The Munich Police-- a long career of shielding the public from crime.
Dietrich Reithuber, a high-ranking commissioner at Munich’s Kripo (Kriminal Polizei, or crime division) and head of the department that investigates unexplained deaths, made out well with his office. The 52-year-old has the great fortune of sitting at a desk in the new wing of the police headquarters on Ettstrasse. His window looks out onto the Frauenkirche, which stands but 20 m away. Having recently moved into his new working space, a number of international uniform caps—which he and other colleagues avidly collect—is haphazardly strewn over a cabinet in the corner. The pride of his collection is a Royal Canadian Mounted Police hat. A US army major’s cap is also among the collection of headwear. This was a gift from the army for good teamwork—just what kind of collaboration Reithuber had with the US army is not up for discussion. Though his diploma from the FBI academy in Quantico lies on top of a packing box, it will no doubt adorn his walls shortly.While the holding cells in Munich’s police headquarters are clean, the faint scent of faeces hangs in the stale air. A small window secured with bars lets in little light. Between 12,000 and 13,000 detainees pass through the holding cells each year. They stay no longer than 48 hours. Many are moved to take up longer residence at Stadelheim prison or, those who have committed only minor crimes, are released. The inmates, who number eight per cell, have left their marks on the walls. Presumably the messages scrawled there contain swear words and other angry comments, but you would have to speak Russian or Arabic to know for sure. Scribblings in German are easily understood—Neo-Nazi graffiti in which Adolf Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess, is exalted.
Given his rather unpleasant work environment, it is surprising to discover that Oberkommissar Bauch, head of detention at HQ, is a cheerful man. Bauch’s soft eyes, which have certainly seen a lot in their time, peer through a pair of glasses as he explains how the inmates scribble on the walls. “Of course, they don’t have pens with them when they are locked in the cell. They are, however, allowed to smoke. They simply mix cigarette ashes with water and smear away.” A yearly paint job does not deter the inmates from sharing their views in burnt tobacco.
Reithuber and Bauch are two of about 7,000 officers who work for the Munich Police. The law enforcement team is responsible for the security of the city’s 1.6 million inhabitants, in an area of approximately 1,000 square kilometers. In the first half of 2000, officers handled 52,921 cases. In the first half of 2001, 58,938 crimes were committed, a statistic that clearly shows a rise in the crime rate. Munich police are especially concerned with the alarming increase in burglaries, by 15.4 percent, street crimes, by 4.6 percent, and rapes, by 9.1 percent.
In reviewing the statistics, however, one must bear in mind that these numbers are based on a very low overall crime rate. Ten lives were taken in the first half of 2001 as a result of crime. All of these crimes were solved. But the Munich Police has not always enjoyed such a high success rate in solving murder cases—the history of the force, after all, goes back a long way. For much of it, of course, police personnel were not equipped with the modern devices used to fight crime today.
The Munich Police was founded in 1294. It was in that year that Rudolf, Duke of Bavaria, granted the city of Munich permission to appoint its own judge. “Judge servants” were hired to serve him, but also to search for criminals, stop fist fights and keep the peace on the city’s streets at night.
In 1577, the Munich Police came under new management. Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria, exercised his right to appoint the judge. Seemingly apathetic Münchner did not put up a fight and, from that year until 1945, the Munich Police was run by the state of Bavaria. After World War II, the US Army reorganized the force, taking it out of Bavarian control and putting it back in Munich’s hands. This lasted only until 1950, when the Münchner Polizei officers again became civil servants of Freistaat Bayern , and remain so today.
Of course, many reprehensible things have happened between then and now. In 1701, for example, a 16-year-old girl was the last in a line of “witches” sentenced to be burned at the stake in Munich. In 1848, owing to unrest, especially among student protestors who openly and violently opposed the relationship between Ludwig I, King of Bavaria, and the Spanish dancer Lola Montez, the Munich Police used all means to quiet the group. In the end, Montez was deported and Ludwig abdicated, handing over the throne to his son Maximilian II.
During that time, the Munich police department was housed in the now former Englisches Fräulein building. The force’s current location, in the Ettstrasse, was built from 1911 to 1913. Architect Theodor Fischer designed the facility, incorporating the remains of the Augustine monastery that stood on the property. Even the monastery church was used as office space. The complex, in those days, was considered to be mammoth, measuring 12,400 sqm with 395 offices.
