This Day in History

Not often that you see your last name in a Day in History (from The Free Dictionary)... ;)

The Spiegel scandal of 1962 (German: Spiegel-Affäre) was one of the major political scandals in Germany in the era following World War II.

Essentially, the scandal boiled down to a conflict between Franz Josef Strauß, then Federal Minister of Defense, and Rudolf Augstein, owner and editor-in-chief of Der Spiegel magazine, Germany's leading weekly political magazine. The affair would cost Strauß his office and put the young German democracy to its first major test.

The two had clashed already a year earlier, when, in 1961, Spiegel raised accusations of bribery in favor of the FIBAG construction company, which had received a contract for building military facilities. However, a parliamentary enquiry then found no evidence against Strauß.

Der Spiegel No. 41/1962, which triggered the scandal

The quarrel then escalated when Der Spiegel, in its October 8, 1962 issue, published an article called "Bedingt abwehrbereit" ("partly prepared for defense"), about a NATO manoeuver called "Fallex 62". The piece uncovered the sorry state of the Bundeswehr (Germany's army) facing the communist threat from the east. At that time, the army had been given the grade "prepared for defense to only a limited extent", the lowest possible NATO-grade.

The magazine was accused of treason. At 9 p.m. on October 26, 1962, the magazine's offices in Hamburg were seized and (together with the houses of several journalists) searched by 36 policemen, and thousands of documents were confiscated. The offices would remain shut down for weeks. Augstein and the then-editors-in-chief Claus Jacobi and Johannes Engel were arrested. The author of the article, Conrad Ahlers, who was vacationing in Spain, was seized in his hotel during the night. Augstein would be jailed for 103 days.

Bundeskanzler (Federal Chancellor) Konrad Adenauer was informed of Strauß's actions. However, the Minister of Justice, belonging to the smaller coalition party FDP, was deliberately left out of all decisions. The injustice of the arrest caused riots and protest throughout Germany. Strauß initially denied all involvement, even before the Bundestag: Adenauer, in another speech, famously complained about an "abyss of treason" ("Abgrund von Landesverrat").

Strauß was finally forced to admit that he had phoned the German military attaché in Madrid and urged him to arrest Ahlers. This was clearly illegal — as Minister of the Interior Hermann Höcherl famously paraphrased, "etwas außerhalb der Legalität" ("somewhat outside of legality"). Since Strauß had lied to the parliament, on November 19, the five FDP ministers of the cabinet resigned, demanding that Strauß and Volkmar Hopf be fired. This put Adenauer himself at risk. He found himself publicly accused of backing the suppression of a critical press with the resources of the state.

On November 26, the police ended its occupation of the Spiegel offices, while Augstein, Ahlers and three others remained under arrest — Augstein until February 7, 1963. In December 1962 Adenauer formed a new cabinet without Strauß.

On May 13, 1965 the Bundesgerichtshof (highest German court of appeals) refused to open trial against Augstein and Ahlers, ruling that during the affair Strauß had violated the boundaries and committed Freiheitsberaubung (deprivation of personal freedom); however, because of his belief of acting lawfully (Verbotsirrtum), he was exempt from punishment. The case also came before the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, which issued a groundbreaking ruling that laid down the basics of the freedom of the press for decades to come.

The scandal temporarily halted Strauß's political career and was remembered by many when Strauß ran for Bundeskanzler in 1980, clearly losing against his SPD opponent (and incumbent) Helmut Schmidt. However, it is mostly remembered for altering the political culture of post-war Germany and — with the first mass demonstrations and public protests — being a turning point from the old Obrigkeitsstaat (authoritarian state) to a modern democracy.