I’m reading Herman Hesse’s 1927 novel Steppenwolf. Early in the story, the narrator describes his aunt taking in a lodger. The narrator is disturbed when he learns:
The only request he had made was that his arrival should not be
notified to the police, as in his poor state of health he found these
formalities and the standing about in official waiting-rooms more than
he could tolerate.
What’s this all about? Apparently German law required you to notify the police if you rent a room to someone? Why? Was this a long standing law in Germany, or was it related to the rising fascism in the pre-Nazi era? Did this happen in other countries? And how much trouble would the aunt be in if the police learned of her lack of notification?
In the 19th and early/mid 20th C it was pretty much standard in Europe for hotels to maintain guest registers that were an open book to (if not compulsorily copied to) the police. It was a state surveillance tool, basically.
I don’t know the laws from 100 years ago, but in modern Germany, whenever you change your permanent residency (not for staying in hotels or such), you are obliged to register at the local Einwohnermeldeamt (local residents’ registration office). Although you don’t report directly to the police, they will have access to that info. Maybe in 1927, you had to register directly at the police.
Isn’t this standard in most countries?
Many countries maintain a population registry.Every person has a number and an address.It’s usually administered by local municipalities, under the national department of the interior or equivalent.(i.e. not the police).
This concept terrifies many Americans, but it really isnt very different than the Social Security number in the US.
And one important aspect of the registry is that it guarrantees everybody the right to vote. Because you are automaticallty assigned to the polling station nearest your home.
You do not even have to be a permanent resident. I came to Germany (not in the 1920s), I had to get an “Aufenthaltserlaubnis”, and I was supposed to register my address. It had nothing to do with hotels, though.
I really don’t know for sure, but I think so, but I was under the impression that it’s not the case in the US. And you make a good point about voting: you don’t have to register vor voting, whenever there’s an election, you automatically get your voting notification per mail from your local municipality which enables you to vote at your local polling station or to request the papers for postal voting (online or per snail mail).
In Australia when you relocate the requirement is to update your electoral registration and your drivers’ license. Everything else is optional and for convenience / avoiding lost post.
The Day of the Jackal (original Fred Zinnemann movie version, don’t know about the original book or the garbage Bruce Willis remake) makes much play of hotel guest cards, which act as a real-time chase element potentially putting the cops closer to their target.
Surely there’s a difference, though, between a hotel (or an individual) documenting guests in a register and actively notifying the police upon arrival.
In the “Day of the Jackal” book as well, there’s a sequence where a delay in getting guest cards to the police and recognizing the important one, plays a part in the Jackal escaping the manhunt in rural France.
1927 is not yet a decade out from the end of WW1, and Europe remained a wary and suspicious place. It isn’t hard to imagine that most country’s authorities wanted to know about the arrival of new people. Not just foreigners. The world was grappling with political unrest from all quarters. Bolsheviks and anarchists had been tearing up Russia, Fascists had taken Italy, and foment was in the air. It was a nervous time, and with good reason.
I looked at the German text of Steppenwolf, and the reference was to polizeiliche Meldung.
That was actually the same procedure that is in use now - only in the past it was referred to with that term.
A bit of background: In the past Polizei in German legal and administrative usage did not refer just to what we call police now, but to any part of public administration regulating safety and order aspects of public life. So Baupolizei referred to municipial building authorities, Lebensmittelpolizei to food inspection authorities, Feuerpolizei to fire protection departments, Forstpolizei to agencies supervising forestry etc.
This usage has been superseded in public discourse for less than half a century now (Baupolizei → städtisches Bauamt, Lebensmittelpolizei → Lebensmittelüberwachungsbehörde etc.)
Polizeiliche Meldung involved showing up not indeed at a police station, but at city hall where you registered as a resident. It used to be that you needed to show a certificate of deregistration at your previous place of residence; nowadays the new municipiality of registration automatically notifies the old one.
Nowadays the process is called Anmeldung. Once you are in your city of registration’s database
you can get your new passport and ID card at city hall (if a citizen), also you apply for a driving license at city hall (the data is forwarded to the different agency that actually does the tests)
you are automatically on the voter roll (if a citizen and of age) and you can stand in elections where residence is a condition
crucially for the municipiality: the municipiality gets 15% of your income tax (German income tax is shared between the Federal Republic (42.5 %), the state of residence (42.5 %) and the municipiality (15 %)
As I recall from that movie, the hotel also required visitors (foreign visitors?) to present their passport when checking in to the hotel. I seem to vaguely recall the hotel held on to them? This would have been 1962. Which is a plot point also, as the Jackal gets around this registration problem in Paris by getting himself picked up by a local man in a public steam bath.
Because the United States has a long history of freedom of anonymous unimpeded travel. We haven’t had a culture of “papers, please”.
We have a decennial census to derive this kind of residency information at the federal level, which would otherwise be available in real time if you had to register your domicile with the government every time it changed.
Please note that this thread is about two separate legal obligations, of which one, two or none apply in different jurisdictions:
an obligation of a person taking up residence in a municipiality to register their place of residence with that municipiality (as referred to in the OP in Germany, with reference to Der Steppenwolf)
an obligation of hospitality businesses to keep a register of their short-term residents, and in some cases to timely forward that information to a government agency (as mentioned upthread for Spain).
The second case can take the form that a register must be kept but the data not forwarded automatically to the government (this is the case in Germany, with many states exempting small hospitality businesses)