Projekt

The project investigates the long-standing relations between German and Arab secret services. Goal of the project is to understand whether these relations included an exchange of knowledge about how to set-up and develop secret services. Running for five years, the project will look at both East and West German services' relations with at least three different Arab countries. The public frequently considers secret services through an aura of mystery and adventure. In fact, secret services are a mainstream feature of modern states: nearly every state has one. But political scientists' knowledge about why and how secret services have spread across the globe remains woefully low. What is so important about secret services? Do they really function similarly across the world? Do governments exchange knowledge about how to run them? These are some of the bigger questions the project seeks to answer. A small team of researchers will survey untapped documents from German and Arab archives to collect information, and will interview German and Arab contemporary witnesses, such as former diplomats, exiled politicians and victims of secret service interrogation and arrest. A wide ranging literature review will bring together for the first time the pre-existing work on German-Arab secret service relations.

• Dr. Sophia Hoffmann

  Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO)
  Berlin
  

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