How a German domestic spy agency classified a random man as a "potential right-wing extremist" for no reason and nearly ruined his life

The State Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Hessen. Source.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has published an amazing story about an anonymous professor in Hessen and his run-in with the Hessian Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

This is one of the sixteen state divisions of the German domestic intelligence apparatus whose agents I refer to affectionately as the constitutional protectors. Domestic intelligence agencies in other countries primarily busy themselves with things like terrorism and counter-espionage, but the constitutional protectors of the Federal Republic spend a great part of their time monitoring ordinary citizens for signs of political unreliability. They publish periodic reports autistically delineating all of the species and subspecies of political wrongthink they encounter among the rabble, they help orchestrate media smear campaigns and they selectively disclose their findings to employers and business associates, thereby ensuring that political offenders are appropriately ostracised for believing or saying or perhaps even just seeming to believe or say the wrong things.

The constitutional protectors have always been very bad, and this in at least two respects. Firstly, they are typical of the rest of German “defensive democracy,” in that their mission is malign, contradictory and faintly terrifying. Secondly, to judge from their annual reports, various assessments and public statements, they are screechingly incompetent. While I think everyone can agree that police states are pretty unpleasant places, ours is a unique nascent police state staffed by chubby bubble-writing female sociology majors, which makes it all worse and more humiliating.

Anyway, our professor – an economist – already lived and worked under a general cloud of political suspicion because he had once been a city councillor for Alternative für Deutschland. He’d long since abandoned politics and left the AfD, but that hardly matters in the eyes of the constitutional protectors; there is never any coming back from fascism. Then, in September 2023, he took a trip to Berlin and found that his regular hotel was booked up, so he called an old friend who used to be his neighbour. This friend, Stephanie Elsässer (née Eckhardt), happens to be married to Jürgen Elsässer, “right-wing-extreme” editor of Compact magazine – the very same Compact magazine that was briefly (and unconstitutionally) banned by Interior Minister Nancy Faeser. Our professor asked the Elsässers to put him up for the night and they offered him their guest room.

The constitutional protectors must have had the Elsässer home under surveillance; that’s the only way this story makes sense. They saw the professor come, they saw him go, and after bureaucratic processes opaque to us, they decided that this overnight stay was sufficient to make him a “potential right-wing extremist.” By early 2024, the constitutional protectors had compiled a long list of no fewer than 52,000 such people. Most of these alleged extremists never even know they’re on the list, but our professor had particularly bad luck.

A few months after his stay at the Elsässer house, on 15 January 2024, he received a call at home. It was a receptionist at his university. She told him to cancel his afternoon class and appear instead at the office of the university President. This was at the start of a massive nationwide freakout “against the right,” set off by dishonest reports from government-adjacent “fact-checkers” that the AfD were secretly plotting mass deportations of migrants – just like the Nazis, or something. Our baffled professor wondered what he could have done wrong and hoped the meeting was just some pointless formality.

From FAZ:

The University President was not alone when the professor entered the office. The Head of Disciplinary Affairs was seated there too. The President ostentatiously leafed through a folder and finally explained that he had a report from the Hessian Office for the Protection of the Constitution that “assigned” the professor to the “right-wing extremist scene.” He said that he was sure the professor would understand that the university had to protect its students. The professor was therefore suspended from duty immediately, pending an initial a six-month disciplinary procedure.

“I was surprised at first,” says the professor, looking back on that day almost two years ago … “I thought it was a misunderstanding.” He was not dealing with a suspicion of a criminal offense against which he could defend himself against, but rather with a political verdict by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. That was more dangerous and also more consequential.

Our professor asked what this was all about, and to his amazement the President told him of his overnight stay at the Elsässer house. As in the DDR, so in the Federal Republic: Association with the politically suspect is the best way to become politically suspect yourself. The professor protested that it was merely an incidental visit and clarified that he had no political ties to the Elsässer family and barely knew Jürgen Elsässer at all, but the President merely asked him to leave the room. He needed a moment to consult privately with his Head of Disciplinary Affairs.

