State Office for the Protection of the Constitution of Hesse

The State Office for the Protection of the Constitution (LfV) Hessen , based in Wiesbaden , was established on July 19, 1951 and, as the higher state authority, is directly subordinate to the Hessian Ministry of the Interior and Sports . The authority with 246 employees is divided into four departments with eleven departments and two further departments that are directly attached to the authority management. In the budget of the state of Hesse , 3.01 million euros were allocated in 2009. On February 23, 2015, Robert Schäfer replaced Roland Desch , the previous head of the agency .

Legal basis and areas of responsibility

Organization chart LfV Hessen

According to Section 2 (1) of the Law on the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution (LfV Law) of December 19, 1990 (GVBl. I p. 753), amended on September 6, 2007 (GVBl. I p. 542-545) and most recently has § 32 of the Hessian vetting law of 28 September 2007 (GVBl I, p. 623), the state Office for the protection of the Constitution Hesse, the task of enabling the relevant authorities in good time the measures necessary to prevent threats to the free democratic basic order , the stock and to meet federal and state security. This basically applies to all activities that

• against the free democratic basic order or
• are directed against the existence and security of the federal government or a state or
• aim to unlawfully interfere with the performance of the federal or state constitutional organs or their members, or
• endanger foreign interests of the Federal Republic of Germany through the use of force or preparatory actions aimed at it within the scope of the Basic Law.

This mandate is implemented by

• Gathering and evaluating information on politically right-wing and left-wing extremist persons or organizations, as well as Islamist, left-wing or right-wing extremist foreigners' organizations that fight their home country or its government from German soil with violence and thereby bring Germany into foreign policy conflicts or go against the thoughts of the Direct international understanding.
• Tasks in personal and material security protection (security and reliability checks)
• Information gathering and evaluation in the areas of organized crime
• Counterintelligence

The LfV is not interested in political views. Efforts within the meaning of the Constitutional Protection Act are rather purely targeted activities that impair or attempt to eliminate the core of our constitution. They are labeled as anti-constitutional or extremist. You can express yourself through acts such as agitation, preparations for acts of violence or other political activities - also in the run-up to criminal offenses.

For the planned new constitutional protection law and for the planned amendment of the Hessian police law , the CDU parliamentary group received the negative BigBrotherAward in the politics category together with the green parliamentary group in the Hessian state parliament in 2018 . Laudator Rolf Gössner described the legislative initiative as a "dangerous accumulation of serious surveillance authorizations that deeply encroach on fundamental rights and threaten the democratic constitutional state."

Powers and working methods

• The LfV only observes and teaches. It has no police powers (e.g. arrests, searches, seizures, evictions). However, it is allowed to collect and evaluate the relevant information if there are actual indications for efforts within the meaning of the LfV Act. Neither a concrete danger nor a committed criminal act are necessary to legitimize its action.
• In the area of ​​right-wing extremism, the LfV has set up the right-wing extremism competence center (KOREX) . Its central tasks include increased awareness-raising and prevention work. KOREX is intended to work through the specialist knowledge on right-wing extremism in a targeted manner.
• After the Internet for extremists of all phenomenon areas plays an increasingly important role, and the LFV has set it. In the year under review, a central Internet processing system, Online Research Team Extremism Terrorism (ORTET), was set up.
• The information that the LfV needs to perform its tasks is obtained from open sources that are also available to every citizen, e.g. B. from newspapers, the Internet, from magazines, brochures, leaflets, archives and other media as well as from documents from other government agencies.
• In addition to the open acquisition of information, the LfV may, under certain conditions , collect information covertly using intelligence means . Such intelligence agents are
  • the observation,
  • smuggling in or recruiting and leading confidants ("sources") in extremist organizations,
  • secret photography or sound recordings,
  • the use of intelligence aids such as camouflage IDs or camouflage signs.
  • Monitoring of letter, post or telecommunication traffic.

Information obtained through intelligence channels generally cannot be used publicly. However, they enable an appropriate and qualified assessment of the publicly available information. They are therefore necessary and indispensable for the assessment of anti-constitutional efforts. The State Office for the Protection of the Constitution regularly informs the Parliamentary Control Commission for the Protection of the Constitution and the highest state authorities about its findings. In individual cases, other authorities, e.g. B. those of the criminal prosecution, in order to fulfill their mandate by the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution are informed about relevant knowledge.

control

The LfV is subject to complex rule-of-law controls. In addition to legal and technical supervision by the Hessian Ministry of the Interior, external controls by the state commissioner for data protection ensure that the statutory framework is not exceeded. Parliamentary control is carried out by the Parliamentary Control Commission for the Protection of the Constitution . Post and telecommunications surveillance measures in accordance with the Article 10 Act are subject to the control of the G 10 commission of the Hessian state parliament. The budget is subject to strict control by the Hessian Court of Auditors. Last but not least, the protection of the constitution is controlled by the public through public media reporting.

