Berlin Police Research Articles

Ataki terrorystyczne, poważne incydenty i infrastruktura krytyczna. Spostrzeżenia z Berlina

Dramatic security incidents, such as terrorist attacks, generate widespread public interest. They arouse strong emotions, on the wave of which there are appeals to the authorities to counter threats more effectively, passionate demands for changes and declarations of their introduction. This usually lasts for a few months and then the topic goes quiet. In the interview, Paul Fröhlich from the Operations Division of the Berlin Police, an expert in the EU Protective Security Advisors programme, refers to a figurative term for this phenomenon - disaster dementia. He suggests ways to counter it, mentioning, among other things, the lessons learned and lessons identified by the Berlin police after the terrorist attack on the Berlin Christmas market. He emphasises the importance of being prepared for crises not only at national but also at individual level and the role of institutional and non-institutional cooperation.

Exploring Terrorism Prevention: An Organizational Perspective on Police Investigations

Abstract The article analyzes the investigations conducted by the Berlin police into the subsequent perpetrator of the vehicle-ramming attack at a Berlin Christmas market on December 19, 2016. We explore why the police closed these investigations prematurely and thereby focus on an attempt to prevent lone actor terrorism. The analysis shows that the police closed its investigations owing to organizational dynamics driven by an increasing need to justify further resource investments in the face of absent conclusive evidence and scarce resources in relation to the organizational case ecology. We propose hypotheses for future research and formulate three contributions to existing research on the sociology of police, terrorism prevention, and lone actor research.

The Streets Echoed with Chants: The Urban Experience of Post-War West Berlin by Laura Bowie (review)

Reviewed by: The Streets Echoed with Chants: The Urban Experience of Post-War West Berlin by Laura Bowie Paul Steege Bowie, Laura–The Streets Echoed with Chants: The Urban Experience of Post-War West Berlin. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2022. 300 p. In September 1968, West Berlin’s biannual Bauwochen (building weeks) celebrated the opening of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s modernist Neue Nationalgalerie and gave visitors an opportunity to tour “the most beautiful post-war … locations” in the city (p. 14). Skeptical opponents organized a kind of “anti-Bauwochen” whose most notable achievement was an exhibition that sought to “diagnose” the problems in West Berlin’s postwar (re)construction. Laura Bowie’s new book focuses on the organizers of this exhibition, the members of Aktion 507. This collection of [End Page 195] architecture students and assistants at West Berlin’s Technical University “mapped intellectual sources onto aspects of the lived experiences of city-dwellers to support their analysis” (p. 166), and those connections shaped the form and content of their work. Taking its name from the seminar room (number 507) of Professor Oswald Mathias Ungers, Aktion 507 offers a compelling means to reframe a transnational student movement within the “micro-politics of everyday spaces of West Berlin” (p. 22). Bowie explicitly locates Aktion 507’s Diagnose exhibition within a “timeline of global events” (pp. xxiii–xxiv) that runs from June 2, 1967—when West Berlin police shot and killed the student Benno Ohnesorg during a protest against the visit of the Shah of Iran—to October 31, 1968—when US President Lyndon Johnson announced an end to the bombardment of North Vietnam. Located in an unfinished building designed by Hans Scharoun to house the Technical University’s Urban Development Institute, the exhibition ran from September 8–20, 1968. Its published manifesto (rather more than a catalogue), as well as visual and personal documentation of the event anchor Bowie’s analysis, and she weaves in these materials throughout the book. Its 77 figures, published in a mix of colour and black and white, richly complement the text. Bracketed by an introduction and a “post-mortem” (Chapter 10), the nine remaining chapters are divided into three sections: “The Present,” “The Past,” and “The Future.” Part I wrestles with the “present” reconstruction of West Berlin, the evolving efforts to cope with post-Second World War destruction and the implications of urban planning policies that demolished housing stock in the city centre and constructed new high-rise housing in the city’s outskirts. The chapters of Part II take on the multilayered theoretical engagement with Germany’s Nazi past and the ways that past remained a (neglected) part of Berlin’s urban cityscape. The final three chapters tackle the ways that student protest tied together critiques of West Berlin’s housing conditions, the trajectory of the discipline of architecture, and Nazism’s authoritarian residue in order to articulate specific revolutionary visions for the city’s future. Hinrich Baller, one member of Aktion 507, retrospectively described this effort to translate theory into praxis as a kind of “visionary pragmatism” (p. 265). Central to Aktion 507’s 1968 diagnosis of the social and material contexts that underlay the lived experience of West Berlin was the Märkisches Viertel (MV) housing development, constructed in the northernmost reaches of West Berlin beginning in 1963. Initial plans drew on international modernist inspirations, such as those that had shaped the city’s International Building Exhibition in 1957, and imagined apartment towers surrounded by ample green spaces, schools, daycare, and other community facilities. Planners turned to a variety of architects, and their variable designs for individual apartments as well as the use of colour to differentiate the buildings aimed to offer an alternative to the “grey Alltag [everyday]” (p. 71) of Berlin’s postwar environment. When interviewed by members of Aktion 507, however, MV residents denounced the development as a “grey hell” (p. 74) for which the addition of external colour changed nothing. In an effort to cope with growing housing demand, the scale of the development expanded dramatically in the midst of construction. Buildings that O. M. Ungers had planned for three to [End Page 196] six stories...

