Richard Gerken

Richard Gerken (1900 – after 1963) was the head of the counter-espionage department at the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and a secret service writer from 1957 to 1964 .

The NSDAP member (since 1933) Gerken worked in the espionage apparatus of the Nazi dictatorship . As a captain in the military defense under Wilhelm Canaris . In Munster (Westphalia) he headed the Front Reconnaissance Command 213, responsible for sabotage and disintegration abroad, including actions in Italy and Morocco . In the occupied Netherlands he was involved in the persecution of resistance fighters . At the turn of the year 1944/45 he moved as SS-Hauptsturmführer in Amt IV (research and fight against opponents / Gestapo ) ofReich Security Main Office (RSHA), Department IV A 1, under Heinrich Müller . Gerken was an expert on the Soviet Union . In May 1945 he was taken prisoner by the British and made his knowledge available.

Since 1949 he worked again for the secret service : first at a still unofficial information office of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in Düsseldorf. There he was dismissed by the director, Fritz Tejessy , for concealing his membership in the NSDAP . He moved to the Lower Saxony Ministry of the Interior in Hanover and in 1952 became head of department at the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, first for procurement until 1957, then for counter-espionage. He retired there in 1964 as a senior government director . He had six-figure amounts for special purposes through the "Title Group 300" administered by him and controlled only by the President of the Federal Audit Office. The hiring of incriminated employees took place through front companies and associations. His system of "freelancers", some of which he won from old SS circles, was tolerated by Presidents Otto John and Hubert Schrübbers and promoted by Vice President Albert Radke because it led to considerable success in counter-espionage. During a 1963 scandal, the public took notice of the re-employment of these perpetrators, but it was not until 1967 that they were all removed from service.

Fonts

• Spies Among Us - Methods and Practices of the Red Secret Services according to official sources , Auer Donauwörth 1965
• Spy in Bonn. The case of Frenzel and others , Auer, Donauwörth 1964

literature

• Constantin Goschler , Michael Wala: “No new Gestapo”. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Nazi past . Rowohlt, Reinbek 2015 ISBN 978-3498024383