Spies and Secret Service: The story of espionage, its main systems and chief exponentsGrant, Hamil
History
Spies and Secret Service: The story of espionage, its main systems and chief exponents
Grant, Hamil
Secret service; Spies
His work in Silesia was so ably performed and so many arrests and
imprisonments followed as the result of his services, that the Berlin
authorities decided to employ their sleuth in the capital, where
already the Socialists were becoming an important enough body. Armed
with letters of introduction from his committees in Silesia, Stieber
arrived in Berlin and forthwith became a member of the principal
revolutionary clubs in the metropolis. The spy himself describes his
presentation to King Frederick William: "My duties required me as a
Socialist leader to head a procession of revolutionaries through the
capital. At a point in the progress of our bands, the King appeared
on the scene, and naturally felt but little at his ease, seeing
that the Socialists were the avowed enemies of all existing forms
of government and their representatives. Noting his trepidation, I
approached his majesty near enough to say: 'Sire, have no fear. I am of
your majesty's side and have taken every precaution for your safety.
In the meanwhile I must proceed with my rôle of leading these poor
deluded people.'" Notwithstanding that Stieber from this day became an
object of suspicion to men of the Socialist clubs who had known him in
Silesia, the influence of the King protected him and eventually took
him into the monarch's service with the title of "police-counsellor,"
a position which allowed him virtually to act on his own initiative and
independently of the minister of police. Stieber's real business in his
new post was to keep a close watch upon the ministerial or official
police, and that he did so with particular satisfaction to the Prussian
monarch, the latter one day admitted to the official chief of police
who was complaining of the officious activities and energies of the
police-counsellor, and suggested his removal on the ground that since
the man was a traitor to those with whom he professed to adhere, he
must necessarily be suspect in any cause in which he engaged. The King
replied:
"Stieber is more devoted to his King than to any cause and I reward
him well. He used to come to me from time to time and tell me what the
Socialists were doing, what their plans and intentions were and how on
one occasion they had debated the question of seizing the royal family
and establishing a Commune."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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