Renovations and additions have rendered police headquarters a veritable maze. Even the young chief commissioner Alfred Hauck, who gave Munich Found a tour of the station, lost his bearings. When he tried to show us the cell block, we suddenly stood before a locked door. Last week, he explained, the entrance to the cells was here. Now it is on the floor above. “It’s like Neuschwanstein in here,” jokes Hauck. There is, he says, always something being repaired. But it isn’t all that idyllic here. After we have viewed the cells, we are off to the identification department. Here, fingerprints are taken and mugshots are snapped. It is hard to believe that a tiny wooden chair from the 1960s is where even bulky criminals pose for their photos. But what is missing in modern furnishings is made up for by the latest in computer technology. Bad guys no longer have to hold a sign with case/prisoner numbers; today the PC does all that. As a law-abiding citizen, it is an eerie feeling to sit for a test photo. There is certainly nothing amusing about the experience. It is, therefore, all the more puzzling that most criminals smile warmly “for the birdy.” A photographer’s assistant says he thinks it is because of life-long conditioning—we see a camera pointed at us, so we smile, even if we have just been arrested and may face years in prison.
Pictures also play a big role at the Munich Police traffic division. It is somehow chilling to enter a room containing 50 monitors, each showing a different view of the city’s streets by means of hidden cameras—Big Brother is watching us. Here, it is possible to peek at passersby while viewing live images of Marienplatz, Sendlingerstrasse, Petuelring and more. And, if you don’t like the view, you can use a remote control to turn the camera in another direction or zoom in on a point of interest. The public’s concern about surveillance is unwarranted, says head commissioner Stahl. “The cameras are used only for monitoring traffic, not for observing individuals,” he says. Should the police notice that, on a particular street, there is a lot of traffic at any given time, they can control the signal lights from this office to ease the situation. In fact, the city’s 900 traffic lights can be manipulated from “command central.” Those officers who watch Munich “on TV” can send emergency vehicles to the sites of accidents they have just witnessed on their monitors.
Though, in the Weimar Republic, from 1919 to 1933, there were obviously no surveillance cameras, they were badly needed. After the fall of the empire, the Bavarian capital was wrought with havoc. The chaos culminated on February 21, 1919, when Bavaria’s first prime minister, Kurt Eisner (SPD), was shot and killed on the street. The police were able to apprehend Eisner’s murderer, Graf Arco, right at the scene of the crime. The young Graf was sentenced to death. Yet, only four years later, the right-wing count was pardoned and released from prison.
One of the Munich Police’s claims to fame is having been the only police force to arrest Hitler. This, of course, took place in November 1923, after Hitler’s failed coup d’état known as the “Beer Hall Putsch.” Participants were quickly dispersed, albeit by police gunfire. A few days later, the Munich Police arrested Hitler in Uffingen, where he had hidden in an armoire upon hearing that the police had searched the home of his friend Ernst Hanfstaengl.
The darkest period in the force’s recent history was certainly that of the Third Reich. In 1933, Reich Leader of the SS Heinrich Himmler became Police Chief of Munich. Major-General SS Reinhard Heydrich, later “famous” for the atrocities he committed in the Holocaust, began his career as a chief in charge of politically-motivated crimes within the Munich Police (then known as the Polizeidirektion München ). Himmler left his position within a mere four weeks, when he moved to Berlin to fulfill his “higher” aspirations. His successors were a string of NS myrmidons. One of these, SS Major-General Freiherr von Eberstein, offered the following comments in a speech he made when he took over Himmler’s post: “The basis of successful work, as I see it, is the Nazi Party. Anyone who accepts this notion is a friend of the new state, and also a friend of mine. Anyone who rejects this idea is an enemy of the state and, therefore, an enemy of mine.”
In 1945, the time of the “brown power” was over and the American military began rebuilding the Munich Police force. As early as May 10, 1945, the reins were handed over to a German police chief: Johann Paul Ritter von Seisser. From that day on, things quieted down in the Isar city. One case, however, boggled police long after World War II. Georg Vogel, known as “the goatee from Munich,” was suspected of murdering four women between 1917 and 1943. Because no corpses were ever found, no arrest could be made. Vogel died in the 1960s, a free man. Even today, officers at Munich’s homicide department wonder if perhaps Vogel was able to elude police because he had committed “the perfect crime.”
