Cultures of Administration. The Imperial Ministry of the Interior, the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of the Interior of the GDR Between Continuity and Political System Dependency 1919-1975
Principles of Law and Jurisprudence
Final Report Abstract
Which continuities existed between the state administrations of the Weimar Republic, the Nazi State, the Federal Republic and the GDR – and how did they differ? The research project gives differentiated answers to these questions by focusing on the culture of administration of the four German Ministries of the Interior between 1919 and 1975. Most parallels existed between the Ministry of the Interior of the Weimar Republic and the FRG. In both ministries, the decision-making process had to be documented in a written form. Also the hierarchy and the competence to give orders from above to below played a key role. Additionally, the members of the administrative staff possessed a wide range of decision-making power. The culture of administration had a civil character and was shaped by legal norms and well-ordered procedures. In contrast, the Ministry of the Interior of the GDR broke radically with the seemingly bourgeois administrative German tradition, to which the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the Reich Ministry of Interior of the Weimar Republic referred. Therefore, administrative staff relied increasingly on an oral and secret decision-making process. Additionally, the Ministry of the Interior of the GDR combined the strongly developed hierarchy with the practice of education, guidance, control and surveillance of the subordinated staff. The administrative culture of the Ministry of the Interior of the GDR was highly politicized and had a military, mobilized and combative character. In comparison to the Ministries of the Interior of the Weimar Republic and the Federal Republic on the one hand and the Ministry of the Interior of the GDR on the other, the Nazi Ministry of the Interior occupied an intermediate position. It followed the far-reaching claim of the regime to politicize and radicalize its assignment, it understood itself as a militant institution in order to impose the folkish and racial aims of the regime, but it only partly had a military character. An oral decision-making process, a strong hierarchy and secrecy played an increasing role, but, in contrast to the Ministry of the Interior of the GDR, the Nazi Ministry of the Interior kept traditional procedures going, as long as the regime considered them useful. Continuities of the administrative culture during the Weimar Republic, the Federal Republic and partially during the Nazi rule enforced tendencies, that staff, which had already worked during the former political system, was able to arrange itself with the new order. Administrative routines appeared as catalysts in order to stabilize the new political system, whereas, in the GDR, the loss of such routines enforced the impression of a new political beginning.