President

Period	Surname	comment
July 1951 - February 1952	Paul Schmidt
March 1952 - May 1954	Arno Maneck (acting)
June 1954 - March 1955	Karl Pforr
April 1955 - June 1957	Wilhelm Leyerer
June 1957 - November 1967	Kurt Wolf
December 1967 - April 1976	Werner Heede
May 1976 - August 1980	Roderich Fabian
August 1980 - October 1991	Günther Scheicher
1991-1993	Heinz Fromm	President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution from 2000 to 2012
November 1993 - July 1999	Hartmut heel
July 1999 - October 2006	Lutz Irrgang
November 2006 - May 2010	Alexander Kingfisher	Then moved to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution as Vice President
June 2010 - February 2015	Roland Desch	In February, the Hessian Minister of the Interior and Sport, Peter Beuth , put him into temporary retirement with immediate effect
since February 2015	Robert Schäfer	up to this point in time President of the West Hesse Police Headquarters

Affairs

At the time of the April 6, 2006 murder of Halit Yozgat , the ninth and last fatality in the Ceska series of murders , the constitutional protector Andreas Temme was in the internet café where the murder took place. The computer data shows that Temme was still surfing the Internet at 5:01 p.m. At this point in time, the victim was already dead. The intelligence agency claims nothing to have noticed the murder. On the day of the crime, Temme telephoned a right-wing radical twice; at 1:00 p.m. and 4:11 p.m. According to a former neighbor, Temme is said to have been nicknamed "Little Adolf" when he was a teenager. Temme also has no alibi for six other times of right-wing extremist murders committed by the NSU on migrants. The police found excerpts from Hitler's “ Mein Kampf ” in the attic of the constitutional protection agency, which were typed with the typewriter.

The online edition of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit reported on February 24, 2015:

"Tapped phone calls of the former security officer Andreas Temme, who was at the crime scene at the time, feed the suspicion from the lawyers [...] that he had" concrete knowledge of the planned crime, the time of the crime, the victim and the perpetrators "[... ] "

In the intercepted phone call between Andreas Temme and the LfV's security officer , he said:

"I tell everyone: if they know that something like this is happening somewhere, please don't drive past."

During an interrogation on April 22, 2006, Andreas Temme stated that he knew a Hells Angel well, who, according to the investigating detective, is allegedly the Hells Angels leader Michael S., who has confidential documents (" VS - Only for official use ") of the Saxon State Criminal Police Office was found. The relevant betrayal of official secrets has not yet been clarified.

In October 2012, the protection of the Constitution overlooked an advertisement in the motorcycle magazine "Biker News" by right-wing extremist Bernd T., who was imprisoned in JVA Hünfeld, about the establishment of a right-wing extremist organization called AD Jail Crew, although the constitution protection has subscribed to this magazine.

Cooperation with other secret services

"Hesse's Office for the Protection of the Constitution regularly exchanges information with the military intelligence service of the US Army stationed in Wiesbaden"

The State Office for the Protection of the Constitution of Thuringia , to which, among other things, the first NSU investigative committee in the Bundestag issued a devastating testimony, was set up in the 1990s with the help of the Hessian constitutional protectors.

literature

• Protection of the Constitution in Hesse - Report 2009 . Hessian Ministry of the Interior and for Sport. Central-Druck Trost, Heusenstamm 2010.

Web links

• Website of the LfV Hessen
• State authorities for the protection of the constitution

Individual evidence

1. ↑ New head of the Hessian constitutional protection in office . ( Memento from February 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Wiesbadener Kurier, February 24, 2015
2. ↑ Big Brother Award: Negative award goes to Microsoft, Alexa, but also to Die Grünen. In: meedia.de. April 23, 2018. Retrieved April 23, 2018 . 
3. ↑ After the boss was dismissed - the protection of the constitution should react more quickly to Salafists . FAZ , February 10, 2015
4. ↑ Scandal over NSU terror: Verfassungsschützer under suspicion of murder , Focus Online from July 5, 2012
5. ^ Tanjev Schultz: NSU. Munich 2018, p. 275.
6. ^ Zwickau neo-Nazi cell: News from "Klein Adolf" , Stern from April 14, 2012
7. ↑ ^{a b} Kassel: Did Hesse's protection of the constitution know about the planned NSU murder? Zeit Online , February 24, 2015
8. ^ NSU murder in Kassel: Left Party accuses Bouffier of lying . ( Memento from February 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Tagesschau.de, February 24, 2015
9. ↑ NSU murder in Kassel: eavesdropping logs burden the Hessian constitutional protection agency Deutschlandradio Kultur, February 23, 2015
10. ↑ Corrupt officials: The rockers' informers . Spiegel Online , March 21, 2013
11. ↑ Breakdown with the protection of the constitution: Nazi network overlooked . FAZ , April 13, 2013
12. ^ American intelligence service in Wiesbaden: The protection of the constitution maintains contact with the US Army . Offenbach Post Online, July 22, 2013

Coordinates: 50 ° 3 ′ 57.5 ″  N , 8 ° 13 ′ 45.3 ″  E