State security in the second German empire: policy changes from the assassination attempts on emperor Wilhelm I to the First World War

After two attempts to assassinate Emperor Wilhelm I had failed in 1878, internal security became an important policy field in the Second German Empire. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck cunningly exploited the attacks in order to ban the activities of the rising Social Democrats and their associations. Moreover, political surveillance was tightened and policing professionalized. The emergence of the security state was a crucial precondition of the state of exception that the German government and authorities imposed after the beginning of World War I. Altogether, internal security remained a policy field that reflected the authoritarian structure of the German Empire. Even after 1900, democratic potentials remained rather minuscule. During World War I, the policy of repression, which began in August 1914, affected not only the subjects of hostile states, but also the German opponents of the leadership of the German Empire. This policy of repression was based on the fact that the traditional elites retained key competencies in state security policy and were able to freely identify “internal enemies”, as evidenced by the arrests of opponents of the war and the “census of Jews” in the German army. These authoritarian measures not only justified the “special German path”, but also contributed to the eventual transfer of power to the National Socialists in 1933. Thus, the late empire was not a laboratory of promising democracy.