God's Spies , livre ebook

Elisabeth Braw has impressively traced the lives of those sisters and brothers in the GDR who acted not just in the name of God, but also in the interest of the East German secret police, the Stasi. Braw brings things to light that astonish even the most hard-boiled of experts.
HELMUT M LLER-ENBERGS , Professor of History, University of Southern Denmark
Elisabeth Braw has rendered a service - she thinks like a scholar, writes like a journalist, and tells a story like a novelist. Her work is relevant for anyone interested in Germany, communism, freedom and unfreedom , and how we complex and contradictory human beings tick.
JEFFREY GEDMIN, editor -in-chief, The American Interest and former president, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
It is a testament to the power of religion that the East German Communist government expended so much energy monitoring thousands upon thousands of East German (mostly Lutheran) Christians, infiltrating the highest levels of the church. God s Spies reads like a spy thriller because that is what it is - except that it is not fiction. It is as sad as it is inspiring. This account is as instructive to post-Communist society as a warning against state-sponsored compromise to religious liberty as it is to faith communities to protect their independence and their commitment to the gospel.
FR. ROBERT A. SIRICO, President , The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty (USA)

For Lars Braw (1920-2019)
Text copyright 2019 Elisabeth Braw
This edition copyright 2019 Lion Hudson IP Limited
The right of Elisabeth Braw to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by
Lion Hudson Limited
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Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 8DR, England
www.lionhudson.com
Paperback ISBN 978 0 7459 8008 9
Hardback ISBN 978 07459 8010 2
e-ISBN 9780 7459 8009 6
First edition 2019
Acknowledgments
Much of the quoted material in this book comes from interviews conducted by the author. Those interviewed include: Michael Beintker, the late Ingmar Brohed, Erwin Damson, Christoph Demke, Rainer Eppelmann, Gerhard Gabriel, Christoph K hler, J rgen Kapiske, Wolf Kr tke, Helmut Matthies, Konrad Raiser, Richard Schr der, Curt Stauss, Friedemann Stengel, and Joachim Wiegand.
Many other quotes come from Stasi files which are held by Der Bundesbeauftragte f r die Stasi-Unterlagen (the Federal Commissioner for the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic). The BStU website (https://www.bstu.de/en/) states: The Federal Commissioner (BStU) supports research and media (press, radio and film). It also supports civic education agencies in their political and historical reappraisal of the activities of the State Security Service, the power mechanisms in both the former GDR and Soviet zone of occupation and National Socialist past. Following a request by the author, the Agency released the files of several Stasi informants for the purpose of this book.
Every effort has been made to contact the copyright owners of quoted text. If notified, the publisher will rectify any errors or omissions at the earliest opportunity.
Cover image Racide/istockphoto.com and Becca Lavin/Unsplash
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
CONTENTS
Preface
Introduction
Prologue
Dramatis personae
1 Establishing the Stasi
2 Pastor agents
3 A growing threat: seminaries
4 The fine art of recruiting
5 East Germans, escaping
6 Agents vanities
7 Cunning infiltration
8 An exotic foreign assignment
9 Target: international organizations
10 Intercepting Bible smugglers
11 A literary underground railroad
12 Agents and their rewards
13 Spying and doing one s part for East Germany
14 An indispensable Bible smuggler (and Stasi spy)
15 Losing motivation
16 A crucial foreign mission
17 Churches spreading opposition
18 East Germany on its knees
19 The Berlin Wall collapses
20 Destroying the evidence
21 Anxiously waiting pastor spies
22 God s spies: what was the point?
Index
PREFACE
G rowing up in a small village in southern Sweden, the son of a shoemaker and a schoolteacher, young Lars Braw couldn t wait to get out and see the world. Before he was old enough to do so, he paid a daily visit to the grocery store, where he read the front pages of the newspapers. It was an exciting world there, far away from his little village, and as soon as he was old enough to leave home, he embarked on a career in journalism that would eventually take him to five continents - to interviews with Mother Teresa, Robert Mugabe, and Haile Selassie, the then-emperor of Ethiopia. Around the time of those interviews, I was born, Lars s first grandchild.
