13. Behind all the decadence was organized crime, and almost all the major gangs of Berlin had the police on their payroll
Many Berliners may well have been having a good time in the 1920s, but there was a darker side to the city during the Weimar period. The German capital was a hotbed of organized crime. Above all, the so-called Ringvereine (or ‘Ring clubs) ruled the roost. While these criminal gangs had existed since the end of the 19th century, they flourished in the inter-war years, cashing in on the excesses of the Weimar period, especially through their control of drugs, prostitution and illegal pornography.
Historians believed that as many as 60 Ringvereine operated in Berlin alone during the 1920s. These were largely made up of First World War veterans, as well as petty criminals and former convicts. However, the gangs also had a significant number of corrupt policemen on their payrolls. This insider help meant that they were often left to go about their illicit business unmolested. Indeed, it was only really when the Nazis came to power and wanted to take control of every aspect of German society that the authorities started clamping down on organized crime in Berlin – up until that point, so long as the drugs kept coming, the pornography kept being made available and the backhanders were still being paid, little attention was paid to the city’s gangsters.
According to the local folklore, the Ringvereine honored a strict criminal code. While they operated protection rackets and fought to control the lucrative drugs trade, they never used violence against ‘civilians’, only against fellow gangsters. To keep the public onside, these criminal gangs also presented themselves as Robin Hood-type outlaws. They always made sure to give a portion of their ill-gotten gains to poor mothers and children. The Sass Brothers were local legends in this regard. Throughout the 1920s, they robbed banks, keeping most of the loot for themselves but also making a point of stuffing stolen banknotes through the letterboxes of homes in working-class neighborhoods. The Saas Brothers’ criminal racket came to a shuddering halt under the Nazis and the pair ended up being killed in a concentration camp in 1940.