Wilhelm Johann Carl Eduard Stieber (3 May 1818 – 29 January 1882) was

Otto von Bismarck Otto, Prince of Bismarck, Count of Bismarck-Schönhausen, Duke of Lauenburg (, ; 1 April 1815 – 30 July 1898), born Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck, was a conservative German statesman and diplomat. From his origins in the upper class of J ...

's master

spy Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangib ...

and director of the

Prussian Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an e ...

Feldgendarmerie The ''Feldgendarmerie'' (, "field gendarmerie") were a type of military police units of the armies of the Kingdom of Saxony The Kingdom of Saxony (german: Königreich Sachsen), lasting from 1806 to 1918, was an independent member of a number o ...

. Stieber was both an agent of domestic

surveillance Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, many activities, or information for the purpose of information gathering, influencing, managing or directing. This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, such as c ...

and an external agent. Along with

Joseph Fouché Joseph Fouché, 1st Duc d'Otrante, 1st Comte Fouché (, 21 May 1759 – 25 December 1820) was a French statesman, revolutionary, and Minister of Police under First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte, who later became a subordinate of Emperor Napoleon. He ...

, he invented modern

information gathering Intelligence assessment, or simply intel, is the development of behavior forecasts or recommended courses of action to the leadership of an organisation, based on wide ranges of available overt and covert information (intelligence). Assessments d ...

Biography

According to his questionable memoirs, Stieber was born in

Merseburg Merseburg () is a town in central Germany in southern Saxony-Anhalt, situated on the river Saale, and approximately 14 km south of Halle (Saale) and 30 km west of Leipzig. It is the capital of the Saalekreis district. It had a diocese ...

Prussian Saxony The Province of Saxony (german: link=no, Provinz Sachsen), also known as Prussian Saxony () was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia and later the Free State of Prussia from 1816 until 1944. Its capital was Magdeburg. It was formed by the merge ...

. His parents were Hypolith Stieber, a minor government official who later entered the

Lutheran Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Catholic Church launched th ...

ministry, and Daisy Cromwell, an English noblewoman. He began studying

German law The law of Germany (german: das Recht Deutschlands), that being the modern German legal system (german: Deutsches Rechtssystem), is a system of civil law which is founded on the principles laid out by the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of G ...

at Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin against the wishes of his father, who desired a career for him in the Prussian Church. He was then employed in 1841 in a criminal court. When his father learned that he was studying law, he ended all funding towards his education. In order to earn his tuition, young Stieber began working for the Berlin Police. Finding this much more exciting than law, he obtained a promotion to Inspector of Division IV, the Criminal Division. After the

Revolution of 1848 The Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Springtime of the Peoples or the Springtime of Nations, were a series of political upheavals throughout Europe starting in 1848. It remains the most widespread revolutionary wave in Europea ...

, he was promoted by King

Frederick William IV of Prussia Frederick William IV (german: Friedrich Wilhelm IV.; 15 October 17952 January 1861), the eldest son and successor of Frederick William III of Prussia, reigned as King of Prussia from 7 June 1840 to his death on 2 January 1861. Also referred to ...

to chief of police. During the winter of 1850, he was ordered to investigate an exiled political extremist named

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

. His unreliable memoirs claim that, posing as a doctor, he bluffed his way into Marx's London household and stole the membership listings of Marx's

Communist League The Communist League (German: ''Bund der Kommunisten)'' was an international political party established on 1 June 1847 in London, England. The organisation was formed through the merger of the League of the Just, headed by Karl Schapper, and the ...

. The information in the files was sent to France and also to several German states. Many of Marx's associates were then sentenced to long prison terms. Stieber's memoirs also describe his involvement with matters embarrassing to the

House of Hohenzollern The House of Hohenzollern (, also , german: Haus Hohenzollern, , ro, Casa de Hohenzollern) is a German royal (and from 1871 to 1918, imperial) dynasty whose members were variously princes, Prince-elector, electors, kings and emperors of Hohenzol ...

. He refers to an occasion when a

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

swindler named

Constantine Simonides Constantine Simonides (1820–1867) was a palaeographer and dealer of icons, known as a man of extensive learning, with significant knowledge of manuscripts and miraculous calligraphy. He was one of the most versatile forgers of the nineteenth centu ...

tricked the

Berlin Academy of Science The German Academy of Sciences at Berlin, german: Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (DAW), in 1972 renamed the Academy of Sciences of the GDR (''Akademie der Wissenschaften der DDR (AdW)''), was the most eminent research institution ...

out of 5,000 talers with a forged

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

manuscript. As the money had come from the king's private purse, Stieber was ordered to get it back as discreetly as possible. Using an elderly circus performer as an interpreter, Stieber forced Simonides to return the money by threatening to hand him over to the notoriously brutal Greek police. With the money secured, Simonides was escorted to the border and ordered never to return to Prussia. Stieber also investigated a

counterfeiting To counterfeit means to imitate something authentic, with the intent to steal, destroy, or replace the original, for use in illegal transactions, or otherwise to deceive individuals into believing that the fake is of equal or greater value tha ...

gang in the

Rhineland The Rhineland (german: Rheinland; french: Rhénanie; nl, Rijnland; ksh, Rhingland; Latinised name: ''Rhenania'') is a loosely defined area of Western Germany along the Rhine, chiefly its middle section. Term Historically, the Rhinelands ...

and

insider trading Insider trading is the trading of a public company's stock or other securities (such as bonds or stock options) based on material, nonpublic information about the company. In various countries, some kinds of trading based on insider information ...

on the

Berlin stock exchange Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

. He also became something of an expert on the prostitution trade in Berlin and recruited many of its denizens as informants. He died in Berlin.

