SPD police president of Berlin who ordered the "Blood May" crackdown of 1929
A cooper from Mainz, Zörgiebel joined the SPD in 1901 and worked as a union and party district secretary. He sat on the Cologne workers' and soldiers' council in the November Revolution and in the Reichstag in 1920–1924. He became police president of Cologne in 1922 and of Berlin in 1926. His violent suppression of the banned KPD May Day demonstration of 1 May 1929, which left more than thirty dead, became the "Blood May" that Communists cited when they denounced the SPD as "social fascist". Dismissed and imprisoned after the Nazi takeover, he headed the Rhineland-Palatinate police after the war.
Also known as: Karl Zoergiebel
Activities and affiliations
-
1901–
Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD)
Social movements and organizing -
1920–1924
Germany state institutionsMember of the Reichstag
Legislature and state representation -
1922–1933
Germany state institutionsPolice president (Cologne, Berlin, Dortmund)Main
Security, intelligence and policing -
1947–1949
Germany state institutionsState police chief of Rhineland-Palatinate
Security, intelligence and policing
Career Timeline
- 1901Joined the SPD.
- 1907Full-time official of the coopers' union.
- 1918.11Member of the Cologne workers' and soldiers' council.
- 1920.06–1924.05Member of the Reichstag.
- 1922.09Police president of Cologne.
- 1926.10Police president of Berlin.
- 1929.05.01Crushed the banned May Day demonstration (Blood May).
- 1930.11Placed in temporary retirement.
- 1931.12.06Police president of Dortmund.
- 1933.09Arrested and held four months in Brauweiler camp.
- 1947–1949State police chief of Rhineland-Palatinate.
Blood May, 1929
Citing a ban on open-air rallies issued for all Prussia on 21 March 1929, Zörgiebel banned Berlin's traditional May Day demonstrations, saying he feared clashes between Nazis and Communists. When thousands came out on 1 May at the KPD's call anyway, the police, on the orders of Zörgiebel and the Prussian interior minister Albert Grzesinski, crushed the demonstration. Clashes and strikes went on into 2 and 3 May, and the police killed not only demonstrators but uninvolved residents of Wedding and Neukölln. On 3 May the KPD's paramilitary Red Front Fighters' League was banned, a ban extended to all Germany on 14 May; from 3 to 6 May Zörgiebel imposed a curfew on the two districts.
Zörgiebel at first admitted only 23 deaths, and the SPD paper Vorwärts called the dead "victims of Communist agitation"; the toll was later corrected to 33. Even liberal newspapers condemned the police violence against bystanders, and the Communist deputies Paul Frölich and Wilhelm Pieck called him a "murderer of workers". In July the theses of the Tenth Plenum of the Comintern Executive indicted social democracy: "it bans the May Day demonstrations; it shoots down unarmed workers during the May Day demonstration". Werner Hirsch of Die Rote Fahne called him a "Social Democratic butcher of workers" and was fined in 1930. Historians count Blood May among the events that foreclosed SPD–KPD cooperation against the Nazis.
Placed in temporary retirement in November 1930, Zörgiebel returned as police president of Dortmund in December 1931 and was one of the few Social Democrats to keep his post after the Prussian coup of 1932. He was dismissed right after the Nazi takeover in 1933, arrested in September and held for four months.