Letter censorship
As censor ( Post censorship or post-monitoring ) control of the content of letters from authorities and is blackening of content or the entry of the letter in unpopular content referred. Mail that was opened as part of the censorship was often closed by the controlling authorities with a censorship tape and a censorship stamp was applied to the mail . In philately , letters and postcards marked in this way are referred to as censorship mail .
Postal surveillance in the occupied areas in Germany
After the end of the two world wars, the Allied occupying armies censored letters through surveillance offices.
After the First World War from 1919
After the First World War , letters were censored in the Rhineland and in the Ruhr area . The Rhineland and Luxembourg occupied by the Allies are - with regard to post censorship - divided into zones that are identical to the occupation zones, in order to enable a properly functioning administration. With the resumption of postal operations, all correspondence was placed under censorship.
Belgian censorship
In the first phase, the respective commandant of the administrative district was responsible for post censorship. The censorship was to be carried out in the post office of the place where the commandant's office was located. Each letter had to have the name and address of the sender on the outside. Letters that did not contain this information were destroyed. It was forbidden to use an alias as the sender. It was recommended that postcards be used whenever possible.
In the second phase, independent field post departments with permanent post control commissariats were set up between the zones and transit points within the Rhineland were set up for correspondence between the occupation zones, unoccupied Germany and abroad.
The Belgian censorship office in Aachen was housed in the main post office on February 12, 1919. On April 22, 1919 , an authority was set up in Aachen , in Kaiserallee, to monitor postal correspondence with unoccupied Germany. The entire service mail had to be presented here every day. After a random check, it received a control stamp from mid-1919 to early 1920. Other control points were in Erkelenz, Eupen, Friemersheim, Geldern, Kempen, Kleve, Krefeld, Mönchen-Gladbach, Mörs, Neuss, Orsoy and Rheydt.
British censorship
With the lifting of the initial post ban, post censorship also came into force in the British zone, which was exercised by the local military commanderships in this initial phase.
In addition to the many regulations, the following is important, as they concern the erroneously so-called “ mayor censorship ”: “ Letters concerning important business or urgent private matters. If such communications are directed to German territory not occupied by the Allies, they must be passed through the mayor or another local official appointed for this purpose. You must bear his stamp to confirm that the shipments concern important business or urgent private matters. This officer is also responsible for the identity of the sender. "
Of all four occupying powers, the British Post Censorship got by with the lowest number of types of postmarks: only two different types were used.
American censorship
This occupation zone essentially comprised the Moselle valley, namely the Trier administrative district and the Koblenz, Mayen and Cochem districts. In addition, there was the Ahr valley with Ahrweiler and Adenau as well as parts of the districts of Neuwied, Altenkirchen and Montabaur in the bridgehead on the right bank of the Rhine opposite Koblenz. The headquarters of the American occupation army, which had initially remained in Luxembourg , advanced to Trier on December 12th. From there it was moved to Koblenz on June 1, 1919, where it remained in the Rhineland until the end of the American occupation. After Germany signed the Versailles Treaty on June 28, 1919, the American occupation forces in the Rhineland were considerably reduced.
On July 2, 1919, the Third Army officially ceased to exist. The American Armed Forces in Germany (AFG) took their place on July 3rd. Due to the reduction in the number of troops, a decision was made in favor of a smaller zone of occupation and the Trier administrative district was vacated in September 1919. Instead of the Americans, the French 38th Division moved up there and the area was added to the French zone of occupation.
On January 10, 1920, the Versailles Treaty and the Rhineland Agreement came into force. In the meantime, however, a political climate change had occurred in the United States. In terms of foreign policy, isolationist tendencies intensified, not least caused by the Versailles Treaty and its effects. Accordingly, on March 19, the Senate refused to ratify the Versailles Treaty, which led to the conclusion of a separate peace with Germany on August 25, 1920. The voices in the Senate demanding an end to engagement in Europe and a complete withdrawal of the troops from Germany became louder and louder.
The American troops were withdrawn from the Rhineland in protest against the Franco-Belgian approach to the Ruhr in January 1923. On January 24th, the American flag was brought down for the last time at Ehrenbreitstein Fortress . The last soldiers had left Germany by the end of the month. The American zone of occupation was taken over by French units.
