Prussian secret police

The Prussian Secret Police or Political Police was responsible for monitoring political life and the prosecution of political crimes in Prussia from the middle of the 19th century until the authority was absorbed by the Secret State Police (Gestapo) of the National Socialist German Reich .

Origin background

Following various earlier approaches, the reaction policy after the revolution of 1848 led to a reorganization of the political police system in Prussia. The driving force was Karl Ludwig Friedrich von Hinckeldey, who was appointed police president of Berlin on November 18, 1848 by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV . In 1854 he was finally appointed General Police Director. This position corresponded de facto to that of a police minister and made Hinckeldey relatively independent of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior.

Beyond the borders of Prussia, Hinckeldey also played an important role in the cooperation of the police administrations of the states of the German Confederation in the so-called police association .

Activity during the monarchy

In Prussia itself, a political (secret) police force was initially set up in Berlin to monitor and obtain information about opposition people and organizations. This also included monitoring the press. In the first few decades in particular, the latter expanded its scope of action to other countries. For example, evidence of the Cologne communist trial was obtained in Paris or London using sometimes illegal methods.

In the course of the new era since 1858, the surveillance of the bourgeois opposition became increasingly less important. During the Kulturkampf , Catholic priests, lay people and organizations came increasingly into the focus of the political police. During the period of the Socialist Laws (1878–1890), but also in the following decades, the political police concentrated on fighting social democracy .

From 1890, Department V of the Berlin police was called "Prussian secret political police ". From December 1, 1898, Department V became responsible throughout the country as the “Central Office for Evaluation and Information Activities”, although it was limited to anarchist endeavors.

The political police during the republic

In 1918, Department V of the Berlin Police was dissolved by the "People's Commissar for the Public Security Service" ( Berlin Police President ) Emil Eichhorn and replaced by workers 'and soldiers' councils . Eichhorn recognized the need for a political police force, but had serious reservations about employing royal police officers in this capacity. His successor was Eugen Ernst in January 1919 . He was convinced of the need to use police means to fight the continuation of the revolution. The constitutional struggles also forced continuity. The political police was rebuilt under the name 'Centrale Staatspolizei' (C.ST.) as a subordinate body of Department I with former imperial officials. With the decree of May 20, 1925, it became Department IA (AIA) of the Police Headquarters. With a decree of December 12, 1928, the Prussian police were uniformly divided into an administrative, protective and criminal police . Political affairs were handled by Division I of the Administrative Police. The highest level of supervision was carried out by the Minister of the Interior, whose Department II for police matters and the like. a. maintained a “political group” with three presentations.

In the course of the republicanization of the structures of the Prussian administration (“ Bollwerk Prussia ”) during the Weimar Republic , the tasks of the political police also changed. At that time, the political police had around 1,000 officers, making them the largest organ of state security in all of Germany. After all, three quarters of the employees worked in the field.

The political police now fought against anti-democratic and anti-republican persons and organizations. This included the radical left as well as the extreme right. For this purpose, the police used the usual methods of observing and disbanding events and intelligence methods such as the use of informers . Especially at the end of the republic, fighting the NSDAP became an important task of the authority. However, such a mass movement could not be stopped by police means.

There was an overlap of competences with the State Criminal Police Office founded in Prussia in 1925 , at the Reich level with the Reich Commissioner for the Monitoring of Public Order introduced in 1920 , later called the intelligence collection point at the Reich Ministry of the Interior .

Transition to the Gestapo

July 20, 1932 ( Prussian strike ) marked the "end of the republican police". Subsequently, it was slowly infiltrated by the National Socialists. In the political police, most of the higher civil service was only brought in under Diels, and more than half of the newcomers more or less left the Gestapo with him, while the long-established residents stayed until the war.

On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler to Chancellor appointed, in turn, Hermann Goering to the Reich Commissioner for the Prussian Ministry of the Interior appointed. This in turn appointed the head of the political police force of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, Rudolf Diels, as head of Department IA . On March 3, 1933, a Prussian ministerial ordinance repealed the police's restrictions on competencies. This was the first step towards releasing the Gestapo from its commitment to the law. On April 11th, Göring also became Prime Minister of Prussia. With his decree of April 26, 1933, the Prussian secret police was spun off from the police apparatus and the Secret State Police Office (Gestapa) was formed, which was directly subordinate to the Prussian Minister of the Interior (Göring) and had the position of a state police authority. With the second Gestapo law of November 30, 1933, the Gestapo became a completely independent branch of the internal administration, which was directly subordinate to the Prime Minister (Göring). It then became the Secret State Police .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Jacob Julius Nolte: The institutionalization of the political police in Prussia in the context of the persecution of demagogues between 1809 and 1840 (PDF; 255 kB) .
2. ↑ The Police Union of German States, 1851-1866
3. ^ Karl Marx on the activities of the political police during the communist trial
4. ↑ ^{a b} Hans-Joachim Heuer: Geheime Staatspolizei: About killing and the tendencies of decivilization , Walter de Gruyter, 1995, ISBN 3110145162 , p. 26 ff.
5. ↑ Christoph Gusy: Weimar, the defenseless republic ?: Law for the protection of the constitution and protection of the constitution in the Weimar Republic , Mohr Siebeck, 1991, ISBN 3161458273 , p. 277 f.
6. ↑ Use of informants against the KPD from the perspective of the communists
7. ↑ Carsten Darms: State protection in the Weimar Republic , review on H-Soz-u-Kult .
8. ↑ Michael Wildt : Police of the Volksgemeinschaft. Nazi regime and police 1933–1945 , lecture at the conference "Police and Nazi Crimes - Processing and Documentation in the NS Documentation Center Cologne , November 2nd - 5th, 2000
9. ↑ Zdenek Zofka: The emergence of the Nazi repression system - or: The seizure of power by Heinrich Himmler ( Memento from January 5, 2007 in the Internet Archive ), Bavarian State Center for Political Education , Report 1/2004