In popular culture

* Stieber appears as a character in the novel ''

The Prague Cemetery ''The Prague Cemetery'' ( it, Il cimitero di Praga) is a novel by Italian author Umberto Eco. It was first published in October 2010; the English translation by Richard Dixon appeared a year later. Shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Ficti ...

'' by

Umberto Eco Umberto Eco (5 January 1932 – 19 February 2016) was an Italian medievalist, philosopher, semiotician, novelist, cultural critic, and political and social commentator. In English, he is best known for his popular 1980 novel ''The Name of the ...

Works

* ''Die Prostitution in Berlin und ihre Opfer in historischer, sittlicher, medizinischer und polizeilicher Beziehung beleuchtet''. Hofmann, Berlin 1846 (English: ''Prostitution in Berlin and Its Victims'') * ''Der erste politische Prozeß vor den Geschwornen Berlins, betreffend die Anklage des Ober-Staatsanwalts Sethe wider den Literaten Robert Springer wegen Majestätsbeleidigung : nach stenographischen Berichten dargest. vom Vertheidiger des Angeklagten''. Robert Springer, Berlin 1849 * Carl Georg Ludwig Wermuth / Stieber: ''Die Communistischen -Verschwörungen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. Im amtlichen Auftrag zur Benutzung der Polizei-behörden der sämmtlichen deutschen bundesstaaten. Erster Theil. Enthaltend: Die historische Darstellung der betreffenden Untersuchungen''. Druck von A. W. Hayn, Berlin 1853 (Reprint: Olms, Hildesheim 1969 und Verlag Klaus Guhl, Berlin 1976) * Carl Georg Ludwig Wermuth / Stieber: ''Die Communistischen -Verschwörungen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. Im amtlichen Auftrag zur Benutzung der Polizei-behörden der sämmtlichen deutschen bundesstaaten. Zweiter Theil. Enthaltend: Die Personalien der in den Communisten-untersuchungen vorkommenden Personen''. Druck von A. W. Hayn, Berlin 1854 (Reprint: Olms, Hildesheim 1969 und Verlag Klaus Guhl, Berlin 1976) nlineAvailable at: https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/view/bsb10771201?page=11 ccessed 8 Oct. 2014 * With Carl Georg Ludwig Wermuth: ''Die Communisten-Verschwörungen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts'', ASIN: B0000BU4N6 (English: '' Communist Conspiracies of the Nineteenth Century'') * ''Denkwürdigkeiten des Geheimen Regierungsrathes Dr. Stieber. Aus seinen hinterlassenen Papieren bearbeitet von Dr. Leopold Auerbach''.Leopold Auerbach, Jurist (1847–1925) Engelmann, Berlin 1884 * ''Practisches Lehrbuch der Criminal-Polizei. Auf Grund eigener langjähriger Erfahrungen zur amtlichen Benutzung für Justiz- und Polizeibeamte und zur Warnung und Belehrung für das Publikum bearb. von Wilhelm Stieber''. Hayn, Berlin 1860 (Reprint: Kriminalistik-Verlag, Heidelberg 1983) * Wilhelm J. C. E. Stieber: ''Spion des Kanzlers. Die Enthüllungen von Bismarcks Geheimdienstchef''. Seewald, Stuttgart 1978, (dtv, München 1978 ) (English: ''The Chancellor's Spy. Memoirs of the Founder of Modern Espionage''. Translated from the German by Jan Van Heurch, Grove Press, New York 1979)

References

Literature

* Karl Bittel: ''Der Kommunistenprozeß zu Köln 1852 im Spiegel der zeitgenössischen Presse. Hrsg. und eingeleitet''. Rütten & Loening, Berlin 1955 * * Hilmar-Detlef Brückner: ''Wilhelm Stieber (1818–2018) oder wie sich alternative Wirklichkeit durchsetzt. Eine Fallstudie''. Hamburg tradition, 2018 * Thomas Diembach: "''Das kann doch nicht wahr sein! Zur Authentizität der Memoiren von Bismarcks Geheimdienstchef Wilhelm Stieber''. In: ''Themen juristischer Zeitgeschichte'' 2. Recht und Juristen in der deutschen Revolution 1848–49. Nomos, Baden-Baden 1998, s. 236–243 * Rudolf Herrnstadt: ''Die erste Verschwörung gegen das internationale Proletariat. Zur Geschichte des Kölner Kommunistenprozesses 1852''. Rütten & Loening 1958
Karl Marx: ''Enthüllungen über den Kommunisten-Prozeß zu Köln''. Boston 1853
* Wilhelm J. C. E. Stieber: ''Spion des Kanzlers. Die Enthüllungen von Bismarcks Geheimdienstchef''. Seewald, Stuttgart 1978, (dtv, München 1978 ) (English: ''The Chancellor's Spy. Memoirs of the Founder of Modern Espionage''. Translated from the German by Jan Van Heurch, Grove Press, New York 1979)

Biography

In popular culture

Works

See also

References

Literature

Further reading