In contrast to the French and Belgian post censorship during the time of the Rhineland occupation, only a few different types of stamps were used by the American censorship agencies.
French censorship
France, with its 8th and 10th Army, provided the bulk of the Allied occupation forces in the Rhineland. The entire area on the left bank of the Rhine south of the Moselle valley with the bridgehead around Mainz on the right bank of the Rhine was assigned to the French as their zone of occupation. In addition, Marshal Foch, as commander-in-chief of the Allied Army, ordered that French units should also be stationed in the zones of occupation of the Americans, Belgians and British, in order to make the French dominance clear.
The propaganda of “hereditary enmity”, which had been stoked up on both sides even before the war, and even more so the horrors of the war itself, had resulted in the relationship between the French occupiers and the local population being strained from the start. There was distrust and prejudice on both sides. That is why there were not a few voices in France who demanded that the Germans be allowed to feel the occupation in all severity, since they had been spared this destruction. Originally, France had even planned to annex areas on the left bank of the Rhine, but this project met with determined resistance from its American and British allies. France considered these demands not only fully justified, but also entirely achievable. So they weren't ready to accommodate the Germans in any way. They meticulously paid attention to compliance with all contractual provisions and reacted immediately with sanctions if the contract was viewed as violated. This policy of sanctions, which mostly consisted of the expansion of the occupied area, finally reached its climax with the occupation of the Ruhr area in January 1923.
Second World War
Swiss censorship
During the Second World War, the Press and Radio Message Department (APF) acted as the Swiss censorship authority. Although there was no general control of mail in Switzerland, the post, telephone and telegraph companies (PTT) were instructed by the political police to deliver the mail from monitored persons in order to prevent the distribution of dangerous material. In these cases, the mail items were opened, examined and then sealed and forwarded to the recipient. The Political Police monitored the correspondence of people who were classified as a threat to national independence or neutrality.
After the Second World War from 1945
After the Second World War and an initially complete ban on mail, the occupying powers passed Law No. 76 (censorship provisions for the civilian population under the rule of the military government), according to which censorship was permitted. After the law was repealed in the American and French occupation zones , the postal control was continued with reference to the guarantee of the safety of the occupation troops (occupation statute). In the British zone, Sections 8 and 10 of the Act, which were still in force, permitted inspection of postal traffic.
The customs authorities also monitored mail traffic to prevent foreign exchange smuggling in mail on the basis of Military Government Act No. 53 Article IV. The officials of the customs authority could then enter post offices and consignments for illegal imported or exported assets into the federal territory or from the federal territory in traffic with the Soviet-occupied zone and the eastern sector of Berlin were according to the provisions of the ordinances on the supervision of the traffic with assets between the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany as well as the eastern sector of Berlin ( Interzone Monitoring Ordinance of 9 July 1951; Federal Law Gazette I p. 439) monitored by the customs authorities. They opened the items in the post office and determined whether the required accompanying documents were available and whether the items presented (goods, means of payment, securities) matched the type and quantity with the information on the accompanying documents.
Postal surveillance in the GDR
Violating the confidentiality of letters was punishable by law in Section 135 of the Criminal Code (GDR) . Nevertheless, the Stasi systematically checked all mail from or to the west . Department M of the Ministry for State Security ( MfS ), which is responsible for postal surveillance, checked around 90,000 letters every day.
Postal surveillance in the Federal Republic
Article 10 (2) of the Basic Law only permits censorship of letters on a legal basis. Such a law was only passed in 1968. Therefore, until then, letters were censored according to the Occupation Statute .
The mail was handed over to Allied agencies for censorship or censored by Germans on behalf of the occupying powers. In this way, between 1950 and 1968 around 300 million letters were confiscated and most of them destroyed, as research by the historian Josef Foschepoth has shown. Mainly mail from communist states was affected, most of them from the GDR .