Long-termindoor gunshot exposure of special police forces induces bronchitic reactions and elevated blood lead levels-The Berlin shooting range study.

Gunshot emissions contain toxic elements that can harm those frequently exposed, such as police officers. Several years ago, police indoor firing ranges were closed by the Berlin municipality in response to police officer health complaints, and an investigation was launched into the possible respiratory health risks of frequent gunshot emission exposure. We, therefore, conducted an exploratory cross-sectional study to investigate clinical and functional parameters of respiratory health as well as the burden of trace elements in policemen with long-term high exposure to indoor gunshot emissions, compared to low-exposure and control groups. We conducted lung function tests and collected blood and urine samples from Berlin police officers and government employees who were divided into three subject groups based on exposure to gunshot emissions: high exposure (n=53), low exposure (n=94) and no exposure (n=76). Lung function was examined using body plethysmography. Blood and urine samples were tested via inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry for the presence of common gunshot powder elements (antimony, lead and manganese). Exposure and symptoms were assessed using records as well as questionnaires. Higher exposure was associated with more respiratory symptoms during gun shooting practice (64% vs. 21%, P<0.001) compared to the low-exposure group. Headache, cough, discoloured mucous and shortness of breath were also more common as were some other symptoms. The cough symptomatology of the high-exposure group also persisted significantly longer (median: 0.67 vs. 0.01days, range: 0 to 5days, P=0.029) compared to the low-exposure group. They also showed a lower forced expiratory volume in 1s/forced vital capacity quotient (Tiffeneau index), P=0.018 between the three groups and P=0.005 for the high-exposure group, a possible marker of early, subclinical bronchial obstruction. We observed increased blood lead concentrations depending on subject's age (+1.2% per year, 95% confidence interval: 0.5-1.9%, P<0.001) and cumulative gunshot exposure (+0.34% per 100000 shots, 0.02-0.66%, P=0.037). These first results suggest that long-term exposure to indoor gunshot emissions induces bronchitic reactions due to repeated irritation of the airways. Higher levels of exposure lead to more negatively impacted lung function and higher blood lead levels with the possible reason that more frequent exposure may mean shorter regeneration phases for the respiratory mucous membrane. We recommend a reduction of exposure to gunshot emissions in order to decrease symptoms and avoid any-even small-deterioration in spirometry.

Cross-dressing, Male Intimacy and the Violence of Transgression in Third Reich Photography

Abstract This co-authored article draws upon two distinct genres of photography, police mugshots and amateur soldier snapshots, to illustrate the value of queer visual culture methodologies for how to think about the visualization of violence, masculinity and desire. Building upon two vastly different depictions of male to female cross-dressing, one produced between 1934 and 1938 by the Berlin police and Gestapo of a transvestite and the other produced between 1940 and 1944 by cross-dressing Wehrmacht soldiers behind the lines, we argue that in searching for evidence of intact identities, we overlook important ambiguities. We first show how different photographic traditions have framed gender and sexual non-conformity in the historical record and then go deeper into an image analysis. Drawing upon cross-dressing as a polyvalent performance of masculinity, as play, camp and an identity category, we explore how photographic sources help us better appreciate the multiple and sometimes coexisting layers of feminized masculinity at work during the Third Reich. By queering Nazi history and reading the police mugshots and amateur Wehrmacht photographs within and beyond their visual frames, we point out the limits of reducing every image of cross-dressing to an expression of an inchoate gay or trans identity and argue for analysis that embraces the multiple layers of histories gathered around visual sources.

