1954 20 July: John disappears in East Berlin and later holds an
international press conference.
1955 5 May: The FRG receives state sovereignty and becomes a
member of the North Atlantic Treaty Association (NATO).
14 May: The GDR becomes a member of the Warsaw Pact.
15 May: The State Treaty of Austria proclaims the country’s
neutrality, and the occupying powers depart by the fall. 24
November: The MfS regains its ministerial status.
1956 Kurt Fechner organizes postwar Austrian military intelligence.
4 February: Robert Bialek is kidnapped from West to East
Berlin. 22 April: The Soviets make public their discovery of
the Berlin Tunnel. 1 May: The Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung
(HVA) under Markus Wolf is officially sanctioned. 1 April:
The Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) is designated a federal
agency under Gehlen. 4 July: The first U-2 flight by the
United States over Soviet territory is launched from Wies-
baden. 17 August: The Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands
(German Communist Party) is banned in the FRG.
1957 The BND begins clandestine cooperation with the Israeli
Mossad. 1 November: Ernst Wollweber is dismissed and
replaced by Erich Mielke as head of the MfS.
1958 27 October: Walter Ulbricht declares East Berlin to be sover-
eign territory of the GDR.
1959 24 June: Klaus Fuchs is released from prison and becomes an
East German citizen two days later.
1960 11 May: Adolf Eichmann is kidnapped by Mossad in Argen-
tina and brought to Israel for trial. 28 October: Alfred Frenzel
is arrested in the FRG as a Czechoslovakian spy.
1961 13 August: The GDR begins construction of the Berlin Wall,
causing a reduction in spy traffic between the two Germanys.
6 November: Heinz Felfe of the BND is arrested as a double
agent.
1962 10 February: East German lawyer Wolfgang Vogel helps ar-
range the first Cold War spy exchange, trading Rudolph Abel
for U-2 pilot Gary Francis Powers. October–November: The
Spiegel Affair strains the relationship between Chancellor
Konrad Adenauer and the BND.
xx • CHRONOLOGY