Shocking New Research: Stasi Had Thousands of Spies in West Germany
New research has revealed that the notorious East German secret police, the Stasi, had a network of spies in West Germany that was much bigger than previously known. Thousands of people worked as informers and spied on their colleagues and friends — including a priest who filed reports on a young Joseph Ratzinger.
Josef Frindt took his secret to the grave. When he passed away at the age of 81, the pastor in the western German town of Dorsten left a congregation mourning a pious man of God. But what the congregation didn’t know was that their pastor had also worked for East Germany’s notorious secret police, the Stasi.
Under the code name “Erich Neu,” the pastor is believed to have submitted 95 informant’s reports, including ones on a colleague who even at the time showed a great deal of potential: Joseph Ratzinger, better known today as Pope Benedict XVI. Frindt, who studied and later taught in the city of Münster, delivered information on up-and-coming theologians and future church dignitaries there, including the future pope, who was working at the time as a professor.
Two years after Frindt’s death, research carried out by the Berlin-based agency of the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Files has brought to light Frindt’s alleged activities as an agent of communist East Germany. The revelations have shocked members of his Sacred Heart congregation in Dorsten. “Many found it impossible to imagine this,” says one church leader. “Now they’re looking for reasons why he might have done it.”