In Vienna, quite a different set of priorities dominated after 1815.
The Austrian chancellor, Klemens von Metternich, realized that newly
unleashed forces of nationalism posed a dire threat to the existence of the
multiethnic Habsburg Empire. As a means of monitoring suspected sub-
version—and building on the work of forerunners such as Johann Anton
Pergen, the founder of Austria’s first secret police force—Metternich
established the Mainzer Informationsbüro (Mainz Information Office),
which ran a far-flung network of informers unrivaled in Europe at the
time. Austria could also claim expertise in the realm of cryptography,
having earlier formed the Geheime Kabinets-Kanzlei (Secret Cabinet
Office), one of the most renowned black chambers of the 18th century.
Yet the institutionalization of intelligence in Germany took place in
a rather haphazard manner without any firm guiding hand. One might
have expected Otto von Bismarck, the wily iron chancellor who brought
about the country’s unification, to have played a more decisive role
in this regard. Granted, he engaged Wilhelm Stieber just prior to the
Austro-Prussian conflict in 1866 and helped him acquire the title of
Germany’s first spymaster. But Bismarck relied on many other sources
of information—especially his own foreign envoys—and assigned to
Stieber primarily those tasks that lay outside the world of bourgeois
respectability, such as spying on political opponents and reading other
people’s mail. Even though Stieber was the recipient of several state
awards, his reputation among the general public remained an unsavory
one, and his intelligence bureau vanished with his departure from gov-
ernment service. Bismarck, who tried to avoid personal meetings with
his spy chief whenever possible, mentioned him only fleetingly in his
memoirs.
The situation was further complicated by the desire of the Prussian
General Staff to be independent of Stieber and possess its own infor-
mation-gathering unit. At the prompting of Field Marshal Helmuth von
Moltke, the first military secret service in German history came into
existence in 1867 and steadily expanded its operations during the next
decades, especially in France and Russia. Major resistance, however,
came from the Foreign Office. Already displeased with the installation
of the military attachés in its embassies and possessing its own off-the-
record contacts, diplomatic officials saw a further intrusion on their turf.
These unresolved tensions were merely a portent of what was to follow
in the 20th century.
INTRODUCTION • xxvii