- Yg. 1929, No. 20 -
The reports from the Berlin theater of war of the first of May, 1929, may be as different as the reporting party's party position, such as those about a World War II battle, but there are some facts that no one can dispute. For example:
1. In the course of the first of May, the police ban on May Day celebrations in Berlin, with the exception of a few smaller gatherings that were quickly dispersed, had not been broken. This statement (as well as the fact that no actual battles have taken place) is as much directed against the defense attempts of the police as against the bloody hands of the Communists and some bombastic telegrams from Moscow, which speak of "revolution" and so on.
2. The shootings have been started by the police. Whether civilians have ever fired, is questionable. In any case, only a single policeman has been injured by a shot, accidentally by a colleague.
3. The police have z. T. shot without any warning passersby. In most cases, she immediately started the shootout after the "Road free!"
4. The police have dragged out completely uninvolved people from homes, maltreated and arrested. Even the few processes that have been negotiated in quick trial in Moabit show this very clearly.
In addition, a plethora of individual examples of raw and meaningless police action are reported. She has z. For example, when people who were waiting for the trams on traffic islands were driven off without warning with the rubber truncheon, they blindly shot down the streets in the closed-off areas and fired them into apartments. They shot machine guns out of the closed-off districts into released streets, etc. The result Therefore, on the side of the "civilian" of five days of battle was: 24 dead, 73 seriously injured, over a hundred slightly injured, on the part of the police: no dead, 4 seriously injured, 43 slightly injured, among them, as I said, only a single person injured by a shot.
"Should this be lawful in future in Prussia, that the police, if one of their rules of a small group of people really or supposedly not obeyed, suddenly block entire neighborhoods, pop into the windows, totally uninvolved people tug from apartments, with rubber truncheons and lame beating and how shooters can shoot down? Should it become a maxim that cities or districts of their own country can be treated as a whole war zone because of any police-illegal acts of individual inhabitants? "Asks the" diary ".
The answer to this question will have to be: it depends on the training of the police. After the revolution, when the belief in the word "man is good" was even stronger, much has been said that the policeman must be the "steward of the street". Today you hardly dare to talk about it anymore. For today the training of the police, the "second army", is quite military. The police are trained on civil war. According to an article in the official correspondence "Beko", the young police officers once every four days have a few hours of instruction in the police service, but otherwise they are drilled military. The police officer school is no different. The leaders adhere to the training methods of the old General Staff, partly because they still live in this mentality, partly because they demand the rules. In the occasional officers' meetings z. For example, the officers in sealed envelopes are given tactical tasks for the civil war, which they have to solve with lead soldiers. In the May days, the officers have led the young police teams (most of them "used" very young people) into the "war" just as they did on the sandpit.
In September of last year Ignaz Wrobel wrote in an article of the "Weltbühne" on a book "police use, presented to tasks, book II, when used in the city area" by K. v.. Oven pointed out. If you read this article today and the citations quoted in it from Ovens book, then you are no longer surprised at the action of the police in the May days: the practice corresponds exactly to the theory, in which nothing is mentioned as of "use" It is no wonder, then, as the "Frankfurter Zeitung" in a report on the May Day has done, to say: "Die The task is typically police, but the use of teams and the action is military. "
The rules governing the training of the police are military, and the teachers and officers live in military spirit - so you have to change the training regulations and the personnel policy. Both are the responsibility of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. Although the Social Democrat Grzesinski is in the lead here, one does not notice it. Whether he can not or if he does not want, I do not know. In any case, the Ministerial Director Klausener, the head of the police department, has more influence on the police than Grzesinski. Here you would have to start with the plastering.
But probably nothing happens. At most, a few reactionary police officers, who have made themselves felt by particularly rude action, are transferred. To bet ten against one: as a teacher to a police school. So that the tradition is preserved.
1929, 20 Hermann List
1. 5. 1929: During the May roundings, there are riots in many cities. In Berlin, 13.000 police violently violate protesters. Nine people die, 63 are seriously injured.
3. 5. 1929: After new clashes between protesters and police, the Berlin police chief imposed a "traffic and light ban" on the Berlin districts of Wedding and Neukölln. A total of 33 protesters were killed, and more 198 protesters and 47 police were injured.