a fundamental reform after the March 1920 Kapp Putsch. Senior civil servants hostile to the Republic were dismissed, and the political reliability of new hires was checked. A total of about one hundred senior civil servants were placed on retirement. Among these were three governors (), three district presidents () and 88 district administrators. Almost all of these were from the eastern provinces. In addition to supporters of the conservative parties, they included the Social Democratic governors August Winnig (East Prussia) and Felix Philipp (Lower Silesia). Severing and his successors purposefully appointed supporters of the coalition parties as political officials. The policy led to a considerable change in the heads of departments. In 1929, 291 of 540 political officials were members of Weimar Coalition parties, including nine of 11 governors and 21 of 32 district presidents. The shift also changed the social composition among top officials. While in 1918 eleven governors were aristocrats, only two were in the period between 1920 and 1932. There were nevertheless still lagging regions. While in the western provinces 78% of newly appointed district administrators were supporters of the governing parties, the situation in the eastern provinces was noticeably different as late as 1926. There supporters of the coalition made up only one-third of district administrators; the rest were mostly conservative nonpartisans. Another limitation was that a breakup of the monopoly of lawyers in the higher civil service posts did not succeed. Only in exceptional cases, such as that of Wilhelm Richter, Berlin's police chief, were outsiders appointed. Republicanization of the police The Prussian police force was not only the strongest in the Reich but also the most important instrument of the Prussian government's executive branch for maintaining constitutional order. Massive restructuring also began in the police force after the Kapp Putsch in order to ensure its loyalty to the Republic. Under the leadership of the Minister of the Interior, the republican-minded police chief Wilhelm Abegg became the decisive figure in carrying out the reform. By the end of the 1920s, all leading police officers were republicans. Of thirty police chiefs in 1928, fifteen were members of the SPD, five belonged to the Centre, four to the DDP, three to the DVP, and the rest were nonpartisan. Below the command level, however, the situation was somewhat different. A large proportion of the police were former professional soldiers; the majority were conservative and anti-communist, and some