„Relikt” metternichowskiej policji politycznej. Informationsbüro i jego polscy współpracownicy

Abstract

‘A relic’ of Metternich’s political police. The Informationsbüro and its Polish informers The Information Bureau (Informationsbüro), inspired by Klemens von Metternich in Mainz in 1833, was a political institution which collected information about persons and groups that challenged the existing political and social order. After the outbreak of the Revolutions in 1848, the Bureau was closed down, but the Austrian authorities made use of its staff and their experience. The Bureau’s former officers found employment in the Austrian Ministry of the Interior, and later in the Supreme Police Office (Oberste Polizeibehörde) and the Ministry of the Police, continuing their operations in the 1850s and 1860s. In the aftermath of the changes which the Habsburg monarchy underwent in the second half of the 1860s, an Information Bureau was established in Vienna; it was part of the joint Austro-Hungarian Ministry of the Interior. Its purpose was to collect (mainly political) information in the Empire and abroad. The Information Bureau ceased to meet the expectations of the Austro-Hungarian government in the early twentieth century and was closed down in 1908; its responsibilities were transferred to a special department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The article is about the organisation of the Information Bureaus in Mainz and Vienna, their employees and informers, in particular Poles. The Mainz Information Bureau was interested in Poles from its inception, although initially its officers encountered problems with infiltrating Polish émigré communities. Interest in their activity was not as high as in the activity of German, Italian and later Hungarian émigrés. The change of the international situation and of the monarchy’s policy towards Poles in the 1860s did not mean that the Information Bureau lost interest in them; it continued its endeavours to enlist them as informers, especially to collaborate against Russia.