Policing ‘wayward’ youth: law, society and youth criminality in Berlin, 1939 - 1953 David Meeres Thesis presented for the award of Doctor of Philosophy Supervised by Prof. Anthony McElligott Submitted to the University of Limerick in November 2014 Declaration The work presented in this thesis is my original. Due reference has been made when the work of others has been used. 2014 David Meeres I Acknowledgements There are many, many people to thank for tolerating my waywardness during the writing of the thesis. It has been a long, arduous journey. First of all, thank you to my long-suffering supervisor Anthony McElligott. He has not only had to put up with me as a post-graduate at the University of Limerick, but also as an under-graduate at St. Andrews University in Scotland. We have therefore known each other quite a long time. Thank you for your inspiration and your long-standing support. Thank you to my doctoral siblings Dr. Nadine Rossol and Dr. Tina Dingel (who have long since flown the nest). Nadine also helped me learn German, which was quite possibly not always that fun for her. To both of you: your support was really much appreciated! To the German Historical Institute in London, my thanks for providing both moral and financial support, the former through a research scholarship that they generously awarded me in 2004. Frau Welzing provided me with much needed advice during my prolonged stint at the Landesarchiv in Berlin. The staff of the Bundesarchiv Berlin also proved to be tolerant and patient helpers, particulary given my lack of grace in using the microfilm readers. They are quite tricky, though. Dr. Carlos Meissner, Dr. Tom Mathar, Dr. Rob Duncan – huge thanks to you for reading, (constructive) criticising, pushing me forwards to complete the thing. Also to my tour guiding colleagues in Berlin, who have provided much needed company and respite from the lonely travails of writing a thesis. Particular thanks go to my good friends Jim McDonough, Forrest Holmes, Engin & Rike (& Wilma) Dünyaadami, Steffen Gumpert and Fabian Caroli. Not forgetting two very lovely cats, Otto (much missed) and Gizmo. To my wonderful parents: I’m not really sure how I can thank you enough for your love and your patience. Finally, to my wife Lisa. I really don’t know how I can adequately express my gratitude that I have you by my side. I couldn’t have done it without you. II Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Policing the home front, 1939 – 1940 44 Chapter 2: Constructions of wayward youth, 1941-1943 70 Chapter 3: Waywardness and Total War, 1944-1945 106 Chapter 4: Locating wayward youth 1945-1948 131 Chapter 5: Wayward youth in East and West Germany, 1949-1953 159 Conclusion 189 Bibliography 197 Appendix: DEFA film ‘Und wenn’s nur eine wär…’ (1949), Opening sequence 205 III Abstract The thesis is at once a legal, social, and everyday history of youth crime in Germany between 1939 and 1953. Its overarching tenet is that the so-called Zero Hour of 8 May 1945 as a starting or ending point is obstructive in any historical appreciation of deviance in twentieth Century German history. Whilst the dis/continuities in modern German history have been widely researched by scholars, little has been written on the importance of juvenile criminal discourse in wartime and post-war Germany, and almost nothing exists in the English language. This thesis aims to fill these lacunae. It argues that there was remarkable continuity in the policing of ‘wayward’ youth between the last years of the Third Reich and the period of Reconstruction. In order to prove this, the thesis has at its centre a case study of over three hundred juvenile Strafakten (criminal court case files) held at the Landesarchiv processed by Berlin local courts between 1941 and 1948. This is framed by a wide-ranging analysis of legal, sociological and pedagogical debate surrounding an ever-present juvenile criminal discourse, including archival material of the Reich Justice Ministry from the holdings of Berlin’s Bundesarchiv and Foreign Office reports found at the Public Record Office in London. The choice of Berlin as the heart of the thesis’ investigation is obvious, given its position as the Reichshauptstadt and the centre of Allied administrative control after 1945, as well as the city boasting the largest population in Germany. In both the wartime and post-war periods, it was the laboratory for dealing with ‘criminal’ youth. IV Introduction The thesis is an investigation of youth crime in Germany between 1939 and 1953. Spanning the last years of the Third Reich and the post-war period of Reconstruction, it compares how the police, the courts, pedagogues, and welfare authorities treated so- called ‘wayward’ or ‘criminal’ youths. It finds that despite the considerable amount of social, political and cultural upheaval that took place during these fourteen years, there was a large