When the professor was allowed back in, the President issued him an official “ban on performing his duties” and informed him of the consequences: He had to hand over his university keys immediately … His work laptop would be confiscated the next day, and he would only be allowed to enter the building once more, under supervision, to clear out his office. After that, he would be prohibited from contacting his students. Finally, the professor was asked if he felt well enough to drive home and informed that psychosocial services stood ready to help.

Until this moment, our professor had no disciplinary record to speak of. Some of his colleagues “were critical of his past membership in the AfD,” but even leftists on the university faculty seem to have had a high opinion of him, with one Green colleague describing him as a “cautious, decent and upright man.” The faculty sent a petition to the administration, demanding that our professor be reinstated, but the school ignored their entreaty.

Meanwhile, the professor found himself caught in a whirlwind of state suspicion. He was subjected to various interrogation-like scenarios and his wife was also required to give statements. He learned by chance that investigators had combed through his bank transactions. The university administration sent him a steady stream of letters from the Hessian Ministry of the Interior. In them, the constitutional protection authorities questioned his statements. Sometimes it seemed to him as if his words were being twisted. “I felt like I was being treated like a serious criminal,” he recalls.

Because our professor had not done anything wrong or even remotely actionable, there was nothing to investigate. There was only the recursive, probing, punitive investigation itself.

The professor’s [Green Party] colleague describes a “ghostly atmosphere” that prevailed after his suspension. The topic was not addressed in meetings, but there was all the more whispering in the corridors. “There was a fear that you might have to deal with the Office for the Protection of the Constitution oneself,” he said. “People often said: Better close the door.”

Eventually, as his case dragged on well past the initial six-month investigative period, our professor hired a lawyer. A judge dismissed his lawsuit in December 2024, so he filed an appeal with the Administrative Court of Hessen. Finally, in May 2025, the court found in his favour:

The Administrative Court … overturned the lower court’s ruling and found in favor of the professor on almost all points. In a 14-page ruling, the judges of the First Senate demolished the entire regime of measures and suspicions …

The judges reminded the professor’s employer that “restraint” was required when using intelligence sources. Decisions that could lead to a loss of reputation for those affected should not be based solely on an official report. “Other important aspects” were necessary, but the university management had not investigated these at all.

The court made it clear that mere contact with the Elsässer couple did not constitute guilt and did not justify sanctions: “Contacts with persons or participation in events organized by organizations classified as right-wing extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution do not in themselves constitute evidence of anti-constitutional activities or acts of support by the civil servant himself. Without further evidence, it cannot be ruled out that the constitutional rights to freedom of expression and/or information are being exercised.“ The judges specified that in order to be considered an opponent of the free democratic basic order, “concrete, outward-directed action” must be established.

After 16 months under suspicion no crime at all, our professor was reinstated. It only cost him legal fees to the tune of 50,000 Euros. Having gone that far, he pressed further, demanding that the constitutional protectors release all the intelligence materials they had assembled on him. Eventually they mailed him five binders extending to over 2,000 pages. Two-thirds of this material was redacted, but there was enough that wasn’t. He learned that domestic spies had been compiling intelligence on his activities well before his September 2023 stay at the Elsässer house, presumably because of his earlier AfD affiliation. The constitutional protectors had at points placed him under physical surveillance, they had checked his phone calls and his emails and reviewed his internal personnel records. At one point they event sent a clandestine photographer to a party held by the staff of Compact magazine in the hopes of catching our professor in attendance – although he was never even invited to the event.

We are birthing a scary political dystopia in this, the eighth decade of the Federal Republic, and that birth is not yet complete. The constitutional protectors and the AI-assisted speech monitors have not yet scaled to the point that can they pose an equal and pervasive menace to everyone. Their repressions are rather scattershot and opportunistic, with hints of strategy but also a great deal of randomness. If you’re lucky and you have the resources, you might find a sympathetic court and land on your feet in the end, like our professor. The repressive apparatus, however, is gaining strength everyday, and who is to say how long there will still be upstanding judges anybody can appeal to in the judiciary. This is a grave problem, and nobody presently in charge has even the remotest inkling of what a dangerous and stupid beast they are creating here. It is a blind, blank automaton that nobody controls, bent on hunting down obsolete political villains that hardly exist outside its own bureaucratic imagination.