If anyone could judge, it was Hans-Georg Maaßen. ”Berlin is the European capital of spies“, said in 2013 the then head of the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, responsible for countering espionage in the Federal Republic of Germany. Maaßen was not talking about the past, about the time of German division, when the hottest front in the Cold War ran right through Berlin, but about the present, about the 21st century.
Every Berlin tourist knows where the spy quarters are in the government district, because bronze plaques hang next to their portals. At least six embassies in the city centre most likely serve as listening posts: the US mission and the British and French embassies on Pariser Platz, the late Stalinist palace of Russia on Unter den Linden, the prefabricated building of the North Korean mission on Wilhelmplatz and China’s diplomatic location on the Jannowitzbrücke. On the roofs of all these buildings, Google Earth shows mysterious objects: interception antennas.
At the same time, probably no country is as naive as the Federal Republic. In the German and international intelligence establishment, a statement by long-time Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2013 initially caused astonishment, then laughter and finally pity: ”Spying among friends is not acceptable“, the head of government had announced after the alleged revelations about the NSA’s surveillance activities. Yet everyone who is even remotely familiar with the subject knows that every intelligence service tries to eavesdrop on everything it can – at least every service except the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), which is either completely prohibited from doing so or faces such high legal hurdles that it is of little practical significance.
Today, Berlin is the capital of espionage due to a misguided sense of restraint, even though there are hardly any targets for industrial espionage here – simply because the German metropolis has virtually no relevant economy. Instead, there is all the more politics, administration, associations, law firms and consulting companies. Berlin is also a city where representatives of right-wing and left-wing opposition parties visit a headquarter of enemy intelligence services such as the Russian embassy, and where parliamentary staff members spy for China.
This thoroughly depressing state of affairs invites comparison with the Cold War. In the decades between the end of the Second World War and the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989/90, Berlin was synonymous with espionage: Nowhere did the two blocs clash more directly than at the inner-city border. Until the Wall was erected, this was the ”invisible front“ in a very dirty secret conflict, which included not only clandestine propaganda battles but also a whole host of secret operations. In the 1950s, this more or less secret struggle was part of everyday life in both East and West Berlin. The autobiography of British double agent George Blake provides a somewhat exaggerated picture of the intelligence situation at that time: ”One got the impression that at least every second adult Berliner worked for some espionage organisation, many of them for several at the same time.“
This remained the case even after the 13 August 1961. Although living conditions in the former German capital had changed, and with them the conditions under which agents attempted to monitor, infiltrate or otherwise harm the other side, the formerly ”invisible front“ was now impossible to overlook. But fundamentally, nothing had changed: Berlin was and remained the capital of spies. From the eastern part of the divided city, the GDR’s Stasi launched one attack after another on its more successful German rivals in the Federal Republic and West Berlin. The police there were systematically infiltrated, and regional politics were at least co-directed by agents of influence. Conversely, Americans and British eavesdropped far into the Eastern Bloc from the legendary Teufelsberg and the (much less well-known) USAF station on the ”Amiberg“ in Marienfelde, recording radio and radar signals to gain advantages for the constantly looming military conflict. In one respect, both sides were similar in this constant confrontation: whenever international interests were affected, the German participants in this risky game had no say whatsoever – both in the dictatorially ruled Soviet bloc and in the democratic West.
This decades-long power struggle ended with the reunification of Germany in 1990, but only temporarily. For Russia’s shift against the West, and thus against peaceful coexistence in the world, which began in 1998, led within a few years to a new Cold War, which has become heated since the attack on Ukraine in 2022 at the latest.
Unlike a few decades ago, however, awareness of the dangers has virtually disappeared, at least in many German minds, right up to the highest levels of government. There is no other explanation for the distorted reaction of at least significant sections of the political establishment to intelligence activities: The completely normal (and in most cases even legal) gathering of information by Western, mostly American diplomats was blown up into a scandal dubbed ‘Cablegate’ in 2010, while actual attacks by a foreign power, for example on Germany’s strategically essential energy security, were considered part of a ”Energiewende“. In such a mindset, even a former chancellor was ultimately able to openly act as an agent of influence for the Kremlin.
Sven Felix Kellerhoff
Senior Editor for Contemporary History
DIE WELT
Germany
kellerhoff@welt.de
Back to Table of Contents