Master of charts

Two-and-a-half months after the flooding disaster, Hamburg’s Parliament expands the existing police ministry into a comprehensive interior ministry. The new authority is assigned competencies from other administrative departments. This means that from May 1962, Senator Schmidt also becomes responsible for a range of other areas, such as district supervision, fire brigade, motor traffic, citizen registration, statistics and protection of the constitution. At the end of February 1963, the authority moves into its offices in Hamburg’s Sprinkenhof complex (part of the Kontorhaus district UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2015). Its headquarters remain there to this day. Schmidt himself leaves state politics for the second time in the autumn of 1965, returning to the German Bundestag, where he increasingly focuses on security-related issues.