the Volkpolizei in Karl-Marx-Stadt (today Chemnitz) to protect the state enterprise of Wismut AG. Leadership Minister of the Interior (Minister des Innern) Karl Steinhoff (1949–52) Willi Stoph (1952–55) Chief of the German Volkpolizei (Chef der deutschen Volkspolizei) Kurt Fischer (1949–50) Karl Maron (1950–55) Minister of the Interior and Head of the German People's Police (Minister des Innern und Chef der deutschen Volkspolizei) Karl Maron (1955–63) Friedrich Dickel (1963–1989) Lothar Ahrendt (1989) Function and effectiveness The function of the Volkspolzei changed over time. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Volkspolizei can be regarded as the nucleus of all other armed state institutions of the GDR. It was the first institution of the East German state, from which other organisations such as the Stasi and the National People's Army originated, both at the institutional and personnel level. Over time, however, it increasingly became but one agency within the GDR's extensive security bureaucracy. In terms of general policing duties, the Volkspolizei dealt with criminal activity as conventionally understood, such as theft, murder, and so on, but also performed duties including border protection, passport and identity controls, transport control, and the protection of sensitive buildings and areas, each of which were carried out by specialised departments. A critical part of the Volkspolizei was its grass-roots policing, introduced from 1952, whereby every GDR citizen had their own "section commissioner" (Abschnittsbevollmächtigte, ABV). Within their section, the ABV was responsible for all policing affairs regardless of branch or speciality in that area; in total, approximately 5,000 ABV positions were created all over the republic in order to cover an average of 4,000 inhabitants per section. Following the East German uprising of 1953, the number of sections and ABVs almost doubled. The purpose of the ABV was to establish and cultivate a "close connection" with their section's population, in order to fulfil conventional policing duties, as well as enable the party to penetrate society at the very moment of the construction of socialism through state power. Police functions were also extended beyond the official, paid forces through organisations such as Combat Groups of the Working Class (Kampfgruppen der Arbeiterklasse, KdA), organised units within factories and workplaces numbering around 400,000. The effectiveness of the Volkspolizei was questioned following the Uprising of 1953. The leaders of the SED and the Volkspolizei interpreted the response by the GDR's security apparatus as a debacle. Police stations and court houses were