closely with this matter, which I personally found to be normal only to be unsympathetic to people." For almost 30 years he was in close contact with the doctor, Sex researcher and co-founder of the homosexual movement Magnus Hirschfeld , and the two men respected each other. In 1922 Tresckow wrote to Hirschfeld: "The fact that I take a less favorable position than you when assessing homosexuals is probably due to the fact that you, as a doctor, have met more valuable personalities than I as a police officer."

The gay movement was in close contact with Inspection B, so victims of extortion in connection with Section 175, which criminalized sexual acts between men, were advised to contact this inspectorate. Von Meerscheidt-Hüllessem had promoted this development, and so was his successor Tresckow. Tresckow even received an annual special allowance for a separate office in his apartment, where he advised victims after work. In 1920 Hirschfeld certified that Tresckow had saved "hundreds of homosexual people from despair and suicide". On the other hand, the number of "pederasts and blackmailers" recorded by the police, later known as the Pink List , rose from 1900 to 1918 to over 1,000 people. Although Tresckow was for the abolition of the paragraph because he recognized the problem of extortion, reported extortions often ended with the conviction of the perpetrator and victim. The victims came from all walks of life and the extortion often resulted in suicide. During Tresckow's term of office, the scandal trials in connection with the Harden-Eulenburg affair (1907-1909) took place. In the murder of Friedrich Ferdinand Mattonet , he appeared in court as an expert witness.

Tresckow's department was supposed to fulfill three functions - fighting criminal homosexual acts in accordance with Section 175, preventing male prostitutes and homosexuals from appearing too publicly in the streets, and protecting homosexuals from extortion and other crimes - but ultimately the homosexual department only acted as a state monitoring and repression body towards homosexual prostitution. On the other hand, “pederast balls” with sometimes more than 1000 participants were held in Berlin during the German Empire and tolerated by the police. Tresckow's predecessor in office, von Meerscheidt-Hüllesem, even attended these events and had dances performed.

Tresckow also investigated other crimes. In 1907 he was engaged in the investigation of a sensational series of thefts by the kleptomaniac Princess Carmen von Wrede, wife of Anton von Wredes, who stole silver and other valuables from hotels during her menstruation and hoarded the stolen property in her castle; in satirical papers she was called Countess Mopsberg . While the princess was acquitted and placed in a private sanatorium, her valet was sentenced to a nine-month suspended sentence for aiding and abetting , which led to public criticism and was also a topic in the Reichstag. Tresckow dedicated a separate chapter in his memoirs to the case of Countess Kwilecki for child suppression . Her alleged son was supposed to secure the inheritance for the count's family. From 1904 to 1910 Tresckow was also head of the central police station for combating the international trafficking in girls , which acted on an international level, but gave up management when there were differences of opinion within the police on this issue.

In 1914 Tresckow went to the First World War as a volunteer . Wounded, he said goodbye in 1919 . He moved with his wife to Rinteln , where he wrote his memoirs. He asked Magnus Hirschfeld for a review: "[...] I have emphasized in various places in my book that I have found decent characters among homosexuals". Hirschfeld praised the book, but criticized Tresckow's attitude that homosexuals are not suitable for responsible positions in the civil service, also because he believed that he had discovered a "lack of national feeling" in many homosexuals: "They feel international and feel like cosmopolitans." The book, published by his son Theodor Fontane's Fontane-Verlag , became a bestseller.

As a spectator, Tresckow attended the trial of the mass murderer Fritz Haarmann and then wrote in the gay newspaper “ Blätter für Menschenrecht ” that “this case was very damaging to the homosexual cause”. In the years that followed, he continued to write articles in homosexual magazines, stating that he believed the homosexual struggle was justified. In 1926 he wrote: "[...] in later times we will perhaps be just as surprised that homosexuals were persecuted with punishments as we are today surprised and indignant that witch trials were initiated in the Middle Ages". The journalist Christoph Poschenrieder judged in 2014 after reading Tresckow's memoirs: "What is interesting, however, is Tresckow's transformation from an orderly but compassionate police officer to (cautious) advocate of the homosexual movement [...]."

