(including the use of forged documents) began to circulate in the gen-
eral public, forcing him to resign in 1847 rather than face dismissal.
His attachment to the Prussian monarchy—and Friedrick William
IV in particular—led to his appointment in 1850 as head of the Berlin
Criminal Police. Not only had Stieber served as a royal bodyguard
during the turbulent 1848 Revolution but the escape of the notorious
revolutionary Gottfried Kinkel from Spandau prison in 1850 had
convinced the monarch of the need for a stronger police enforcement.
Building on his previous work in gathering incriminating material
on German radicals connected to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
in London, Stieber established a separate department that monitored
dissident activities through a wide network of informants. He also
compiled a general handbook of communist conspiracies.
In 1858, because of the worsening health of Friedrick William IV,
his reform-minded brother, the future William I, was appointed re-
gent and sought to curb what he considered the excessive police and
spy presence in Prussia. Stieber soon faced charges by the state pros-
ecutor of having willfully deprived people of their personal liberty,
although the court eventually acquitted him following his threat of
invoking the monarch’s responsibility in these cases. Dismissed from
active police work and given a reduced salary, Stieber nevertheless
attracted the attention of the Russian embassy, which was anxious
to track various political activists who had fled the tsarist regime to
Prussia. His undercover work earned him a substantial fee as well as
several awards by the Russian government.
The last and most important phase of his life came via Otto von
Bismarck. With the outbreak of the Austrian-Prussian War in 1866,
Bismarck proposed that Stieber head the newly formed Feldpolizei
(Field Security Police), which was approved by the war minister,
General Albrecht von Roon. Its functions included safeguarding the
main headquarters, preventing the infiltration of enemy agents, and
acquiring information about the Austrian military. As the successful
war lasted only a matter of weeks, Bismarck retained Stieber’s ser-
vices by appointing him head of yet another new body, the Central-
Nachrichten-Büreau (Central Intelligence Bureau). Any criticism of
his new intelligence chief was sternly rebuffed by Bismarck, who,
following an unsuccessful attempt on his life, quipped that Stieber
was the only “useful policeman” in all of Prussia. Nevertheless, no
STIEBER, WILHELM • 445