The algocracy as a new ideal type for government organizations: Predictive policing in Berlin as an empirical case

Motivated by the classic work of Max Weber, this study develops an ideal type to study the transformation of government bureaucracy in the ‘age of algorithms’. We present the new ideal type – the algocracy – and position this vis-à-vis three other ideal types (machine bureaucracy, professional bureaucracy, infocracy). We show that while the infocracy uses technology to improve the machine bureaucracy, the algocracy automates the professional bureaucracy. By reducing and quantifying the uncertainty of decision-making processes in organizations the algocracy rationalizes the exercise of rational-legal authority in the professional bureaucracy. To test the value of the ideal type, we use it to analyze the introduction of a predictive policing system in the Berlin police. Our empirical analysis confirms the value of the algocracy as a lens to study empirical practices: the study highlights how the KrimPro system conditions professional assessments and centralizes control over complex police processes. This research therefore positions the algocracy in the heart of discussions about the future of the public sector and presents an agenda for further research.

Численность русской эмиграции в Берлине 1920-х гг. по германским источникам

The article analyzes in detail the issue of the number of Russian emigrants in Berlin of the 1920s. The existing data of the historiography is contradictory, incomplete, and based on imperfect sources: emigrant press and journalism, fragmentary reports of international and charitable organizations that didn’t have a centralized systems of tracking refugees in Europe. The interest of emigration and the role of Germany and Berlin as a transit zone in European travels led to exaggerated estimates of the number of emigrants of the “first wave.” The number of the Russians in Germany in 1923 was proclaimed around 600,000; 360,000 in Berlin. These huge estimates were transferred to historiography and still appear in the works of researchers. This prevents a realistic assessment of the scale of the “Exodus” from Russia after 1917 and of the size of the emigrant “colonies” in Europe. The article attempts to revise the number of emigrants in Germany and especially in “Russian Berlin” of the 1920s. Having studied the materials of the emigrant press (the newspaper Rul’) and the Berlin archives (Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preu?ischer Kulturbesitz; Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde), the author comes to a conclusion that the number of emigrants in Germany and in Berlin was significantly exaggerated by the contemporaries. However, the size of the “colony” in Berlin can be revised using estimates of the Berlin police officials involved in the supervision of foreigners. Official correspondence and public interviews of the police officers show that they never assumed that there were more than 100,000 Russians living in the German capital in 1920-24 (this highest estimate was made in March 1924). As the police was engaged in registration of foreigners, its employees were best informed on the scales of migration flow, thus, their data is most credible.

Policing the Stones: Music and Violence in Berlin. The Transnational Debates of the 1960s.

This article analyses the violence that broke out at a 1965 Rolling Stones concert in West Berlin. In a close reading of records from the Berlin Police archives, it understands the events at the concert as the combined result of a lack of experience with new cultural forms of expression, old-fashioned ideas of ‘order’ deeply rooted in German history, and logistical failures. Analysing the aftermath of the concert, the article demonstrates how not only the event itself, but also the effects of rock music in general and the state of post-war youth, were discussed extensively in the media and even in a political debate at the Berlin city parliament. As a result, police reforms and new safety standards for concert halls and arenas were developed and internationally debated. Therefore, the article suggests considering the mid-sixties as a watershed (‘Schwellenzeit’) in the process establishing a new rock and pop culture.

Sex, Politics, and Putin: Political Legitimacy in Russia by Valerie Sperling (review)