When I was growing up, Grandpa tried to make sure that I, too, developed an interest in world events. During my frequent visits with my grandparents, Grandpa always instructed me to join him in listening to the BBC World Service on his short-wave radio. I hated it because my English wasn t good enough.
Together with my grandmother Kaj, herself a journalist, Grandpa also set out to show me the world. First, they took me to Hamburg and L beck, which left me indifferent. Then came West and East Berlin, reached by means of an East German train. I was captivated - by the Eastern side. What a strange country, I thought, what with all its guards, its grey cityscapes, its all-permeating smell of coal. So geographically close to my home country of Sweden, separated only by the tiny Baltic Sea, yet completely different.
On 9 November 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. Less than a year later, the two Germanies were reunited. Meanwhile, brave citizens in other countries behind the Iron Curtain were staging their own velvet revolutions. The Soviet empire, imposed after World War II, crumbled. East Germany, the German Democratic Republic, had lasted for only forty years - a tiny interlude in world history.
But thirty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germany continues to fascinate. There have been academic books, novels, non-fiction books, songs, and conferences. Steven Spielberg has made a movie. East Germany s pedestrian crossing signal, the Ampelm nnchen , is now Berlin s de facto mascot.
The Stasi - the Ministry for State Security - has been the subject of much of that attention; to many, the all-pervasive, all-knowing security police has even become synonymous with East Germany. Surprisingly, however, one of its cleverest and most successful activities has received little attention outside Germany. That activity is the Stasi s church espionage. Karl Marx vs Jesus Christ, you might call it.
For the final eleven years of the Stasi s existence, Joachim Wiegand led its church department. To this day, he remains a committed socialist. Without knowing him, most people would probably think him despicable for having spent a career in the Stasi, most of it spying on Christians.
Without Joachim Wiegand, this book would not have been written. He and I represent completely different world views and, of course, backgrounds. He has never before given an interview for a book. But I was lucky: Wiegand decided to speak to me. Not once, not twice, but several times. We spent countless hours discussing what many would call his and his staff s dirty deeds. Most of the Stasi s top officers are dead, and virtually all of the survivors have, like Wiegand, refused to speak publicly or write down their memories. Despite being so fascinated by the Stasi, the world knows very little of how the Stasi s officers operated, how they thought, what motivated them. Historians can, of course, read Stasi files and speak to victims - but without the Stasi officers insights, a crucial piece is missing. I owe Joachim Wiegand immense gratitude for having decided to speak with me.
J rgen Kapiske likewise had no obligation to speak to me. Like all other Stasi pastor spies, he has been uniformly vilified. Like a small number of other former pastor spies, he has also been defrocked. Speaking with me, as he did over many hours, in no way helps him. On the contrary, it opens wounds that have barely begun to heal. Whatever one thinks of Kapiske s actions, I owe him gratitude.
Wolf Kr tke was one of the Stasi Church Department s victims. Despite wanting nothing to do with the Stasi, he has had to live with its shadows all his life - simply as a result of being a committed Christian and pastor. Kr tke could be forgiven for not wanting to waste any more time on the Stasi. Instead, he has helped me with this book every step of the way, telling me about his own experiences, connecting me with others, explaining how East German churches operated. Pastor Curt Stauss, too, generously shared his time and contacts with me and helped me understand who was who in the world of East German Christianity.
Nevin Brown, Jeffrey Smith, Sebastian Braw-Smith, and Heidi Schubert-Erkrath read the manuscript at various stages of completion. Professor Helmut M ller-Enbergs at the University of Southern Denmark, a leading authority on the Stasi, read the final draft - as did Revd Dr Rune Imberg, a Swedish theologian. R diger Sielaff at the office of the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records was an early interlocutor and went to great lengths to assist me in understanding Stasi records. Friederich Rother, also at the Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic, responded to my seemingly never-ending file requests with great patience. Carola Schreckenberger and Andreas Kaufmann put me up on my many visits to Berlin wit