Until the end of 1950 the occupying powers censored without German participation. In November 1950, the British High Commissioner Ivone Kirkpatrick wrote to Chancellor Adenauer that British censors were finding more and more propaganda material in the mail from abroad. They intercepted 500,000 such shipments within 14 days. That is why “mail from the eastern zone must be subjected to increased censorship”. He asked Adenauer whether he was in agreement with increasing post censorship, since according to the Basic Law, the federal government “is unfortunately not allowed to exercise censorship. Under these circumstances, an effective defense against Soviet propaganda could only be ensured by the occupying power ”. Adenauer replied: "The Federal Chancellor agrees with the proposed increase in the censorship of letters." From this point on, German postal officials had to take part in the censorship of letters. They were faced with the choice of either breaching their duty of loyalty as civil servants or breaching postal secrecy.
When the Germany Treaty came into force in 1955 , the Allies declared in a secret letter to Adenauer that the "previously exercised" post and telecommunications censorship would be continued, as it "falls under the reservation rights of the Three Powers under Article 5 of the Germany Treaty".
Regarding the wiretapping scandal in 1963, Die Zeit reported that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution had also participated in post censorship without a legal basis since 1953. The surveillance of postal traffic is forbidden in democratic constitutional states through postal secrecy . Nevertheless, there are also options for postal surveillance under tight conditions.
In Germany, where Art. 10 GG protects postal secrecy, the law on the restriction of the secrecy of letters, mail and telecommunications regulates exceptions for federal intelligence services , i.e. the Federal Intelligence Service , the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Military Counterintelligence Service . The G10 Commission monitors the application of these measures .
Pursuant to Section 99 StPO, it is also possible in certain cases to seize mail and telegrams that are in the custody of persons or companies that provide or participate in postal or telecommunications services on a business basis.
Postal surveillance is also possible in the case of prisoners within the framework of the rules of § 29 StVollzG .
See also
literature
- Karl Kurt Wolter: The Post Censorship. Manual and catalog: history, types of stamps and seals.
- Volume 1: Ancient Times, Early Times and Modern Times (until 1939) . Munich 1965
- Volume 2: Modern Times (1939-1965) . Munich 1966
- Riemer, Karl-Heinz: Postal surveillance in the German Reich 1914-1918 by postal surveillance agencies , Postmarkgilde Rhein-Donau, Soest, 1987
- Riemer, Karl-Heinz: The monitoring of international mail traffic during the Second World War by German agencies , Poststempelgilde Rhein-Donau, Soest, 1979.
- Riemer, Karl-Heinz: Foreign exchange control in international mail and parcel traffic in the German Reich 1933 to 1939 , Poststempelgilde Rhein-Donau, Soest, 1983.
- Steven, Werner, Mayer, Konrad: Post censorship during the occupation of the Rhineland and the Ruhr area after the First World War Self-published, Braunschweig, 1991.
- Riemer, Karl-Heinz: The Allied Post Censorship in Occupied Germany after World War II , Postmark Guild Rhein-Donau, Soest, 1977.
- Josef Foschepoth : Monitored Germany. Post and telephone surveillance in the old Federal Republic . 4th, through Edition. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht , Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-525-30041-1 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
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Manual dictionary of the postal system 2nd edition
- Post censorship, see:
- Monitoring of mail traffic; P. 711
- Black cabinets ; Pp. 670-671
- Post censorship, see:
Web links
- Literature list of the working group censorship mail in the Bund Deutscher Philatelisten eV
Individual evidence
- ^ Christoph Graf: Censorship files from the time of the Second World War. An analysis of the inventory E 4450, press and radio message 1939-1945 . Bern 1979, p. 21 .
- ↑ Andreas Keller: The Political Police as part of the Swiss state security . In: Basel studies of law . B. 50, B. Basel 1996, p. 52 .
- ↑ Concise dictionary of the postal system ; 2nd Edition; P. 711
- ↑ StGB (GDR)
- ↑ Hohenschönhausen Memorial ( Memento of the original dated December 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Peter Mühlbauer : Post censorship and telephone surveillance , Telepolis , June 5, 2009, at heise.de
- ↑ a b c d Josef Foschepoth , Badische Zeitung: "Into the wolf!" , June 27, 2009
- ↑ a b Josef Foschepoth, Journal of History: Post Censorship and Telephone Surveillance in the Federal Republic of Germany (1949-1968) (PDF; 188 kB), May 2009
- ↑ a b Deutschlandradio Kultur: “Federal Republic has confiscated millions of letters” - Historian: Illegal post censorship until 1968 served the state security , July 9th, 2009
