The real-life cloak-and-dagger story of how East Germany's notorious
spy agency infiltrated churches here and abroad
East Germany only existed for a short forty years, but in that time, the
country's secret police, the Stasi, developed a highly successful
"church department" that--using persuasion rather than threats--managed
to recruit an extraordinary stable of clergy spies. Pastors, professors,
seminary students, and even bishops spied on colleagues, other
Christians, and anyone else they could report about to their handlers in
the Stasi.
Thanks to its pastor spies, the Church Department (official name:
Department XX/4) knew exactly what was happening and being planned in
the country's predominantly Lutheran churches. Yet ultimately it failed
in its mission: despite knowing virtually everything about East German
Christians, the Stasi couldn't prevent the church-led protests that
erupted in 1989 and brought down the Berlin Wall.