Capital of Spies by Sven Felix Kellerhoff

Author:Sven Felix Kellerhoff
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781636240015
Publisher: Casemate
Published: 2021-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Until 1979, this was the only known photograph of Markus Wolf. He is shown attending a military parade, and he had by that time already manoeuvred himself to the top of the foreign intelligence service of the SED.

The HVA invested a lot of energy into infiltrating the Bundestag. Although the Bundestag resisted an investigation for a long time, it eventually commissioned one in 2010. However, it was limited to members of parliament and therefore excluded the members of staff who would have been of far greater interest to an intelligence service like the Stasi. Even so, the Bundestag was clearly a major focus of espionage activity. There was at least one occasion on which the Stasi directly influenced West German politics. Specifically, it prevented the overthrow of SPD leader and chancellor Willy Brandt, who, by April 1972, had lost his already narrow majority in the Bundestag in the wake of his controversial efforts at rapprochement with East Germany and the Eastern Bloc. CDU leader Rainer Barzel was hoping to be elected as his successor in a constructive vote of no confidence that took place on 27 April 1972. At 1:22pm, Kai-Uwe von Hassel, the president of the Bundestag, announced the results of the secret ballot. Since the coalition factions of the SPD and FDP (Free Democratic Party) abstained almost unanimously, only 260 valid votes were cast. Barzel needed 249 votes to become chancellor, and he believed he could reach that number after so many former SPD and FDP parliamentarians had crossed the floor to join the CDU/CSU (the political alliance between the Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union). However, he only received 247 votes, two short of what was required. The defeated Barzel went to the government bench and congratulated Brandt. It is noteworthy, though, that the Stasi had a hand in this vote. Two CDU/CSU members were bribed with money from East Berlin to abstain, which was in effect the same as voting against their leader. CDU politician Julius Steiner from Baden-Württemberg admitted as early as 1973 that he had sold his vote for 50,000 West German marks. This was confirmed after 1990 by former Stasi officers and contemporary Stasi documents. The second parliamentarian who sold his vote was most likely CSU politician Leo Wagner. Even though he vehemently denied this until his death, the surviving documents of the HVA indicate he had indeed been bribed. He had been experiencing financial difficulties and had been approached by a Western journalist close to the CSU who went by the name of Georg F. and who had been working for East Berlin since 1966 under the code name ‘Dürer.’ It later came to light that Wagner had received 50,000 West German marks from an unknown source shortly after the vote in the Bundestag. A fellow CSU politician claimed that he had lent Wagner this sum, but this was not convincing.37 By manipulating the constructive vote of no confidence, the Stasi saved Brandt’s chancellorship.

Yet conducting espionage in the West cost a lot of money.

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