Germany's most spectacular espionage cases

On April 18, German police arrested two German-Russian nationals who are alleged to have targeted military sites and railroad lines in Germany.

The Federal Public Prosecutor General has accused them of spying on behalf of Russian secret services. One of the two men arrested in Bavaria allegedly also planned to sabotage German infrastructure with explosives.

"The actions were intended in particular to undermine the military support provided from Germany to Ukraine against the Russian war of aggression," the Federal Public Prosecutor General wrote in a press release. They are said to have spied not only upon German facilities but also those of the US military in Germany.

The main suspect is also accused of membership of a foreign terrorist organization. He is said to have joined an armed unit of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic in eastern Ukraine in the past.

If convicted, the men face prison sentences of up to 10 years.

This is not the first case of suspected espionage by Russia.

Carsten L.

Carsten L.* went on trial in December 2023. 

He was responsible for "personnel security" as head of division at Germany's international secret service (BND), but stands accused of being a security risk himself.

The former Bundeswehr officer now stands accused of having worked as a double agent for the FSB, Russia's secret service. L. is said to have passed on secret documents to the businessman Arthur E., who then handed them over to the FSB. L. is said to have been paid €450,000 ($484,000) and E. at least €400,000 for the documents. Prosecutors now suggest the betrayal of secrets could have enabled the Russian FSB to draw conclusions on Germany's espionage methods.

Carsten L. and his accomplice Arthur E. are now on trial in Berlin. They face a life sentence if they are convicted of particularly serious treason. 

The Russian war against Ukraine "also means a turning point for internal security," German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in June 2023, warning of a new wave of disinformation campaigns, cyberattacks and espionage by foreign intelligence services.

Thomas H.

Thomas H. was arrested on August 9, 2023 in the western city of Koblenz when the federal prosecutor's office accused the Bundeswehr officer of having betrayed information about military details to Russian intelligence.

The Berlin daily Tagesspiegel reported that Thomas H. had already come to the attention of his colleagues because of his sympathy for the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD). Some parts of the party are considered far-right extremists and very critical of the NATO alliance's attempts to help Ukraine against Russian aggression.

Mr. and Mrs. Anschlag

But spies in Germany have been reporting to Moscow since before Russia launched its war of aggression on Ukraine. Beginning sometime in the 1980s, two Russian agents led a middle-class life under the names of Andreas and Heidrun Anschlag, he posing as an engineer, she as a housewife.

They spied on NATO and the European Union, first for the Soviet Union and then for the Russian secret service. They received their orders via encrypted radio messages on shortwave at a time when espionage was not yet a predominantly digital business. Their cover wasn't blown until 2011 — probably thanks to a tipoff from US intelligence services. In 2013, they were sentenced to several years in prison and eventually deported to Russia.

Gabriele Gast

The communist German Democratic Republic (GDR) referred to their agents as "scouts of peace." An estimated 12,000 of them are believed to have been deployed by the East German secret service, the Staatssicherheitsdienst or Stasi, to West Germany during the Cold War.

Among them was Gabriele Gast, a West German recruited by a Stasi officer in 1968 while on a research trip to East Germany for her dissertation entitled: "The Political Role of Women in the GDR."

From then on, Gast reported to the intelligence service in East Germany — while also making a career for herself at the Western intelligence service BND under a false name. She was only exposed after the collapse of the GDR in 1989, shortly before the reunification of Germany. She is still considered to have been one of the GDR's top spies in the West.

Alfred Spuhler

Alfred Spuhler may have been a similarly good source for the Stasi. As a high-ranking BND official, he unmasked hundreds of Western agents working in the GDR. He was arrested in November 1989.

Heinz Felfe

Heinz Felfe, the longtime head of the BND's "Counterintelligence Soviet Union" unit, was also a double agent. He was a member of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's police unit, Schutzstaffel (SS), then reported to the KGB in Moscow until 1961.

Over the years, Felfe is believed to have worked for seven different intelligence services, including the British MI6.

Günter Guillaume

Probably the most sensational espionage case from the Cold War period in Germany is that of Günter Guillaume.

Posing as refugees from East Germany, he and his wife Christel came to West Germany in 1956. Their mission was to provide the Stasi with internal information about the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). Guillaume worked his way up, eventually becoming personal adviser to Chancellor Willy Brandt when the SPD came to power.

When Guillaume's cover was blown, Brandt was forced to resign as chancellor on May 6, 1974. Guillaume was sentenced to 13 years in prison and his wife to eight years. Both were released in 1981 in exchange for West German agents.

Elli Barczatis and Karl Laurenz

A vast number of Stasi spies were exposed after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not much is known about Western agents in the GDR, with the notable exception of Elli Barczatis and Karl Laurenz, who smuggled GDR documents to the West at the beginning of the Cold War in the early 1950s.

Barczatis worked as chief secretary to GDR Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl. She obtained rather banal government papers that she passed to her lover Karl Laurenz, who handed them over to West German authorities. When this was discovered, both Barczatis and Laurenz were sentenced to death in East Germany and executed by guillotine in 1955.

This article was originally written in German. It was first published in August 2023 and later updated.

*Editor's note: DW follows the German press code, which stresses the importance of protecting the privacy of suspected criminals or victims and urges us to refrain from revealing full names in such cases.

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