THE JOURNAL OF REGIONAL HISTORY V.3 No.1 In the Footsteps of Revolutionaries: The Federal Gendarmerie in the Austrian Empire, 1849–1852

Abstract

The article examines the mechanisms of collecting information by the state police in the Habsburg Empire. During the affected period, the duties of this law enforcement agency were conducted through five different institutions: the Federal Safety Guard Corps as the state police authorities, the Gendarmerie, the army, secret post lodges and administrative authorities. The article explores the activities of the state police authorities, entrusted to Minister of the Interior Alexander Bach, until the summer of 1852. In the summer of 1849, a network of confidential informers was reorganized in Western Europe, primarily in the major cities of the German states, in the centers of Hungarian and Polish emigration, and, additionally, in Turkey. Inside the empire establishing and operating an informative system was vested into the police agents working in large cities and for provincial governors /state lieutenants in the country, so that the ministry was only able to form an image of the density and size of the agents’ network via the reports on the expenditures. The situation in the different provinces varied a lot. Such a decentralized system made it difficult to verify the quality of the information and gave rise to abuses; thus in the summer of 1852, when the police functions were transferred from the Ministry of the Interior to the newly established Supreme Police Office (Oberste Polizeibehörde), the mechanism for collecting the police data was reorganized towards strict centralization.

Keywords

• neoabsolutism
• austrian empire
• state police (the federal gendarmerie)
• gathering of information abroad
• decentralised police organisations in the austrian empire
• police agents