quency, although a replacement one could be requested from Abwehr
control in the event of poor or nonexistent reception. Agents received
basic training in the construction of Afus and were instructed to keep
their messages short—usually 50 to 100 letters—through the use of
operational abbreviations. Individual three-letter identification codes
were changed on a regular basis.AGENTENZENTRALE. A common designation used by the German
Democratic Republic, Agentenzentrale (agents’ head office) referred
to anticommunist organizations composed of presumed enemy
agents (the word Agentur was also employed at times). Whether
actual intelligence personnel were involved seemed beside the point.
During the 1950s, some of the primary targets included the Unter-
suchungsausschuss Freiheitlicher Juristen, Kampfgruppe gegen
Unmenschlichkeit, and the Ostbüro der SPD. Members of the latter
group were often called Schumacheragenten, after Kurt Schumacher,
the first chair of the postwar Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutsch-
lands. The Ministerium für Staatssicherheit was further convinced
that the penetration of one organization necessarily led to the penetra-
tion of another. Later the term Feindobjekt (enemy object) gained
more widespread usage. See also KUNDSCHAFTER.
ALBERT, HEINRICH FRIEDRICH (1874–1960). A lawyer who
served as a spy in the United States during World War I, Heinrich
Friedrich Albert was born in Magdeburg on 12 February 1874. Ap-
pointed commercial attaché and financial advisor to Ambassador
Johann Heinrich Count von Bernstorff in 1914, he also established
contact with Franz von Papen and Karl Boy-Ed, the leaders of a
spy ring engaged in various sabotage efforts in the country, and func-
tioned as their paymaster. When Albert carelessly left his briefcase in
a New York streetcar on 24 July 1915, it was seized by a member of
the Secret Service, thereby giving U.S. authorities a comprehensive
picture of the well-financed German operations, especially the bogus
Bridgeport Projectile Company. To avoid an open admission of its
violation of diplomatic protocol, the government arranged to have
the documents published in the New York World without attribution.
Albert nevertheless weathered the negative publicity (“the minister
without portfolio”) and—unlike Papen and Boy-Ed—left only after
ALBERT, HEINRICH FRIEDRICH • 7