Tresckow also gave lectures at Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexology in Berlin. When the Reichstag discussed the abolition of § 175 in 1929, Hirschfeld recommended that Tresckow be consulted as an expert. Tresckow died in Rinteln in 1934 at the age of 68.

The files with the data of the homosexuals compiled by his department and in other cities were subsequently used by the National Socialist authorities to systematically pursue these men.

Honors

Hans von Tresckow has received numerous medals and awards.

According to his memoir, Tresckow had received the Chinese medal for having cut a disruptive tree in front of the Chinese embassy. He sold the Russian order at the beginning of the First World War and transferred the money to the Red Cross .

Publications

  • Of princes and other mortals - memories of a detective inspector . F. Fontane & Co., Berlin 1922 (Danish edition Om Fyresterøg andre Dø delige published by Schleswigschen Verlag, Flensburg 1923)

literature

  • Jens Dobler : Hans von Tresckow . In: Archives for Police History . 2/1999. Pp. 47-52

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gothaisches Genealogisches Taschenbuch , Uradelige Häuser 1941 , Gotha 1941, p. 553.
  2. ↑ a b c Jens Dobler: Hans von Tresckow . In: Archives for Police History . 2/1999. P. 47.
  3. ^ Jens Dobler: Hans von Tresckow . In: Archives for Police History . 2/1999. Pp. 47-48.
  4. ↑ a b c Jens Dobler: Hans von Tresckow . In: Archives for Police History . 2/1999. P. 48.
  5. ↑ Dietrich Nummert: Buddha or The full seriousness. The criminalist Ernst Gennat . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 10, 2000, ISSN  0944-5560 ( luise-berlin.de ).
  6. ^ Robert Beachy: The other Berlin. Siedler Verlag, 2015, ISBN 978-3-641-16574-1 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  7. ↑ Erwin in het Panhuis: Different from the others. Gays and lesbians in Cologne and the surrounding area 1895–1918 . Ed .: Center for Gay History. Emons, Cologne, p. 89 ( erwin-in-het-panhuis.de [PDF]).
  8. ↑ Norman Domeier: Review of: Dobler, Jens: Between Toleration Policy and Combating Crime. Persecution of homosexuals by the Berlin police from 1848 to 1933 . . Frankfurt am Main 2008. In: H-Soz-Kult , January 13, 2009.
  9. ↑ How homosexuality was invented in Berlin. In: tagesspiegel.de . August 26, 2015, accessed December 30, 2015 .
  10. ^ Moritz Bassler, Werner Frick, Monika Schmitz-Emans: Spectrum Literaturwissenschaft / spectrum Literature Volume 50: Crimes of Passion. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, ISBN 978-3-11-042016-6 ( limited preview in the Google book search)
  11. ↑ Werner Schubert: Sources for the reform of the criminal and criminal procedure law. Walter de Gruyter, 1995, ISBN 978-3-11-014788-9 , p. 63 ( limited preview in the Google book search)
  12. ^ Moritz Bassler, Werner Frick, Monika Schmitz-Emans: Spectrum Literaturwissenschaft / spectrum Literature Volume 50: Crimes of Passion. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, ISBN 978-3-11-042016-6 ( limited preview in the Google book search)
  13. ^ Jens Dobler: Hans von Tresckow . In: Archives for Police History . 2/1999. P. 50.
  14. ↑ a b c Jens Dobler: Hans von Tresckow . In: Archives for Police History . 2/1999. P. 51.
  15. ^ Thomas Koebner : Post March. Springer-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-322-94227-2 , p. 266 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  16. ↑ Books, books, books. In: poschenrieder.de. July 7, 2014, accessed December 27, 2015 .
  17. ↑ Susanne Zur Nieden: Homosexuality and reasons of state. Campus Verlag, 2005, ISBN 978-3-593-37749-0 , p. 230 ( limited preview in Google book search).
personal data
SURNAME Tresckow, Hans von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German detective
DATE OF BIRTH May 3, 1863 or May 3, 1866
PLACE OF BIRTH Neisse , Province of Silesia
DATE OF DEATH April 3, 1934
Place of death Rinteln