Wilhelm Stieber

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wilhelm Stieber

Wilhelm Johann Carl Eduard Stieber (born May 3, 1818 in Merseburg , † January 29, 1882 in Berlin ) was a German lawyer, journalist, author and police officer and Prussian Privy Councilor . From 1863 to 1873 he worked for Otto von Bismarck .

Live and act

Youth, training and work at the Supreme Court

Wilhelm Stieber was the eldest son of the Prussian office secretary Carl August Stieber and attended the grammar school at the Gray Monastery in Berlin . Against his father's wish that he should study theology , he completed a law degree at the University of Berlin , and received his doctorate in 1848 at the University of Jena . His father then cut him financial support. He was still able to study because he worked as an author, journalist and editor of an annual calendar and magazine. He passed the two state law exams in 1841 and 1843. This was followed by a position at the Berlin Higher Regional Court as a trainee lawyer with a one-year leave of absence at the Berlin Police Headquarters . There he achieved success in 1844 and took over the editing of a specialist journal for the police headquarters. Because he assaulted someone who had been arrested, an investigation was initiated against him. In January 1845 he moved to the higher court, but was still allowed to edit the journal.

In February 1845, Stieber received an order from the Ministry of the Interior to investigate a report received from Silesia about the overthrowing conspiracy of a carpenter named Wurm. In his reports, Stieber made the factory owner Friedrich Wilhelm Schlöffel, who had fallen into disrepute with the authorities, to the head of the conspiracy and obtained his arrest. In the course of this action it became clear for the first time that he had a tendency to exaggerate excessively in the presentation of his own activities, as he declared that a house search he had carried out was his 3,000th. The incriminating evidence against Schlöffel that Stieber had collected turned out to be so inadequate that he was released from prison and later acquitted. Stieber got caught in the crossfire of public criticism because he had investigated in bourgeois circles and in the criminal milieu under a false name.

Activity as a criminal defense attorney

Due to these events, Stieber's position at the Supreme Court became so difficult that from October 1845 he switched to a position as a defense lawyer and was successful as such. Since he used the inspection of the files of the police headquarters granted to him as the editor of the police journal to find out about the evidence against his clients, the police chief withdrew him from editing the journal in March 1846. A general ban followed in April because Stieber had obtained permission to print his book The Prostitution in Berlin and its Victims from the censorship authority . The investigation initiated against him in 1844 led to criminal proceedings in December 1846 in which he was acquitted. The facts that became known in the course of the hearing, however, led to the initiation of disciplinary proceedings because of improper behavior as a court trainee lawyer. In order to forestall the threatened dismissal, he requested and received his dismissal from the judicial service in February 1847.

In the years that followed, Stieber was a very busy defense attorney and in January 1848 received his doctorate degree from the University of Jena in absentia. PhD . In his self-portrayal, he exaggerated considerably by claiming to have given a total of 3,000 public defense speeches in 1850. He achieved sensational acquittals in several political trials during and after the March Revolution of 1848 .

Activity in the police service

In 1850 he had to give up the legal profession because of health problems. In November 1850, with the support of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV., He moved to the Berlin Police Headquarters as a police assessor, who had not forgotten his assignment in Silesia in 1845 and was one of his favorites from then on.

Stieber was part of the group of European police officers invited by the British government to protect visitors to the 1851 London World's Fair . On the occasion of this he was awarded the title of Police Council. He used the opportunity to investigate the German political refugees living in the city.

Back in Berlin, Stieber was involved in the investigation against members of the Cologne League of Communists . In the Cologne communist trial in 1852, however, he thoroughly embarrassed himself as the main witness for the prosecution, because a volume of documents that he presented as an alleged original record book turned out to be a forgery. From this point on, he could no longer be used for political investigations.

As a result, Stieber officiated with the title of Police Director awarded to him in January 1854 as head of the Berlin criminal police and as special commissioner of the Ministry of Finance for combating counterfeiting . In addition, he handled the editing of the specialist journal of the police headquarters assigned to him so successfully that the journal rose to become the Prussian Central Police Journal in 1855 . Special orders from the Prussian king, such as taking over the management of the Kroll'schen pleasure palace, which was threatened with bankruptcy, had priority for more than a year .

Stieber also used his position as head of the criminal police to intervene in numerous cases in private law disputes over disputed financial claims in favor of the socially and socially better networked party and to enforce the fulfillment of their demands in forced settlements with police pressure. With these compulsory settlements, with the tacit approval of the city court and the public prosecutor's office, he disregarded the rule introduced in 1827, which in such cases prescribed the settlement between the parties by an impartial arbitrator. In the same way, on the instructions of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV., Stieber settled bill debts of officers of the guard regiments at Berlin moneylenders .