Reithuber seldom comes in contact with murderers. His department, 112, is responsible for determining if a murder has in fact occurred or if death is the result of an accident or suicide. Reithuber and his team investigate 2,000 mysterious corpses found in the city each year. The commissioner says that the worst part of the job are the bodies found in an “aggregate state.” By this he means it is extremely unpleasant to deal with a corpse that has been decomposing in an apartment for weeks before being discovered.
One of Reithuber’s toughest cases, he says, was the October 1999 murder of Oberschleissheim resident Diana Kubasch. Her killer and neighbor, Manfred Immler, brutally raped the 19-year-old woman, living out his “perverse, sex slave fantasies.” Immler, who, for a few months, was only one step ahead of an international search team on his tail, was finally apprehended in Athens. The not-so-cunning killer, who unwittingly wore the same outfit he was seen wearing in the numerous photographs plastered in Europe’s newspapers, was caught on standard bank surveillance cameras as he used his automatic teller card to get cash while on the run. Such cases cause even the thick skin of a weathered lawman to thin. “You can’t help but be affected by something like that,” confesses the cop. Reithuber further explains that the key to being able to handle the upsetting situations is to “have real inner stability and a supportive environment.”
The events of September 11 hit many international law enforcement officers especially hard. Colleagues with whom Reithuber studied in Quantico, and some with whom he worked in New York, lost friends as a result of the terrorist attacks. Though Reithuber knows that monetary donations are little more than a nice gesture, the homicide detective took up a collection at Munich HQ following the incidents. His daughter, who studies in NYC, handed over DM 5,700 to the family of a German-born policeman lost that fateful day.
The world had certainly never seen a terrorist attack as fierce as the one witnessed on September 11. But, horrors crop up time and again and Munich has experienced a few. After the relatively peaceful 1950s in the Bavarian capital, the 1960s brought unrest anew. In 1962, the city was the site of the so-called Schwabinger Krawallen (Schwabing riots)—a brutal battle sparked by the early conclusion of a jazz concert—in which 1,000 police officers and 30,000 demonstrators were involved. In 1968, local students protested against a publication they loathed—the Bild newspaper, a daily rag considered by many to be a tad “yellow.” During that demo, a press photographer and a student were stoned to death.
The worst crime of the postwar years was undoubtedly that of September 5, 1972. The 20th Olympic Games were underway in Munich. The world was watching a premiere sporting event of which locals are still proud. A few minutes past five in the morning, the police were alerted that shots had been fired in the men’s Olympic housing village. Two officers immediately headed to the scene. As the pair tried to enter the apartment of the Israeli team, they were met by two men wielding machine guns. If the police duo had walked a couple of steps further, they would have been blown away. Eight heavily armed Palestinian terrorists had taken the Israeli team hostage and had already killed some of them. Their demands included the freeing of 200 Palestinian prisoners in Israel and two helicopters and an airplane to take the eight men and their hostages to Cairo. The helicopters arrived and the kidnappers were transported to the airfield in Fürstenfeldbruck. It was there that things got out of control. Police sharp shooters took the terrorists in their sights. But the lawmen were able to keep only three of the criminals at bay. The other five opened fire on the police. The young police master general Anton Fliegerbauer was killed. When bullet-proof police vehicles arrived, it seemed the kidnappers no longer had a chance. In a last-ditch effort, one of them threw a hand granade at one of the helicopters, in which five of the hostages were seated. The helicopter went up in flames. One of Munich’s darkest days saw the death of 11 Israeli athletes, five terrorists and the young policeman.
Dietrich Reithuber remembers that day—as a young policeman, he had been with the force for only four years. He was stationed at the stadium when it happened and heard many of the details on the police radio. These were the most gripping moments of the early years in his career. Reithuber, however, has never had to fire a single shot from his revolver. “No cop ever wants it to come to the time when he or she must draw the gun,” he says. Understandable, because this could cost the life of a civilian or a colleague. For these reasons alone, Reithuber is forgiving of the often harsh methods of his American colleagues. Though those living in Germany who wish to own a firearm can obtain one illegally, it is not as easy as it is in the States. “Whoever draws first has the advantage,” says Reithuber. “If I knew that there was a chance that every one of my opponents carried a gun, I would also be the first to draw.”
The commissioner has a great deal of respect for his American “brothers.” He is especially impressed by their team spirit and work ethics. On the other hand, the Munich Police need not hide behind the successes of their colleagues in the US. In fact, says Reithuber, many visiting American policemen are impressed by this city’s law enforcement team. Surely, if nothing else, they are a bit envious of Reithuber’s view of the Frauenkirche.