Reviewed by: Sex, Politics, and Putin: Political Legitimacy in Russia by Valerie Sperling Emma Gilligan (bio) Valerie Sperling, Sex, Politics, and Putin: Political Legitimacy in Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 360 Pages, ISBN 9780199324347. Valerie Sperling’s compelling new study on gender norms, sexism, and homophobia addresses one of the most important topics in contemporary Russia—the use of gender norms and sexualization as a form of political legitimacy and opportunity in Russian politics. Her book, Sex, Politics and Putin: Political Legitimacy in Russia, argues that “gender norms are invoked as tools of authority-building to take advantage of widespread misogyny and homophobia.”1 Offering the most comprehensive book on gender politics in post-soviet Russia, Sperling skillfully frames the political and emotional values shaping the current presidency’s quest for political legitimation, while tracking its deleterious effect on the rights of women in Russia. Sperling inquires: What is it about Putin’s Russia that has allowed the use of gender norms to “flourish so dramatically”? Putin’s rise to power was framed by a public relations strategy that sought to distance the president from certain soviet legacies. The new government needed to be seductive, sexy, and alluring. It also needed to be somewhat capitalist. Sperling argues that “Putin became the major sex symbol of a new political regime resting on a new economic order.” The “sexualization of economic products starting in Russia in the 1990s helped lay the groundwork for the sexualization of political products, such as candidates and their supporters.”2 The new government [End Page 805] quickly dispensed with the image of an intoxicated Boris Yeltsin, conducting the Berlin Police Orchestra, a symbol that had grown to mirror the decline of the Russian state. This visual memory was replaced with the energetic physique of Vladimir Putin. As Sperling argues, the “Kremlin deployed a legitimation strategy that included stressing Putin’s machismo—a strategy that bled over into popular cultural productions of the same ilk.”3 The new president was routinely featured in the press as an active sportsman; flying a firefighting helicopter, riding shirtless and bareback through the Siberian forest, shooting a tiger, and diving underwater on the Taman Peninsula in search of archeological treasure. Sperling proposes an analytical model she titles the “multiple opportunity structure” to explain the origins and evolution of this new phenomenon.4 The five part structure includes: 1) “Political Opportunity” in which she explores the political environment that has enabled this “strategy to emerge unhindered, without significant contestation,”5 2) “Economic Opportunity” embodied in the new commercial capitalism of the late 1990s that subjects women to advertising messages that promote materialism and false images of beauty and sex,6 3) “Political History” depicts how legacies of soviet ideology continue to shape the current presidency,7 4) “Culture” examines the role of family, the workplace, and the easy transition of sexism in politics to popular culture,8 and 5) the international arena constitutes the last piece of the multiple opportunity structure.9 Sperling contends that “[t]ying into the political-historical and cultural opportunity structures, Russia’s international context at the close of the Cold War created an opening for masculine contestation in foreign affairs.”10 The three key issues I wish to raise in this review relate to Sperling’s examination of political groups and organizations, the role of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the state’s response to the feminist movement. Sperling provides a multitude of excellent case studies for examination, but these selected themes are among the core tenets of her argument regarding political legitimation in Russia. Sperling argues that political parties and youth organizations on all sides of the political spectrum use gender stereotypes to denigrate their opponents, sexualize their campaigns, and promote traditional family values. These techniques are not unique to President Putin, but are reflections of Russian politics in general. For example, Sperling shows how Nashi (Ours), the pro-Putin youth organization, frame “their messages using culturally familiar concepts” that promote sexual stereotyping. While promoting a nationalist discourse, Nashi links gender norms to notions of masculinity in the military service, and pro-natalism serving the discourse of the state. Yet it is not unique in...

Inquiring into Diversity: The Case of Berlin Police Inspector Bobkowski

How does one deal with diversity in an organization known to be hostile to it? Drawing on a Weberian perspective I present in this article one case occurring in actual historical practice: that of Inspector Bobkowski, a teacher, chief of the political education unit at the Berlin police academy and training center, and a hobby historian. With an eye to the case at hand as well as other efforts to deal with difference under the Weimar Republic encountered during my fieldwork, I attempt to uncover the motives underlying the action of officers who contributed to the promotion of diversity within the police force in Germany. Inquiring into their motives enables me to construct an ideal type of a “carrier of diversity,” which, I argue, shares affinities with a liberal agenda of civic equality.

Kein Weg ohne Ziel – praktische Hilfen für Schulen in Notfallsituationen

Summary No road without a goal - practical advice and help for teachers and administrators in emergency situations Public attention was recently drawn to the problem of violence in adolescence when the Berlin police announced that violent crime had increased by nearly 100%. Schools are required by law to report cases of violence. This makes it possible to assess the use made of psychological support services and to pinpoint the need for further support. Fifteen educational psychologists with a further training in »crisis intervention and the prevention of violence« are working on the early warning system »Look and Act«. They have developed the pamphlet “Emergency Plans for Berlin Schools”, which gives a series of six concrete steps to be followed in the case of emergencies or as a preventative measure when violence is seen to be in danger of escalating.

