commander of the protective police, the centrist politician Magnus Heimannsberg, were taken into custody and released the next day, after they had bound themselves in writing to engage in no more official acts. Immediately after the dismissal of the state government, a large-scale purge began. Numerous officials who had belonged to the previous coalition parties, especially the SPD, were put on temporary retirement and replaced by conservative officials, the majority of them German nationalists. This step, in addition to affecting the cabinet of Otto Braun, was directed especially against Social Democratic provincial presidents and leading Social Democrats within police organizations. Following a decree issued on 12 November 1932, those who had been placed on retirement were either dismissed or delegated to the provinces. In this way 69 ministerial officials with republican sentiments were sidelined. In addition to members of the Braun cabinet, they included among others Carl Steinhoff, vice-president of the province of East Prussia, and Carl Freter, district administrator of Calau in Brandenburg. But this was only the first step. The purge continued well into 1933. With targeted interventions against the police, especially the political police, an essential part of the power apparatus in Prussia had already been "cleansed" before Adolf Hitler's chancellorship. There was hardly any resistance, mainly because the SPD's executive board had decided on July 16 not to resist with the resources available to it in order to avoid provoking a civil war. Members of the first commissioner's government Interior Ministry and Franz von Papen's Deputy Reich Commissioner and Deputy Reich Chancellor: Franz Bracht, former Lord Mayor of Essen Commerce: Friedrich Ernst, Reich Commissioner for Banking Supervision in Heinrich Brüning's cabinet Finance: Franz Schleusener, State Secretary in the Prussian Ministry of Finance Justice: Heinrich Hölscher, State Secretary in the Prussian Ministry of Justice Culture: Aloys Lammers, State Secretary in the Prussian Ministry of Science, Art and Education Agriculture: Fritz Mussehl, Ministerial Director in the Prussian Ministry of Agriculture Public Welfare: Adolf Scheidt, Ministerial Director in the Prussian Ministry of Welfare Reaction of the Prussian state government Despite its previous declarations, the Prussian government refused to respond with violence of its own to the violence that the national emergency and emergency decree had officially sanctioned. Deployment of the Prussian police and the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold – an organization formed by three center and left of center parties to defend parliamentary democracy – was rejected. Even non-violent resistance in