general public). At least 13 cases were handled in this fashion be-
tween 1782–1789, nearly all of them involving espionage. Pergen’s
recommendations, often taking a more lenient tack, did not always
accord with the judgment of the headstrong emperor, as in the case of
Franz Rudolf Gossing, a Bavarian contact person for various Hungar-
ian dissidents whose abundant testimony while in captivity failed to
save him from a life sentence.
With Leopold II’s accession to the throne in 1790, the central-
ized system suffered major setbacks. The Habsburg police force
in Hungary was dismantled, leaving municipal authorities to keep
public order, while persons earlier convicted as Staatsverbrecher
were amnestied. Concerned about threats stemming from the French
Revolution, Leopold nevertheless ordered the surveillance of all for-
eigners as potential French agents, and he commissioned the former
head of Pergen’s police in Pest, Franz Gotthardi, to recruit a group of
Hungarian informants. Pergen, who faced reduced funds and increas-
ing interference, submitted his resignation in early 1791, convinced
that the emperor’s undermining of his police system would have the
gravest consequences.
Following Leopold’s death in 1792, the new emperor, Francis
II, reinstated Pergen as head of the secret police, which included
jurisdiction over the prison system and surveillance of all foreigners.
Francis was impressed by his performance and sought his advice
on other matters. Yet it turned out that one of Pergen’s Hungarian
agents, Ignaz von Martinovics, was a French sympathizer, and a se-
ries of Jacobin trials took place in 1794. Before his retirement in 1804
due to failing health, Pergen sought to consolidate the powers of the
secret police, recommending to the emperor that all foreigners unable
to prove legal and steady employment be expelled from Vienna. The
recipient of numerous state honors and rewards, Pergen died on 12
May 1814. See also SAURAU, COUNT FRANZ JOSEF VON.PERS Z. The cryptanalytical unit of the German Foreign Office, Pers Z
(Personal Z) traced its origins to a unit established in December 1918
by the new Weimar government. Its later name, adopted in 1936,
referred to its secret location in the personnel department of the For-
eign Ministry’s political intelligence bureau. Initially headed by Curt
Selchow, a former captain in army signals intelligence, it steadily
344 • PERS Z