Documentary tells about East German pastor spy

“Church Under Observation” (Gemeinde unter Beobachtung) tells the story of how Knuth Hansen, right, a KGB spy, came to be pastor of Berlin Mennonite Church in Germany from 1980 to 1990. Tweeback Verlag “Church Under Observation” (Gemeinde unter Beobachtung) tells the story of how Knuth Hansen, right, a KGB spy, came to be pastor of Berlin Mennonite Church in Germany from 1980 to 1990. Tweeback Verlag

A new documentary sheds light on how a pastor in East Germany spied for the Stasi secret police on a Mennonite congregation in Berlin for years.

Historian Bernhard Thiessen worked with filmmaker Thomas Schamp to tell the story of how Berlin Mennonite Church came to hire Knuth Hansen as pastor in 1980.

Hansen, a Protestant pastor, worked with the congregation from 1980 to 1990. He and his partner Gerd Bambowsky were informants for both the East German Stasi and the KGB Soviet spy organization, specifically with the intent of learning about smuggling of religious literature by Mennonites and other Christians into the Soviet Union.

Church Under Observation is based on previously unpublished interviews conducted in 1992 by Dutch Pastor Fokke Fennema, including Hansen, now deceased. These are joined by contemporary interviews based on recent findings. The film also addresses Bible smuggling and illegal printing presses in the Soviet Union.

The film was shown Sept. 28 at the Museum for Russian German Cultural History in Detmold, Germany. The German language DVD includes subtitles in English, German and Russian and is available from tweeback.com/katalog/gemeinde-unter-beobachtung.

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