exams respectively in 1955 and 1959 while working as a pre-qualification lawyer. He received his doctorate in 1960/61 from the University of Cologne in return for a piece of work on "the motives for robbery of young law breakers". The dissertation was based on a study of Cologne district court records covering the period 1953–1956 in respect of convicted law-breakers. Government service Walter Priesnitz had by now switched to government service, employed successively between 1959 and 1971 at two government ministries. He started out at the West German Federal Ministry of Displaced Persons, Refugees and War Victims (as it was then known), working until 1962 in an administrative capacity for Department IV, which was the department responsible for disability insurance. In 1961 he was promoted to the "departmental assistant" grade. After that there came a mandatory period of working "in the field" during which he undertook three relatively brief stints at the Berlin Social Security office, at the National Supervisory Office for the Banking System (also in Berlin), and thirdly for the Eiderstedt District Council, in the extreme north of the country, near the border with Denmark. By the end of 1963 he was back at the ministry, where he served as a section head until 1967. He then took charge, during 1968/69, of the ministry's important "Representation Office" in West Berlin. (West German government ministries were based in Bonn until 1990.) In 1969 there was a change of government and Priesnitz was switched to the Interior Ministry, where between 1969 and 1971 he served as departmental director of the department in charge of the endlessly complex relationship between West Germany and Germany's divided former capital which still, before 1972, had no internationally agreed status. Regional government On 1 March 1971 Priesnitz moved on to a senior post as director of regional administration ("Kreisverwaltungsdirektor") for Nordfriesland, which involved a return to the region of West Germany bordering Denmark. He remained in post until 1975, evidently cementing his reputation for exceptional competence. Although the position was not a directly political one, it involved extensive work at the critical interface between politicians and the world of public administration. His next posting was to Ahlen, a prosperous mid-sized municipality slightly to the east of the Ruhr industrial region. Here he served between 1975 and 1985 as "Stadtdirektor" – effectively chief executive of city administration. During this time he worked closely on a succession