degree of legal continuity in how juvenile criminals were dealt with by the authorities in Germany, calling into question how far the moment of German capitulation on 8 May 1945 can be viewed as an absolute Stunde Null (Zero Hour). Many of the juvenile decrees and ordinances introduced by the National Socialist regime remained on the statute books after the war. Indeed, the phrase schädliche Neigung (harmful tendencies), introduced as an explanation for the indefinite sentencing of youth in 1941, remains on the statute books to this day. In addition, there were certain similarities in the mentality and everyday practice of those charged with the policing of criminality, despite the catastrophic end of the so-called ‘Thousand Year Reich’ and the ‘new beginning’ of 1945. The study begins in September 1939, with the outbreak of war signalling a more punitive policy towards those viewed as potentially or actually criminal. New measures were introduced to curb a perceived ‘moral panic’, fuelled by crime statistics showing a significant increase in the incidence of juvenile crime. According to confidential figures released by the Reich Statistical Office in mid-1942, the rate of prosecutions involving youths below eighteen years of age rose by some 66 1 percent by the third-quarter of 1940 compared to the same period the previous year.1 During 1942, well over 52,000 juveniles were sentenced throughout the Greater Reich, representing a 300 percent increase on the total figure for 1939.2 Macro-level statistical data will be contextualized through use of micro-level data. Then the central part of the thesis is an examination of more than 300 juvenile Strafakten from the wartime and the post-war periods, taken from the holdings of the Landesarchiv and Bundesarchiv in Berlin. These files offer a valuable insight into the everyday practice of juvenile courts, as well as giving the historian a wealth of information on the particular individual and the crime they were accused of committing. Whilst one must be careful to bear in mind the bureaucracy and Amtsdeutsch of the legal authorities, these files nevertheless allow one to obtain a significant amount of information about individual cases of juvenile crime. The vast majority of the files utilised for this study have never been examined before now. The thesis is centred on the historical, sociological, and legal examination of 300 juvenile court case files located at two archives in Berlin, the Landesarchiv (State Archive) and Bundesarchiv (Federal Archive). The criminal court cases examined in the thesis represent a micro-history of juvenile social, legal, and criminological thought. It contributes to the mapping of a particular historical landscape that has yet to be properly explored by historians. Encompassing the years 1939 to 1951, the criminal court case files provide a rich source of information on how the juvenile criminal system operated during the wartime and immediate post-war period. Through this information, we can map out the social history of a youth; in particular how old they were, where they lived, what job they had, and their family background. The circumstances surrounding the crimes they committed also often provides information on the social environment in which the ‘criminal act’ was alleged to have taken place; for example what was stolen, from where, and from whom. At the same time, the files also represent a legal history through providing an insight into how juvenile criminal discourse was deployed on the ground level. 1 Statistischen Reichsamt (ed.), Statistisches Jahrbuch für das Deutsche Reich, Vol. 59 (Berlin, 1942) p. 561. This was not accessible to the public. 2 Figures taken from Bruno Blau ‘Die Kriminalität in Deutschland während des zweiten Weltkrieges’ in: Zeitschrift für die gesamte Strafrechtswissenschaft, Vol. 64 Nr. 1 (Berlin, 1952) pp. 31-81. Here p. 34. 2 Protocols, reports, transcriptions, and letters submitted by policemen, welfare workers, lawyers, judges, prison officials, and Hitler Youth leaders revolved around the question of why the youth would have acted in such a way. Who the judge was, as well as where and when the trial was held, had a considerable importance for how juvenile sentencing practice operated. Then, as the thesis will demonstrate, the legal actors involved in policing ‘wayward’ youth were not only informed by contemporary juvenile criminal discourse, but were simultaneously attempting to inform it as well. These cases can only be understood when placed in historical context. Between 1939 and May 1945, the judge’s choice of sentence was influenced by the relative success or failure of the German war effort. The catastrophic military defeat of the Wehrmacht at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942/1943 was a turning point in the war that also affected juvenile sentencing practice, as will be shown in chapter 2.