Laughter and War in Berlin

Could there be laughter and amusement in the city while there was death and suffering at the front? What aspects of humour were legitimate in times of war? What should be the meaning of laughter in ‘serious times’? The essay approaches these questions through the intriguing case of Carl Braun, otherwise known as Carl Höbner, who in October 1914 ran into trouble with the Berlin police for mimicking German generals and dignitaries. Braun’s case leads, in the second part of the essay, to an investigation of the wider debate about laughter and seriousness that unfolded during the war. While the Kaiser and the military pronounced a taboo on urban laughter, radical conservatives propagated what they called ‘German humour’. Yet much of the city’s entertainment industry argued for precisely the kind of laughter that the Wilhelmine elite found so unappealing. The third part of the essay asks what the outcome of this debate meant politically, suggesting that the way in which laughter and war were negotiated reflected wider questions about power and sovereignty in Imperial Germany. Yet reconstructing the politics of wartime laughter not only prompts us to question well-established assumptions about the cultural history of war, it also sheds new light on wider issues concerning the relationship between laughter and power.

Diversity in Uniform? - Gender and Sexuality within the Berlin Police Force

This article examines the significance of gender and sexuality within the German uniformed police. For a long time the police was regarded to be the classic domain of men, but since some years the police actively tries to employ more heterogeneous staff. These efforts result in a clear change of personnel: more and more women are working in the police. It is the aim of this article to firstly examine in which historical contexts gender and sexuality have been relevant categories within the police organisation. Secondly gender and sexuality in organisational theory, especially considering criticism of feminist organizational theory on classical concepts are discussed. Thirdly theories on micropolitical negotiations, processes of managing gender and sexuality are introduced and connected to the police. In the following part of this article two interview examples are presented and analysed, in which the significance of sexuality and gender today are discussed by female police officers.

Maximilian Mehl und die Behandlung mit konzentriertem Sonnenlicht

In 1889, a chance observation made by Maximilian Mehl, an officer of the Berlin police force, lead him to develop a new method of treating Lupus Vulgaris with concentrated sunlight. Although first therapies proved the efficacy of this method, scientific medicine showed little interest. But Mehl found recognition among supporters of natural healing methods who saw their principles confirmed by his discovery. Mehl's tentative therapy was superseded by technological methods of sunlight treatment, as developed by the Danish doctor Niels Ryberg Finsen. In 1903 Finsen was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work while Mehl's discovery remained practically unknown. This episode in the history of medicine demonstrates how the recognition of a new method not only depends on criteria of its efficacy, but equally so on the degree of its conformity with preconceived notions and accepted standards.

Zwischen Kriminalistik und Justiz. Zur Konjunktur der Fotografie als Evidenzstrategie

The paper deals with the criminalistic-judicial and media specific prerequisites, on the basis of which the scene of crime photography was employed as evidence and identification around 1900. Based on the only existing crime scene photographs in Germany, kept by the Berlin Police collection and Berlin Archives, the focus will be both on the criminalistic concepts and judicial laws – exemplarily reflected by the Dienstanweisung fur Kapitalverbrechen from 1902 [service instruction concerning capital crimes] and a decision of the criminal senate from 1903 – and on the photographic methods and aesthetics, taught in the forensic textbooks from 1893 through 1912, that allowed for the photographic reconstruction of crimes.

Divided in Unity: Identity, Germany, and the Berlin Police

Divided in Unity: Identity, Germany, and the Berlin Police

Book Review: Divided in Unity: Identity, Germany, and the Berlin Police

Book Review: Divided in Unity: Identity, Germany, and the Berlin Police

Divided in Unity: Identity, Germany, and the Berlin Police. By Andreas Glaeser. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Pp. ix+383. $27.50.

<i>Divided in Unity: Identity, Germany, and the Berlin Police.</i> By Andreas Glaeser. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Pp. ix+383. $27.50.

Identical with What? Chartering the Unknown Waters of the Concept of Identity

Andreas Glaeser Divided in Unity—Identity, Germany, and the Berlin Police (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2000)Lutz Niethammer Kollektive Identität—Heimliche Quellen Einer Unheimlichen Kultur (Hamburg: Rowohlts Enzyklopädie, 2000)

Divided in unity: identity, Germany, and the Berlin police

When the Berlin wall fell and the reunification of Germany began, Willy Brandt predicted that 'what belongs together will now grow together.'This study of Berlin's police force in the aftermath of reunification shows that forty years of separation left the nation with deep rifts.