heads of MfS, but its employees had a noticeably higher educational
background than found elsewhere in the security apparatus.
While drastic measures came to be employed against individual
GDR citizens—ranging from job discrimination and the suspension
of driver’s licenses to interrogation and imprisonment owing to trea-
sonable activity—the ZKG proved powerless in halting the escalat-
ing emigration movement, notably during the summer of 1989. Its
only tangible success involved the penetration and suppression of
key organizations assisting those fleeing the country.ZENTRALFRIEDHOF BERLIN-FRIEDRICHSFELDE. The chief
burial site for prominent German communists, including many spies,
the Zentralfriedhof Berlin-Friedrichsfelde (Central Cemetery Berlin-
Friedrichsfelde) opened officially in 1881. It was rededicated by East
German authorities in 1951 with a large stone monument inscribed
“The dead exhort us.” Among the intelligence figures interred there
are Anton Ackermann, Richard Stahlmann, Bruno Beater, Ernst
Wollweber, Erich Jamin, Alfred Scholz, Max Clausen, Klaus
Fuchs, and Markus Wolf. To prevent its desecration, the grave of
Erich Mielke was left unmarked.
ZENTRALSTELLE FÜR DAS CHIFFRIERWESEN (ZfCh). A
unit of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) devoted primarily
to the encoding of information for the government of the Federal
Republic of Germany (FRG), the Zentralstelle für das Chiffri-
erwesen (Code Coordination Bureau) traces its origins to 1947,
when a small group of military cryptologists was assembled by
Erich Hüttenhain, the ex-chief of cryptanalytical research for the
Wehrmacht, at the U.S. Army base outside Oberursel (Hesse). This
group subsequently became part of the signals intelligence unit
of the Organisation Gehlen, which, headed by Hüttenhain, con-
centrated its attention on Eastern bloc military transmissions. Al-
though the Ministry of Foreign Affairs established a cryptographic
service (Sektion 114) in 1950 under Adolf Paschke, it was closed
five years later owing to the FRG’s decision to rearm. By 1956,
all coding and decoding responsibilities were consolidated in the
newly created BND. A further reorganization took place in 1989,
when the ZfCh was transformed into an expanded Zentralstelle für
ZENTRALSTELLE FÜR DAS CHIFFRIERWESEN • 517