Klaus Weinhauer. Schutzpolizei in der Bundesrepublik: Zwischen Bürgerkrieg und Innerer Sicherheit: Die turbulenten sechziger Jahre. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, 2003. 417 S. EUR 49.00 (gebunden), ISBN 978-3-506-77530-6.
Reviewed by Andrew Oppenheimer (Department of History, University of Chicago)
Published on H-German (September, 2004)
To judge this book by its cover, one would expect in Weinhauer a study of the "turbulent 1960s," when youthful, politically minded provocateurs confronted a West German police establishment intent on defending the state against civil unrest and subversion. But this study of the West German Schutzpolizei offers much more. Broad in scope, rich in detail, and thoughtful in its observations, Weinhauer's book combines institutional and cultural analyses to examine policing's transformation over the course of approximately two decades. In sum, it describes the emergence of West German policing from under the shadow of Weimar.
Evoking Pierre Bourdieu, Weinhauer conceptualizes his subject as the habitus of police work.[1] To that end, he proposes an extended social-historical analysis that attends, first, to the everyday (Alltag) of police activities, and, second, to the cultural expressions and rituals that bound West German police formations into socially cohesive communities. The latter is particularly important, for it draws attention to the hitherto under-researched gendered foundations of police culture and history. Indeed, this approach enables Weinhauer to argue that gender was foundational to the culture and practice of policing. The author describes a hierarchical organizational structure, inherited from Weimar, complimented by the ideal of a Schicksalgemeinschaft--a community of men committed to each other, their leadership, and the state. In the context of organizational reform and generational change after 1945, Weinhauer examines the relationship between state structure and self-characterizations of police work, paying special attention to the points where police organization and self-perception began to part ways. Situating this against the backdrop of West Germany's emerging Erlebnisgesellschaft, Weinhauer also traces the changing relationship of policing to established cultural norms. He asks, first, after evidence of broad cultural trends in patterns of organizational modernization, and, second, whether structural reforms and demographic changes within the policing establishment translated into a process of socialization, by which he means an opening of this close-knit community to West German society at large.
Chapter 1 provides an historical overview of West German policing since 1933, paying special attention to the political circumstances in which police forces were reconstituted after 1945. Weinhauer develops a comparative analysis of police forces in two federal states--Hamburg and Nordrhein-Westfalen (NRW): the former with a long-established, well-entrenched police bureaucracy, the latter a new formation in which communal and state officials competed for authority. Because the Allied occupiers (in these instances the British) wanted to establish quickly both effective and efficient policing, they relied upon pre-established organizational and cultural patterns when reconstituting German police forces. This is not to say that denazification was irrelevant: the British, for example, implemented some organizational reforms in an effort to depoliticize and demilitarize police institutions. Yet, like denazification measures more generally, these reforms were limited. The British narrowed the purview and scope of police activities; however, the legal basis for policing as codified during the late interwar era remained in effect. Police practices continued to emphasize social order, public safety and, above all, defense of the state, its symbols, and the unfettered operation of its institutions.
Weinhauer's exploration of the habitus of policing begins in earnest in chapters 2 and 3, where he establishes links between militarist visions of police work, forged during the Wilhelmine and Weimar eras, and the training and organization of police officers after 1945. New recruits were not simply taught their trade; they were acculturated into a community that emphasized its special relationship to the (West) German state. Weinhauer describes a "thick web of control" in which recruits functioned, both on and off duty, which molded them into a collective of men of action. Training regimes in both Hamburg and NRW evoked the struggles of the Prussian Schutzpolizei, in particular against Communist revolts in 1921 and 1923. On the basis of this ideal, police officials sought to create an esprit de corps defined by principles of courage, bravery, cold-bloodedness, and circumspection.
Chapter 2 offers the study's most in-depth engagement with the Nazi past. The experience of soldiering--in particular of combat against partisans from within intimate, tight-knit squadrons--is evident in the emphasis on esprit de corps among police officers. Despite the early postwar dismissal of many police officers through denazification programs, a significant number returned to duty over the course of the 1950s. Taken together with the former Wehrmacht soldiers recruited for careers in policing, Weinhauer looks for the influence of Nazi ideology and the experience of soldiering on postwar police praxis. He cites the direct, unregulated influence of senior over younger officers, especially upon the latter's entry into the Revierdienst, as an important factor in this equation. At the same time, however, he argues that experiences of soldiering did not supplant the Weimar era model of policing; rather, they reinforced pre-existing militarist ideals. This claim is not the focus of Weinhauer's analysis. Of greater interest to him are discussions in Hamburg and NRW about officers compromised by wartime associations and activities. These conversations, which began in the early 1960s, challenged the mollifying inclinations of policy makers. Most striking of all in Weinhauer's analysis of these discussions is the importance of the myth of Weimar policing in affecting how early postwar police officials confronted National Socialism. Put simply, by conceiving of the Nazis as an overpowering anomaly, they were able to resuscitate the militarist ideal of the Prussian past. Had police officials addressed the complicity of the police in both the rise and crimes of the Nazi regime, it would have compromised their visions of community and masculinity.