After the later King Wilhelm I took over government business in 1858, Stieber was brought to court in 1860, but not charged with disregarding the arbitration rules, but merely with abuse of official authority in bringing about three compulsory settlements. An acquittal was made for lack of evidence. In the course of the hearing, however, it turned out that Stieber had detained people in countless cases with the knowledge and approval of the city court, the public prosecutor and the Ministry of Justice for longer than the legally prescribed 24 hours before they were brought before the examining magistrate. The judicial scandal was considerable. In order to prevent it from getting out of hand, Stieber was not indicted again, but instead put into temporary retirement at the beginning of December 1860.

Privy councilor in Bismarck's service

In the following years Stieber worked as a private investigator. His most important client was initially the Russian police, with whom he had already worked as head of the Berlin criminal police. From the turn of the year 1863/1864 he also worked for the Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck . Stieber received around 1,900 thalers a year for this. They gave him the opportunity to build a private network of correspondents. After an assassination attempt on Bismarck on May 7, 1866, Stieber was also officially employed by Bismarck with the permission of the king.

In 1866, Stieber took part in the war against Austria as chief of the three-officer political police at the Great Headquarters . Because of his excellent connections to the press, he managed to get them to present him to the public as head of the field police . After the war he was given the title of Privy Councilor.

In the following years, Stieber investigated on behalf of Bismarck against the journalists, editors and owners of the anti-Prussian foreign press and against the supporters of the dethroned King George V of Hanover who had fled abroad and who were reestablishing his kingdom annexed by Prussia. Since he could not sell his reports under his own name in view of his bad reputation, because that would have impaired their credibility, in the autumn of 1866, with the active support of Bismarck, he appropriated the identity of the central news office of the, which had been established for the duration of the war and has since been dissolved Great General Staff .

In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 , Stieber was again chief of the political police at the Grand Headquarters. Although he regularly reported to Bismarck about the police security situation at the respective location, he did not have an independent position.In particular, during the siege of Paris at Versailles, he was subordinate to the prefect of the department appointed by Wilhelm I in police matters and to the officer from the square in military matters the city headquarters. His contribution to the gathering of military intelligence was modest. After the end of the war, Bismarck was no longer interested in the topics on which Stieber and his correspondents could report. In 1873 he was instructed to accept it and to limit his own expenses to the bare minimum.

Stieber then retired from the business in 1874. He died in 1882 as a wealthy man in his house at Matthäikirchstrasse 4 in Berlin. The total value of his estate was around 450,000 marks. It mainly consisted of three properties - the family's house in Berlin, an estate on the Oder and a manor in Belsin in the north of the Posen province in what is now Poland .

family

Stieber married Maria Komitsch in 1848, whose mother Friederike Komitsch was first married to the actor Ludwig Devrient . He had had an illegitimate relationship with her since 1845. The connection resulted in two illegitimate and 15 legitimate children, including the lawyer Paul Stieber (1856–1944), father of the composer Hans Stieber and the tenor Paul Devrient .

From life to legend

Stiebers after his death as memorabilia of the secret government councilor Dr. The records published by Stieber have inspired numerous writers and journalists. These took up the exaggerations contained therein with regard to Stieber's service responsibilities and expanded them in various variants over time. This painted a scientifically controversial picture of Stieber and his actual importance for the development and expansion of the Prussian secret service.

Two decades after the end of the Second World War, the “legendary Stieber” finally caught on. For example, the former head of the US secret service CIA , Allen Dulles, portrayed him in his 1963 book In the Secret Service as the head of the Prussian military intelligence service and the Prussian secret police . In 1971, two editors of the news magazine Der Spiegel joined forces in their book Pullach intern to this trend and ascribed all the services of the Central News Office of the Great General Staff to Stieber .

Stieber's memoir Spion des Chancellor , which was published posthumously in 1978 and allegedly belonged to the family, was exposed as a forgery by Hans-Joachim Schoeps shortly after their publication .

In the novel The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco took Stieber use.

Titles and awards

Stieber has been awarded several titles. In 1851 he was appointed police advisor, in 1854 police director and in 1866 a secret councilor . He also received the following medals:

Works (selection)

