Punctually at 8:00 A.M. on 26 November 1895, teams of police officers in Berlin began to search the homes of nearly eighty members of the Social Democratic Party, and the city offices of their organizations. These surprise raids, over by 10:00 a.m., were ordered by the Prussian Minister of Interior, Ernst Köller, to obtain evidence that the Socialist organizations had been working with one another to promote their political goals. In 1895 it was illegal in Prussia, and in most of the other states of the German Empire, for political associations of any kind to work together. Yet the evidence so efficiently confiscated on that gray November morning ultimately put not only the Socialists on trial, but government policy and the fundamental political rights of German citizens as well. Neither the national constitution nor the federal law codes provided protection for the rights of association or assembly at that time. In the absence of such guarantees, the political organizations had to cope with the particularities of the various state laws.