In the late 1950s, a crisis of authority developed that challenged both the model of a close-knit Dienstgemeinschaft and its masculine ideal. This marked the beginning of the end for both the sense of mission and self within the Schutzpolizei. Initial attempts on the part of senior police officials to shore up established ideals against the creeping vision of police work as a job like any other put this crisis into relief. Younger officers began to show a lack of concern for tradition as well as for the strong ties between the police and the state. In addition, they began to display greater interest in their own material well-being. Contemporary commentators pointed to decreased fears of a Soviet invasion as a significant factor in this shift. As one official summed up the situation from the perspective of the elder police "patriarchs," many among the Bereitschaftpolizisten assumed that political freedom was a gift free of obligations (p. 181).
Unsurprisingly, the inability to shore up traditional means and ideals of policing over the long-term corresponded to demographic changes within West Germany's police forces. Weinhauer highlights the on-going promotion of officers socialized during and after the Second World War, who sought to incorporate modern techniques of policing into West German practices. What emerged in the wake of their efforts was a "civilian and more technically-oriented" model of policing. Chapter 3 offers a detailed analysis of reform measures. They focused on both the structure and content of police training and work, and emphasized demilitarization and the introduction of civics into the training regimen of recruits. Despite differences in the timing and motivation of reform efforts in Hamburg and NRW, both programs demonstrate the importance of the small group-centered organizational structure to the maintenance of established patterns of authority, cohesion, and manliness, as well as the importance of breaking up this organizational model for reform efforts. To this end, reforms in police training emphasized personal skill and physical fitness over community and discipline. The statist, patriarchal vision of policing thus gave way to one that emphasized individual achievement, flexibility, self-responsibility and technical proficiency.
The impact of reforms is explored explored in chapter 4. Here, Weinhauer focuses on the less than ideal everyday of the Revierdienst. He characterizes it as a "spiritually isolated" community, "very sensitive to criticism," marked by a bureaucratic and authoritarian organization, as well as by high rates of suicide, sickness, and alcohol consumption among officers. Parallel to the changes in the Schutzpolizei, efforts were made to modernize techniques of policing in the Revierdienst, especially in the urban milieu. The idea was to remove police from their relatively immobile, local beats (Fussstreifen) and place them in mobile units able to assist in all types of situations across a broad geographic area. Key to this change was an increase in radio car patrols (Funkstreifen) and the consolidation of police stations into larger units. As in recruit training, organizational reforms here translated into the erosion of the existing masculine ideal: in abandoning the small, locally-centered foot beats of the Weimar era, police lost an important anchor of their sense of self as officials with intimate local knowledge defending both the state and order from the prospect of civil unrest. Not surprisingly, these measures raised important questions about the relationship and accessibility of police officers to the populace. Despite grumbling (both from within the community of police officers and West German society at large), there would be no turning back. Again, demographic shifts within the community of police officers played an important role. Weinhauer highlights a rising interest in technology, especially among younger officers, suggesting an inevitable dislocation of traditional forms of police work and acceptance of new techniques as standard practice.
The need to confront rising crime rates during the 1960s inspired still more changes in the Revierdienst. Crime was an issue that ebbed and flowed across the first several decades of the Federal Republic. By the mid-1960s, two factors marked the discourse around crime: increasing reliance on statistics generated by the Bundeskriminalamt in debates on crime, and the place of crime within a broader political discourse on security. Innere Sicherheit emerged as a Leitbegriff in both domestic and international politics, and Weinhauer is particularly interested in how domestic stability became a theme in West German discussions of foreign affairs. In addition, he argues that the ability to turn to statistical reports reinforced both the tendency to perceive crime systematically and the conviction that policing ought to be deployed for crime prevention. To the latter end, politicians and police officials sought increased personnel, greater flexibility in methods, and less bureaucracy. And by establishing connections to the broader network of state social institutions, they also sought to break down the organizational barriers that kept the police an isolated, closed institution.
The fifth and final chapter of Weinhauer's study is dedicated to student protest actions during the late 1960s. The author begins by explaining how the police approached protesters, namely as mobs in which conscious, individual personalities were subsumed under collective impulses. He cites a pattern of responses to crowd actions--the Halbstarkkrawalle in autumn 1958 and the Beatkrawalle in 1965-66--to demonstrate both continuities and changes within police responses to "mobs" over the course of the decade leading up to 1968. While direct force remained a viable technique for disciplining crowds, the emerging discourse on innere Sicherheit provided a new interpretive framework for determining when force ought to be applied. Police officials began to differentiate between types of collective actions, specifically between political and non-political protests. The most forceful police responses were reserved, not surprisingly, for the former based on the danger of political subversion. Police officers--particularly older police officers--demonstrated a marked disdain for the exercise of restraint against political protesters. Here, Weinhauer sees the persistence of a masculine ideal that valued vigor and courage over passivity and restraint. "Against the backdrop of anticommunist convictions (Grundhaltung), defense of the state from 'acute mobs' constituted a core aspect of an officer's sense of masculinity and occupation" (p. 331). In the end, however, the aggressive response of the police to student protesters led to further organizational reforms and the continued erosion of the police officer's traditional masculine ideal.
