Wilhelm Arnold Drews, known as Bill Drews (11 February 1870 – 17 February 1938), was a German

lawyer A lawyer is a person who practices law. The role of a lawyer varies greatly across different legal jurisdictions. A lawyer can be classified as an advocate, attorney, barrister, canon lawyer, civil law notary, counsel, counselor, solic ...

and administrator. Bill Drews was the creator of the

Prussian Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an e ...

1931 police administrative law, which became the model for all German police regulations.

Early life

Drews studied law at

Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, t ...

where he was a member of the Corps Bremensia fraternity. From 1902 to 1905 he was commissioner of the county of Oschersleben before joining the Kingdom of Prussia's Ministry of Interior. He was Prussian Minister of the Interior from 1917 to 1918. In 1919, he was responsible for the overhaul of public administration in the then-new

Free State of Prussia The Free State of Prussia (german: Freistaat Preußen, ) was one of the constituent states of Germany from 1918 to 1947. The successor to the Kingdom of Prussia after the defeat of the German Empire in World War I, it continued to be the domin ...

, and urged the creation of a rigidly organized

state police State police, provincial police or regional police are a type of sub-national territorial police force found in nations organized as federations, typically in North America, South Asia, and Oceania. These forces typically have jurisdiction o ...

force to supplement uncoordinated local

police The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their lawful powers include arrest and t ...

forces.

Later life

Drews became president of the

Prussian Superior Administrative Court Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an e ...

in 1921. In 1927 he published '' Preußisches Polizeirecht'', a textbook on police administration. Under his presidency, the court generally upheld the principle of the

Rule of Law The rule of law is the political philosophy that all citizens and institutions within a country, state, or community are accountable to the same laws, including lawmakers and leaders. The rule of law is defined in the ''Encyclopedia Britannica ...

after the takeover of German government by the

Nazi party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...

, though it also allowed a substantial extension of police rights. Until his death in 1938, Drews was the repeated target of attacks by Nazi lawyers promoting the introduction of the

Führer principle ( ; , spelled or ''Fuhrer'' when the umlaut is not available) is a German word meaning "leader" or "guide". As a political title, it is strongly associated with the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. Nazi Germany cultivated the ("leader principl ...

into public administration.Andreas Schwegel, ''Der Polizeibegriff im NS-Staat. Polizeirecht, juristische Publizistik und Judikative 1931-1944'', Tübingen 2005.

Bibliography

*''Grundzüge der Verwaltungsreform'' (Berlin:

Carl Heymanns Verlag Carl Heymanns Verlag GmbH is a legal, specialized publishing house with its seat in Cologne, Germany. On 1 October 1815 Carl Heymann founded, at the age of 23, a bookshop in Głogów, Silesia. He later extended the bookshop into a publishing hou ...

, 1919) *''Preußisches Polizeirecht'' (1927)

References

External links

* 1870 births 1938 deaths Jurists from Lower Saxony Prussian politicians Interior ministers of Prussia {{Germany-politician-stub