BROCKEN. The site of a former major signals intelligence installation
of the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS), the Brocken is the
highest peak in the Harz Mountains as well as northern Germany.
A staple of legends and folklore—the most German of all moun-
tains according to 19th-century writer Heinrich Heine—it achieved
modern significance with its early weather station and the world’s
first television tower in 1937. Although the Brocken was captured
by American forces at the end of World War II, the Soviet military
government gained possession in late April 1947 and erected its own
listening post (code name jenissej). Because of its proximity to the
border of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), the area became
a restricted military zone with the construction of the Berlin Wall in
August 1961.
Five years later, the creation of Main Department III devoted to
signals intelligence and directed by Horst Männchen led to the
installation of an MfS listening post on the Brocken (code name
urian) with a staff of several dozen technicians. Their chief priority
was monitoring the intelligence and defense agencies of the FRG as
well as military-related industrial concerns. The bizarre form of the
main building constructed in 1986 gave rise to the popular designa-
tion “Stasi Mosque.” In early December 1989, eager groups of East
German protesters were drawn to the Brocken and demanded the
reopening of the summit to the public. See also STÖBERHAI.
BRUNNER, ALOIS (1912–?). A notorious SS protégé of Adolf
Eichmann who was later engaged by several intelligence or-
ganizations, Alois Brunner was born in Nadkut, Hungary (now
Rohrbrunn, Austria), the son of a peasant family. Joining the
Nazi Party in 1931, he became a member of the Sicherheitsdienst
(SD; Security Service) eight years later and was Eichmann’s close
assistant. His initial work in Vienna organizing Jewish emigra-
tion was followed by a similar position in Berlin. In early 1943,
while stationed in Thessaloniki, Brunner supervised the deporta-
tion of more than 40,000 Jews to the death camps before being
dispatched to France to reorganize the Drancy facility and oversee
mass arrests throughout the country. His last major assignment
involved the destruction of the last remaining Jewish community
in Slovakia.
54 • BROCKEN