In sum, Weinhauer argues that the police officer's sense of mission and, indeed, sense of self were obstacles to the modernization of West German policing. Not until cultural codes had been released from the bonds of a tradition that mythologized the Weimar era could fundamental change occur. The period between 1955 and the early 1970s thus represents one of nascent transition in which the symbolic and ritual orientations of the Schutzpolizei were questioned alongside initial attempts to modernize organizational structure and techniques of policing. These reform efforts transpired against the backdrop of--and to some extent in response to--a West German society in flux. The conflict between police traditions and changing social norms came to a head during the student protests of the late 1960s. It was only in their wake that radical change in policing occurred.
Weinhauer ends on a cautious note, because the "level of modernization" achieved by the early 1970s leaves an ambivalent impression. Traces of past cultural norms remained visible. Still, by the 1970s, generational changes held open the promise of ever greater acceptance of modern police techniques than shown by previous cohorts of officers oriented by patterns of thought (Denkmustern) formed during the Weimar and Wilhelmine eras.
As informative and impressive as this study is, it left this reviewer unsatisfied in meaningful ways. Both Weinhauer's methods and conclusions are underdeveloped. His concern for the habitus of policing is praiseworthy, but, in the end, the content of culture gets short-changed. By attempting to locate this habitus through an extended social-historical analysis, Weinhauer brings together two studies--one on political-organizational, the other on socio-cultural economy--that deserve separate study prior to their integration. The problems that arise from Weinhauer's approach are seen most clearly in his treatment of masculinity. Despite an excellent account of community organization as a site for the constitution and expression of gendered identities, Weinhauer cuts off the police officers' masculine ideal from a wider cultural economy of assumptions about gender difference. We are offered no sense of how the masculine model studied here was either informed by or informed general cultural concepts of masculinity. And there is no discussion of the relationship between the police officer's masculine ideal and feminine norms either within or outside of the police establishment. In short, Weinhauer presumes his subjects' sense of themselves as isolated from society at large. He thus fails to account for masculinity as a cultural identity under construction, continuously renegotiated with other, gendered cultural identities.
Even if we accept Weinhauer's conclusions on the constitution of masculinity, his study's awkward periodization, petering out in the early 1970s, raises more questions than it answers. Weinhauer contends that the traditional model of policing finally began to wane in the early 1970s. This claim must be tested against police actions later in the decade, specifically in response to the threat of terrorism. The author acknowledges the ebb and flow of police violence across the 1950s and 1960s. Given the heightened fears of social and political instability inspired by acts of domestic terrorism, one has to ask whether police responses to such fears revived traditional commitments to the state and order above the rights of citizens or whether such responses demonstrate persistent continuities in police practice.
Finally, with regard to the emphasis on innere Sicherheit, Weinhauer focuses on Sicherheit at the expense of its qualifier. The public discourse generated around this concept may provide fruitful contributions to the concurrent discourse on the contours of the German nation. Weinhauer could have been clearer on the relationship of discourses on the nation and West German identity to both political and cultural discourses on policing. While crime and juvenile delinquency were relevant issues, so too were territorial boundaries and, quite possibly, cultural tradition. In a society where prominent intellectuals argued that "sovereignty was contemplatable only from the perspective of the renewal of an 'inner' Germany, rather than from any global political standpoint" (p. 30), one ought to explore exactly what required security.[2] This is less of a criticism than a point where Weinhauer could have pushed his analysis further. Indeed, I think that Weinhauer's conclusions will stand up under further scrutiny. The study's shortcomings have more to do with the breadth of its agenda than with its analysis per se. Schutzpolizei in der Bundesrepublik is a thoughtful, well-researched, and valuable contribution to the growing literature on the postwar era as one of cultural transformations.
Notes
[1]. Bourdieu defines habitus as the internalized schemes of thought that regulate an individual's assumptions, "intentionless improvisation[s]," and that coordinate interpersonal relations. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 78-87.
[2]. Anson Rabinbach, "Restoring the German Spirit: Humanism and Guilt in Post-War Germany," in German Ideologies since 1945: Studies in the Political Thought and Culture of the Bonn Republic, ed. Jan-Werner Mueller (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 30.
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Citation:
Andrew Oppenheimer. Review of Weinhauer, Klaus, Schutzpolizei in der Bundesrepublik: Zwischen Bürgerkrieg und Innerer Sicherheit: Die turbulenten sechziger Jahre.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
September, 2004.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=9755
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