Joseph Schreieder (15.8.1904 Munich – ?)

Schreieder joined the Munich Police Headquarters in 1923. As a mid-level civil servant in the Political Department, he was transferred to the Bavarian Political Police in 1933 and from 1935 he headed the border police in Lindau and Bregenz. In 1940, he was briefly Head of Counter-Espionage of the Innsbruck Gestapo. A member of the SS since 1934 and the Nazi Party since 1937, Criminal Inspector Schreieder became Head of Counter-Espionage in occupied Netherlands in 1940 under Wilhelm Harster, the Chief of the Security Police and Security Service (SD), eventually rising to the rank of Criminal Director and SS ’Assault Unit Leader’ (Sturmbannführer). Successfully opposing the resistance and English espionage agents, Schreieder sent many detainees to concentration camps in the Third Reich, where they were murdered.

Detained and charged in the Netherlands after the war until 1949, he was not convicted because the crimes he was accused of could not be proven. After his return, he initially worked for the Gehlen Organization. In 1954, he became head of the newly created state security department in the Bavarian State Office of Criminal Investigation (BLKA), but, after Interior Minister Hoegner overcame his initial resistance, he quickly transferred to the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution, where he was employed in combating espionage. Schreieder viewed himself as an apolitical criminal investigator; he even wrote a book whitewashing his activity in the Netherlands and which failed to mention his membership in the SS.