from
Markus Balser and Ronen Steinke, Berlin
It was a small, secret group that met in Berlin on January 19, 2021, the then Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, his State Secretary Hans-Georg Engelke and the head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Thomas Haldenwang. They had a sensitive matter to discuss, one that many journalists and politicians in the country were already whispering about. Namely the forthcoming decision that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution wanted to declare what was then the largest opposition party in the country as a “suspected case” and to include it in the surveillance.