  • Prostitution in Berlin and its victims are examined in historical, moral, medical and police relations. Hofmann, Berlin 1846. Digitized version (MDZ Reader)
  • The first political trial before the Berlin jury, concerning the indictment of the Chief Public Prosecutor Sethe against the writer Robert Springer for insulting majesty: according to shorthand reports presented by the defender of the defendant. Robert Springer, Berlin 1849. SBB digital collections
  • The legislation of the Prussian state since the introduction of the constitutional form of government ... AW Hayn, Berlin.
  • with K. Wermuth : The Communist Conspiracies of the Nineteenth Century. On official order for use by the police authorities of all German federal states. First part. Contains: The historical presentation of the relevant investigations. AW Hayn, Berlin 1853. (Reprint: Olms, Hildesheim 1969 and Verlag Klaus Guhl, Berlin 1976.) First part (MDZ reader) , second part (MDZ reader)
  • with K. Wermuth: The Communist Conspiracies of the Nineteenth Century. On official order for use by the police authorities of all German federal states. Second part. Contains: The historical presentation of the relevant investigations. AW Hayn, Berlin 1854.
  • The experience of the royal. Police Presidium in Berlin, regarding the application of the law of April 11, 1854 on the employment of prisoners with work in the open air. AW Hayn, Berlin 1856. Digital copy (MDZ Reader)
  • Practical textbook for the criminal police. On the basis of many years of experience on official use for judicial and police officers and for warning and instruction for the public, edited by Wilhelm Stieber. AW Hayn, Berlin 1860. (Reprint: Kriminalistik-Verlag, Heidelberg 1983) Digitized version (MDZ Reader)
  • Memories of the Secret Government Councilor Dr. Stieber. Edited from the papers he left behind by Dr. Leopold Auerbach. Engelmann, Berlin 1884.
  • Chancellor's spy. The revelations by Bismarck's intelligence chief. Seewald, Stuttgart 1978, ISBN 3-512-00518-7 .
  • as publisher: Berlin police and criminal newspaper. From 1846

Literature (selection)

  • Richard Albrecht : The general and his shadow. Engels, Stieber and the Prussian reaction of 1851/52. In: Marxist sheets. ISSN  0542-7770 Volume 37 (1999), Issue 1, pp. 60-65.
  • Manfred Binder: Dr. Wilhelm Stieber, the state agent loyal to Prussia, field police director & chief of the secret service of Prince Bismarck, and his memorabilia. Verlag BOD, Norderstedt 2010, ISBN 978-3-8391-8352-6 .
  • Karl Bittel (Hrsg.): The Communist Trial in Cologne 1852 in the mirror of the contemporary press. Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1955.
  • Helmut Bleiber: Friedrich Wilhelm Schlöffel (1800-1878). A Silesian pre-March opposition. In: Actors of a Change. Men and women of the revolution of 1848/1849. Vol. I. 1998, pp. 619-675.
  • Hilmar-Detlef Brückner: Wilhelm Stieber (1818–2018) or How alternative reality asserts itself. A case study. Tredition, Hamburg 2018, ISBN 978-3-7482-0931-7 .
  • Thomas Diembach: That can't be true! On the authenticity of the memoirs of Bismarck's secret service chief Wilhelm Stieber. In: Topics of contemporary legal history. 2. Law and Jurists in the German Revolution of 1848/49. Nomos, Baden-Baden 1998, ISBN 3-7890-5676-6 , pp. 236-243.
  • Jens Dobler: Wilhelm Stieber, the first apologist for the police persecution of homosexuals. A biographical sketch. In: Tim Engartner (ed.): The transformation of the political. Analyzes, interpretations and perspectives; Seventh and eighth doctoral seminars of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Karl Dietz, Berlin 2006.
  • Annelore Franke: Contributions to the history of the agent system 1863/64. In: Academic research on the history of the German labor movement. Vol. 1, 1954. pp. 199-207.
  • Rudolf Herrnstadt : The first conspiracy against the international proletariat. On the history of the Cologne Communist Trial in 1852. Rütten & Loening 1958.
  • Karl Marx : Revelations about the Communist Trial in Cologne . Boston 1853 ( online in GoogleBooks [accessed February 14, 2020]).
  • Michael Rieck: Wilhelm Stieber and his time. Verlag BOD, Norderstedt 2018, ISBN 978-3-7528-1621-1 .
  • The Stieber-Tichy trial. A picture from the 10-year reaction era in the Prussian state; officially revealed by the before the royal city court of Berlin on May 14th, 15th, 16th and 18th and before the royal. Court of Appeal on November 20, 1860, the criminal negotiations and the explanations of the Royal Criminal Director Dr. Stieber and the public prosecutor at the Royal City Court, Mr. Nörner. Altona 1861
  • Friedrich Wilhelm Schlöffel : My trial on charges of treason. Heidelberg 1846
  • Julius H. Schoeps : Agents, informers, refugees. Wilhelm Stieber and the democratic emigration in London. In: In countercurrent. Edited by Horst Schallenberger. Wuppertal 1977, ISBN 3-87294-119-4 , pp. 71-104.
  • Harold Selowski, Jens Dobler: The Berlin criminal police between 1811 and 1885. 2011.
  • Stefan Weiß: Wilhelm Stieber, August Schluga von Rastenfeld and Otto von Bismarck. To the beginnings of the German secret service. In: Francia. Research on Western European History. Edited by the German Historical Institute Paris (Institut Historique Allemand). Vol. 31. Ostfildern 2004, pp. 87–112.
  • From the Berlin Police Presidium. Leipzig 1861. online

