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Secrecy is paramount in the intelligence community.

It even applies to an order that the honorees were expressly prohibited from wearing in public.

Nevertheless, there is no indication on the St. George Medal as to who donated it for what.

The brass medal bears no inscription, no motto, just a harmless date, and that only on the back.

Only specialists could do something with the indication “31.3.1956” in the laurel wreath.

Because March 31, 1956 was Holy Saturday;

a quiet day, in Bonn there was a holiday mood.

Chancellor Konrad Adenauer recovered in Ascona, and little or nothing else happened.

Why this date?

All sacred

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Because on that day there was a major change in the most confidential area of ​​the West German state: On April 1, 1956, the Federal Intelligence Service was officially established as the West German foreign intelligence service, and its predecessor organization, the "Organization Gehlen", which was set up and temporarily financed by the USA, was merged into the BND.

The historian Bodo Hechelhammer, head of the history working group at the BND, presented the background to the hitherto largely unknown award at a conference in Vienna. The general theme was "Holy and Holiness".

The award went back to Reinhard Gehlen personally (1902-1979), the professional officer and temporary head of the General Staff Analysis Department "Foreign Army East" of the Wehrmacht.

After the collapse of the Third Reich was inevitable, he and his closest colleagues and a lot of material about the Red Army had taken to safety in the Alps and later offered his knowledge and contacts to the USA.

Birth of the BND

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In the beginning of the Cold War, Gehlen was allowed to build a new unofficial network, the "Organization Gehlen" (OG), which was officially transferred to the Federal Republic of Germany on April 1, 1956, based on contacts from employees and also former competitors in the military intelligence system of the Wehrmacht was given the new name of the Federal Intelligence Service.

Gehlen donated the medal to thank the employees of the first ten years and to show them recognition.

Hechelhammer suspects that the choice of motif has something to do with the high number of employees from East Central Europe in the upper floor and the BND, where St. George was “particularly widespread as a patron saint”.

To his most important partner in the world of the secret service, CIA director Allen Dulles, Gehlen justified the choice of the motif in terms of content.

St. George's fight against the dragon stands “for our fight against Bolshevism”, wrote Gehlen on November 12, 1956. Incidentally, Dulles received the very first St. George's medal, and of course the gold version.

Martyr of faith

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The Christian interpretation of the martyr St. George, according to legend an officer in a Roman legion of late antiquity and beheaded in 304 because of his loyalty to Jesus, was apparently far removed from Gehlen.

In any case, St. George does not have a halo on the medal, which is otherwise customary in his depiction - after all, as one of the 14 helpers in need, he is one of the most popular saints of all.

From April 1, 1956, the bronze version of the medal was presented to every BND employee who had been employed full-time for ten years.

In addition, the recipient of the award received an individually formulated letter signed by Gehlen himself, in which the President praised the achievements and character of the recipient.

The medal was presented by a superior in a velvet upholstered case.

Because there was no reference to the BND on the medal itself, those honored were allowed to keep the medal, even if not wear it.

The accompanying letter, on the other hand, had to be returned immediately after reading for security reasons, at least initially;

it went into his - of course strictly confidential - personal files.

Honor with consequences

According to the number initially stamped on the back, the 140th medal was awarded to a CIA employee in May 1957, and at the end of February 1962 a BND employee received St. Georg No. 1089.

Up until 1969 the consecutive number was engraved on each medal, but this has not been the case since then.

The St Georgs Medal also played a small role in the BND's biggest scandal.

After the former SS-Obersturmführer and SD member Heinz Felfe was convicted as a KGB spy in 1961, a way was needed to arrest him inconspicuously.

So Felfe was called to Pullach on the pretext of honoring him on his anniversary in service.

On November 6, 1961, at around 11 a.m., he was supposed to be at Gehlen's confidante Wolfgang Lankau alias "Langendorf" at the BND headquarters.

Felfe found this instruction plausible and followed it.

In his memoirs “In the service of the enemy”, Felfe, now in the GDR, described his arrest a quarter of a century later: “While I was waiting, the secretary discreetly indicated to me that 'Langendorf' would give me the St. George's medal for mine will hand over ten years of service.

After a few minutes, 'Langendorf' came into the anteroom, greeted me, had the secretary hand over the wrapped St. George's medal with the award certificate and asked me into his room. ”There Felfe was arrested and immediately taken to the Munich police headquarters.

In the cornerstone

In the years that followed, and especially after Gehlen's resignation as BND boss, the St. George's Medal was awarded “inflationarily”, as Bodo Hechelhammer judged.

That, of course, reduced their value.

The historian could not or would not give any information about the more recent times.

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With one exception: The foundation stone for the new BND headquarters on Berlin's Chausseestrasse has the shape of the S. Georgs Medal, albeit modified: the federal eagle is embossed with the inscription “Federal Republic of Germany - Federal Intelligence Service” on the front and the reverse St. George with the BND motto "Libertas et Securitas" ("Freedom and Security").

Inside the screw-on medal there were two photo negatives: One shows an aerial photo of the old Pullach headquarters, the other the portraits of the presidents of the BND who had been in office until then.

The tradition of the dragon slayer as an unofficial symbol of the German foreign secret service continues.

This article was first published in 2014.