- Bill Drews
Wilhelm Arnold Drews (
February 11 ,1870 —February 17 ,1938 ), known as Bill Drews, was a Germanlawyer and administrator. Bill Drews was the creator of the Prussian 1931 police administrative law, which became the model for all German police regulations. [ Stefan Naas, "Die Entstehung des Preußischen Polizeiverwaltungsgesetzes von 1931. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Polizeirechts in der Weimarer Republik", Tübingen 2003. ]Drews studied law at
Göttingen where he was a member of theCorps 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 , and urged the creation of a rigidly organizedstate police force to supplement uncoordinated localpolice forces. [ [http://www.gss.ucsb.edu/faculty/spieker/research/preview.html http://www.gss.ucsb.edu/faculty/spieker/research/preview.html] ]Drews became president of the
Prussian Superior Administrative Court in 1921. In 1927 he published "Preußisches Polizeirecht ", a text book on police administration. Under his presidency, the court generally upheld the principle of theRule of Law after the takeover of German government by theNazi party , though it also allowed a substantial extension of police rights. Until his death in 1938, Drews was the repeated target of attacks by Nazy lawyers promoting the introduction of the Führer principle 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 , 1919)
*"Preußisches Polizeirecht" (1927)References
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