"Conny wants to go into construction," said his boss about Conrad Ahlers

After all, the prosecutors of the federal prosecutor's office allowed themselves 16 days before they struck. On October 8, 1962, the issue of the magazine "Der Spiegel" was published with Bundeswehr Inspector General Friedrich Foertsch on the front page and the headline with the headline "conditionally ready for defense". Two days later, federal prosecutor Albin Kuhn requested an expert opinion from the Ministry of Defense in Bonn, because he suspected that the article would constitute a crime of treason.

But it was not until the evening of October 26, around 9 p.m., that the Hamburg police occupied the Pressehaus, the former headquarters of the magazine’s editorial office, on the basis of a court search warrant. But neither editor Rudolf Augstein nor the main author of the article, deputy editor-in-chief Conrad Ahlers, were found.

This is how the “Spiegel” affair began, in which the relationship between free – i.e. privately organized – media and state power was put on a new footing. Augstein's role - he turned himself in the following day and was in custody for 103 days - has often been described, somewhat less frequently that of the then "Spiegel" editor-in-chief Claus Jacobi, who had to spend 18 days behind bars.

But the most exciting is Ahlers. According to statements by colleagues, Jacobi is said to have said to Augstein before the publication of "conditionally ready to defend": "Conny wants to go into the building." Jacobi could not remember that, but said: "It is definitely conceivable that I made such a saying. But I probably didn't mean it that seriously."

In any case, Conrad Ahlers was certainly not a revolutionary and an enemy of the state. Born in Hamburg at the end of 1922, he enlisted in the Wehrmacht immediately after graduating from high school in 1941. He was accepted as a junior for the paratroopers and fought first on the Eastern Front, from 1943 in Italy. After the war, he was able to start studying economics in his hometown in 1945 because of his young age. In 1947 he was one of the co-founders of the Junge Union.

In addition, he was already earning money as a journalist, including with the BBC's German service and, from 1949, with the Protestant weekly newspaper "Deutsches Allgemeines Sonntagsblatt". In 1951, Ahlers changed sides and became an employee of the Press and Information Office of the Federal Government and then of the Blank Office, the Bundeswehr's development staff.

But Ahlers wanted to return to journalism. In 1954 he was hired by WELT, which was published by Axel Springers as it is today. Politically, Ahlers was not very committed: after three years he went to the "Spiegel" for the first time, which he left in 1959 for the more left-wing "Frankfurter Rundschau", returning in 1962 as deputy editor-in-chief of the Hamburger Magazin.

Here the "beautiful Conny" was regarded as an expert on the Bundeswehr and a well-informed specialist in security policy. Federal Prosecutor Kuhn saw it that way: In the Federal Ministry of Defense's report on Ahlers' text "conditionally ready to defend", it said that in a total of 15 passages of the article "dozens of cases of illegal publication of state secrets" were to be determined.

According to his own statements, Helmut Schmidt, then Senator for the Interior of Hamburg, but before that a SPD defense politician in the Bundestag, did not have this impression. He was acquainted with Ahlers and had read a draft of his text in advance. Some passages seemed problematic to him, which is why he recommended consulting a representative of the Federal Intelligence Service. The green light came from there, and so the article appeared.

A few days later, Ahlers went on vacation with his family – to Spain, which at the time was ruled by the right-wing dictator Francisco Franco; that wasn't exactly an indication of a communist sentiment either. Nevertheless, the Spaniards arrested Ahlers, on the direct initiative of Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss and under false pretenses. The father of two children was in prison for almost two months. In 1965, the proceedings against the "Spiegel" and Ahlers were dropped without result.

At the age of 42 he changed sides again and returned to the press and information office, this time as deputy head and nominated by the SPD, which he did not join until 1968. After the change of government in the following year, he became Chancellor Willy Brandt's spokesman and filled this position with an elegance and sovereignty unmatched by any of his predecessors or successors.

However, Ahlers also made the biggest mistake that a government spokesman in the Federal Republic made: On the night of September 5th, 1972, he announced the rescue of all nine Israeli hostages when the security authorities seized the Fürstenfeldbruck airfield. Ahlers was misinformed, because at the time of his statement eight of the nine Olympians had already been murdered and the last one seriously injured; he died soon after 12:05 am.

Irrespective of this, Ahlers had decided to give up his post as spokesman and to run for the Bundestag. From 1972 to 1980, he represented the constituency of Bad Kreuznach for almost two electoral terms, until he became head of the international broadcaster Deutsche Welle in March 1980. In contrast to ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandfunk, Deutsche Welle was and is officially a real state radio station: the station is financed from taxes, not from broadcasting fees.

On December 18, 1980, Conrad Ahlers died unexpectedly at the age of only 58. In WELT, Peter Boenisch, his long-time competitor in the media business, called after him: “We will all miss Conny. Always cheeky in his formulations, always clear in his judgment, always comradely and fair, he was one of those irreplaceable.”

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