Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 33. (1980)
LIANG, Hsi-Huey: International Cooperation of Political Police in Europe, 1815–1914. An Essay Based on Some Austrian Archival Sources
International Cooperation of Political Police 209 and Switzerland to join49). Great Britain and Switzerland had been the mavericks in the history of European police cooperation since the days of the Metternich system. In the 1830’s they had successfully pioneered the liberal doctrine of the right of asylum for political refugees in international law, and developed the principle of non-extradition for fugitives other than common criminals50). In the 1830’s and still in the opening years of the twentieth century, both England and Switzerland were less exposed to the strain of a territorial system of states about to be drawn into a cataclysmic competition for hegemony. In the one case this relative immunity was founded on the strategical asset of the Enghsh Channel, and the economic advantages of vast overseas possessions. In the other case there was the protection of the Alps reinforced by a long tradition of neutrality dating back to the Peace of Westphalia. As the Austrian ambassador to the Court of St. James, Count Mensdorff, reported to Minister Goluchowski on 29 Juni, 1906, in a grudging tone: „England ist soweit von anarchistischen Verbrechen verschont geblieben und die Freiheit, welche die hier lebenden Anarchisten gemessen, ist eben eine Art Versicherungsprämie, welches dieses Land dafür zahlt. Dieser egoistische Standpunkt wird natürlich nicht laut eingestanden, und die grossartige politische Disziplin England’s verhindert es, dass er in der Öffentlichkeit zum Ausdruck kommt“51). The Swiss Federal Government sought to evade a commitment to the St. Petersburg Protocol by expressing its readiness to institute certain police measures at home identical to the measures laid down for signatories of the Protocol, but without in any way incurring a binding obligation by Switzerland towards Russia or the other signatories of the pact. Switzerland reserved the right „von dieser einseitig übernommenen Verpflichtung zurückzutreten, sobald sich deren Durchführung gesetzliche Schwierigkeiten innenpolitischer Natur entgegenstellen sollten“52). Insofar as Switzerland’s difficulty stemmed from her confederate constitution (the absence of a central police executive at the disposal of the Bundesrat) the Germans as early as 1901 had advocated a police reform in Switzerland as being in the interest of the European community53). But the Swiss clearly were less perturbed by the prospect of domestic political difficulties. Their reservations towards the international political police agreement was prompted rather by misgivings over the ideological division of Europe into a reactionary and a democratic bloc. The Austrian minister to Berne, Freiherr von Heidler, wrote home on January 8, 1904: 49) Correspondence concerning St. Petersburger Geheimprotocoll zur internationalen Bekämpfung des Anarchismus, 14 March 1904: Adm. Reg. F 52/9 Konv. Internationale Maßnahmen (see n. 42) beginning with föl. 286. 50) F[elice] Morgenstern Right of Asylum in British Yearbook of International Law (1949) 327-357. 51) Count Mensdorff to Goluchowski, London, 29 June 1906: Adm. Reg. F 52/9 Konv. Internationale Maßnahmen fol. 208 r-v. 52) Heidler to Goluchowski, Berne, 11 April 1904: ibid. fol. 309r-v. 53) Count Kuefstein to Goluchowski, Berne, 15 Nov. 1901: ibid. fol. 595r-598v. Mitteilungen, Band 33 14
