1.5: Hans Gross
- Page ID
- 52938
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Hans Gross was an Austrian jurist, or magistrate, who took up his posting in Upper Styria, an area of iron production near the Croatian border, in 1870. In those days, criminal investigators were not available in the small towns and villages, and law enforcement was left up to village officials, generally former military personnel, acting in the capacity of police officers. It was therefore the role of the jurist or “examining magistrate” to find practical solutions to incidents of criminal nature. Most examining magistrates would solve crimes using what the Austrians would call “Mutterwitz” or the common sense you would get from your mother. Whether influenced by the Sherlock Holmes stories or not, Hans Gross believed that a more thorough and systematic approach to investigating crimes was merited, and he set about an intensive campaign of study and self-enrichment to add to his vast experiences. According to Roland Grassberger in his 1957 paper entitled Pioneers in Criminology, “During many fertile years of intensive practical activity as an Examining Justice and later as a Public Prosecutor at Graz Hans Gross collected an enormous amount of experience. He very eagerly studied a great number of treatises on physics, psychology, medicine and science in general. He occupied himself with microscopy and photography and took great interest in the development of the X-rays which at that time was in its earliest stage. By studying all these subjects of physical and technical science he tried to find out to what extent they could assist the investigation of crime. Thus, Hans Gross founded the "Criminalistics" as a special police science.” In 1893, Hans Gross wrote his ground-breaking book the Handbuch für Untersuchungsrichter als System der Kriminalistik or Handbook for Investigating Judges as a System of Criminalistics. Although the book did not dispute the historical significance of “rounding up the usual suspects,” especially if they were gypsies, it did introduce the need for research, and for special attention to be paid to the scene of the crime, including an inspection of the area for trace evidence such as hairs, fibers, blood, and other bodily fluids. The book was translated into English in 1903, and Hans Gross earned the title of the Father of Criminal Investigations or the Father of Criminalistics. Hans Gross established the Institute of Criminology of Graz in 1898 where he taught criminal law and criminalistics until his death in 1915. He was also a professor at Chernivsti University (now in Western Ukraine) from 1897 to 1902, Prague University (now in the Czech Republic) from 1902 to 1905, and the University of Graz from 1905 to 1915.
Your author recommends Roland Grassberger’s paper on Hans Gross and a visit to the website of the Hans Gross Museum in Graz, Austria.