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b André Niedostadek: Bismarck's master spy Wilhelm Stieber . In: LTO Legal Tribune Online from August 3, 2014
  2. ↑ a b c Hilmar-Detlef Brückner: Wilhelm Stieber (1818–2018) or How alternative reality asserts itself. A case study. Tredition, Hamburg 2018.
  3. ↑ Harold Selowski, Jens Dobler: The Berlin criminal police between 1811 and 1885. P. 92-101
  4. ^ Friedrich Wilhelm Schlöffel: My trial for charges of treason. P. 127.
  5. ↑ Hilmar-Detlef Brückner: Wilhelm Stieber (1818-2018) or How alternative reality asserts itself. A case study. Pp. 13-26.
  6. ↑ Helmut Bleiber: Friedrich Wilhelm Schlöffel (1800-1878). A Silesian pre-March opposition. In: Actors of a Change. Men and women of the revolution of 1848/1849. Pp. 627-632, 639, 645-646, 650.
  7. ↑ a b Memorabilia of the Secret Government Councilor Dr. Stieber. P. 13.
  8. ↑ Harold Selowski, Jens Dobler. Pp. 103-109.
  9. ↑ Hilmar-Detlef Brückner. Pp. 60-64, 72-73.
  10. ↑ Hilmar-Detlef Brückner. Pp. 70-80.
  11. ↑ Julius H. Schoeps: Agents, informers, refugees. Wilhelm Stieber and the democratic emigration in London. In: Horst Schallenberger (Ed.): In countercurrent. Pp. 76-82
  12. ↑ Memories of the Secret Government Councilor Dr. Stieber. P. 98.
  13. ↑ Memories of the Secret Government Councilor Dr. Stieber. Pp. 91-92.
  14. ↑ Memories of the Secret Government Councilor Dr. Stieber. Pp. 196-221.
  15. ^ The Stieber-Tichy Trial. Pp. 13, 18, 23-27, 36-40, 43-45; Berlin Court Newspaper , May 15, 17, 19, November 22 and 24, 1860.
  16. ^ Annelore Franke: Contributions to the history of the agent system 1863/64. In: Academic research on the history of the German labor movement. P. 203.
  17. ↑ Federal Archives Berlin, N 2294, p. 2
  18. ↑ Berlin Court Newspaper. June 26, 1866.
  19. ↑ Federal Archives Berlin, N 2294, p. 17
  20. ↑ Hilmar-Detlef Brückner. Pp. 325-356.
  21. ↑ Bundesarchiv Berlin, N 2294, Bl. 54-55
  22. ↑ Manfred Binder: Dr. Wilhelm Stieber, the state agent loyal to Prussia, field police director & chief of the secret service of Prince Bismarck, and his memorabilia. P. 48.
  23. ↑ Manfred Binder: Dr. Wilhelm Stieber, the state agent loyal to Prussia, field police director & chief of the secret service of Prince Bismarck, and his memorabilia. P. 14.
  24. ^ Victor Tissot: La police secrète prussienne. E. Dentu, Librairie de la Société des Gens de Lettres, Paris 1884.
  25. ↑ Paul Lanoir: L'Espionnage anglais en France. Son Organization - Ses dangers - Les remèdes nécessaires. Paris 1908.
  26. ↑ Hamil Grant: Spies and Secret Service. The story of espionage, its main systems and chief exponents. New York 1915.
  27. ^ Richard Wilmer Rowan: Spy and Counter-Spy. The development of Modern Espionage. New York 1928; Richard Wilmer Rowan: The Story of Secret Service. Garden City 1937.
  28. ↑ Allen Dulles: On the Secret Service. Econ Verlag, Düsseldorf / Vienna 1963, p. 37.
  29. ^ Hermann Zolling, Heinz Höhne: Pullach intern. General Gehlen and the history of the Federal Intelligence Service. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1971, ISBN 978-3-455-08760-4 , pp. 30-31.
  30. ↑ H.-J. Schoeps on Wilhelm Stieber: "Chancellor's spy": Not a word is correct. In: Der Spiegel , October 2, 1978, accessed on February 3, 2010. See also Wilhelm Jonas's letter to the editor: factual claims on insecure feet. In: Der Spiegel, No. 42, pp. 14–15.
  31. ^ Umberto Eco: The cemetery in Prague . Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-446-23736-0 , pp. 254-256 .
personal data
SURNAME Stieber, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stieber, Wilhelm Johann Carl Eduard (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German secret service agent
DATE OF BIRTH May 3, 1818
PLACE OF BIRTH Merseburg
DATE OF DEATH January 29, 1882
Place of death Berlin