Authors and editors of Der Spiegel still have the disaster in their minds that befell the magazine Stern ("Star") when it bought the infamous 'Hitler diary' fakes. They quietly contact a number of active and retired officers of the Bundesnachrichtendienst, the West German Federal Intelligence Service, and ask their opinion on the 'Schoelzgen papers'. None of them can provide a definite judgement on their genuineness. It is true that they are on the right kind of paper and they have all the outward marks of protocolls of Stasi informants. But could a private citizen who claims to have had no Stasi contacts himself find these incriminating documents so quickly? It is true that Teterow has an administrative job where he might have learnt how archives are structured, but still his "findings" came rather quickly and they might indeed benefit the old ruling elite, including the Stasi who might have forged them rather easily. There seems to be no paper trail connecting the Stasi and Teterow. (In fact early Stasi documents praising Teterow's idealism and recommending him as a potential informer have been carefully removed, and the actual contact with him came even after the official dissolution of the Stasi and was not documented.)
Teterow never mentions the possibility of being paid by Der Spiegel. Because he has been carefully briefed on what to say, his story about how he found the papers has some plausibility and remains consistent, an impression that is reinforced by his friendly, open and candid manner. But, after all is said and done, what decides the matter is that the potential scoop is just too big to let it go unpublished. So Der Spiegel publishes Teterow's story and a number of quotations from the papers, however without giving a final judgement on their authenticity. The turmoil caused by the publication is understandably great, just as in the case of Ibrahim Boehme.
For the East German chancellor Markus Meckel it is of course out of the question to have a Neonazi in his government. The fact that Schoelzgen protests his innocence counts for little, however, the unusual circumstances about the supposed finding of the documents leave some suspicion in Meckel's mind. Furthermore, he does not want to lose the NDPD as a coalition partner, so he gives his minister of agriculture the benefit of the doubt and publicly expresses his confidence in Schoelzgen's honesty and democratic convictions.
Teterow never mentions the possibility of being paid by Der Spiegel. Because he has been carefully briefed on what to say, his story about how he found the papers has some plausibility and remains consistent, an impression that is reinforced by his friendly, open and candid manner. But, after all is said and done, what decides the matter is that the potential scoop is just too big to let it go unpublished. So Der Spiegel publishes Teterow's story and a number of quotations from the papers, however without giving a final judgement on their authenticity. The turmoil caused by the publication is understandably great, just as in the case of Ibrahim Boehme.
For the East German chancellor Markus Meckel it is of course out of the question to have a Neonazi in his government. The fact that Schoelzgen protests his innocence counts for little, however, the unusual circumstances about the supposed finding of the documents leave some suspicion in Meckel's mind. Furthermore, he does not want to lose the NDPD as a coalition partner, so he gives his minister of agriculture the benefit of the doubt and publicly expresses his confidence in Schoelzgen's honesty and democratic convictions.
