Interview with Patrick Kurtz, Owner of Kurtz Detective Agency Rostock, for ze.tt, the Youth Magazine of Die Zeit

A Casual Take on the Detective Profession

Patrick Kurtz, owner of Kurtz Detective Agency Rostock and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, spoke with Claudia Wiggenbröker from ze.tt. The result is a lighthearted article about the detective profession, partly meant with a wink:

Surveillance, Tail, Arrest? How a Private Investigator Really Works

An old factory on the city outskirts. Two shadows creep through the night, a briefcase changes hands. Suddenly a third figure emerges from the darkness. “Enough games,” says the private investigator, weapon drawn – do scenes like this from TV detective shows actually happen in real life? Not at all, explains Patrick Kurtz, and he should know, as he is a real private investigator.

Active apprehension of suspects does not reflect reality. Instead of catching criminals themselves, Patrick and his colleagues operate in the background: “We are passive observers. Detectives do not influence events; we document everything for court. We do not want to be noticed,” he explains. What happens in shows like Privatdetektive im Einsatz is nonsense.

Detectives Are Lone Wolves

Patrick mostly investigates misdemeanours rather than serious crimes. Most cases revolve around fraud. “For example, companies hire us if an employee frequently calls in sick. We then find out if they are working elsewhere or on holiday instead of being ill at home.” Most disputes rarely reach court: “Criminal prosecution only occurs in a small number of cases. If there is a dispute, it’s usually before an employment tribunal rather than a criminal court.” Most parties can settle without a judge.

 

Another myth about private investigators is true: “The one-man detective agencies you see in films are mostly accurate,” Patrick says. “Agencies with many full-time employees are rare.” Patrick is an exception: he founded his own agency, operating throughout Germany and Switzerland, with five permanent staff and over 40 freelance investigators handling assignments he assigns.

“You Can’t Rush into Traffic”

In conversation Patrick often uses terms like observation and target person. These are the two concepts that primarily shape a detective’s daily routine. “The majority of our work consists of observations,” he says. They are, however, less exciting than films would have us believe: “It can happen that you stare at a door for 17 hours and nobody comes out.” Patience is therefore an essential quality for a detective.

 

Observations are not always dull, though. This is the aspect of the job Patrick loves most: tailing the target when it becomes difficult. That does not mean detectives roar through the city with screeching tyres and guns drawn. “It does not work like Til Schweiger in Tatort, who shoots about. But it is fun when the target moves a lot and you have to be intensely focused to be able to follow them.” Til Schweiger is often mentioned in this context.

 

Nevertheless it does not always work out: “You can lose sight of the target. For example, if they go through a traffic light that is already red. If oncoming traffic is already present, you cannot continue driving,” Patrick explains. Many clients have little understanding for this. “They think the work was done badly. But you cannot rush into live traffic.”

Debtors Are a Nightmare

Patrick’s clients include both companies and private individuals. Cases are often as classic as you might imagine: a jealous spouse hires detectives to follow the other half. These commissions are often easier to tackle: “The supposedly cheated wife usually has lots of information about her husband. She can give us names, addresses, vehicle registrations. That enables us to plan when and where an observation would be sensible.”

 

More difficult are cases of missing debtors: “When people lend money and the debtor disappears without trace, there is usually very little reliable information about them. And what there is is often falsified,” Patrick says. “It is primarily research: who is this person really and where are they staying?”

Proving Cheating Partners? €350, please

How expensive it will be for Patrick’s clients is usually unpredictable. “It can happen that we observe an alleged adulterer and within two hours he goes to a brothel. Then the matter is done.” In the ideal case, the betrayed partner can obtain proof of infidelity for €350. “But it can also be necessary to observe someone for days or weeks without anything relevant occurring.”

 

There are, however, empirical values, explains the detective. Investigations can become very costly for maintenance matters, for example: if someone receives maintenance after divorce, the entitlement lasts only while they are genuinely single. “People therefore often conceal a new relationship and make it into a real hide-and-seek: they rent two flats even though they live together, park kilometres away so no one sees the car, disguise themselves.”

 

Detectives must then invest a lot of time to prove that the relationship is indeed a partnership and not merely an affair. “That usually costs about €5,000,” Patrick states. Clients who find that too expensive can set a maximum budget for their assignment that the detectives must not exceed.

Not Only Sherlock Smokes

Thinking of the famous Sherlock Holmes, another detective stereotype applies to Patrick: he also smokes a pipe. His love of crime novels predates his profession. He did not come to the job through fiction, however, but via an advertisement seeking interns for detective training. At the time he needed a new direction: “After my bachelor’s degree I enrolled on a course I could not start immediately because the application deadlines were inconvenient. So I had to bridge a year.”

 

He scraped together his last money, travelled to Berlin to take a detective course and became self-employed — planning to resume his studies later. But the workload grew and nowadays Patrick rarely has time to run observations himself. Instead, the founder concentrates on developing his company.

The Original Article from ze.tt can be hound here.

 

Kurtz Detective Agency Rostock and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern

Grubenstraße 20

D-18055 Rostock

Tel.: +49 381 3739 0080

Fax: +49 381 3739 0089

E-Mail: kontakt@kurtz-detektei-rostock.de

Web: https://www.kurtz-detektei-rostock.de/en

Google: https://g.page/kurtz-detektei-rostock