Lawsuits against the Chancellery and the Federal Archives – The 1950s, Cold War (January 2021)

In the summer of 2020, I submitted a request to the Chancellery for access to files from the years 1955 to 1960. The subject matter concerns the Cold War, rearmament, and the disarmament conference held in Paris in May 1960. The Chancellery forwarded the files to the Federal Archives in Koblenz, where they were made available to me in part; however, a number of documents remained classified until 2042—see my film *Ewig Geheim* (Forever Secret). This classification was imposed by the Chancellery, yet the Federal Archives is bound by it, as it is subject to the Chancellery's directives. However, in response to my objection and request for full disclosure, the Chancellery claimed that only the Federal Archives was responsible. Meanwhile, the Federal Archives replied that the Chancellery had recalled the files and had not yet returned them to the Archives. It was a game of ping-pong.

It is clear to me that the Chancellery is—as always—stonewalling, whereas the Federal Archives generally advocates for public access to records—especially regarding documents that are more than 60 years old (!) and ought to be open to the public anyway. Since legal jurisdiction remains unclear, my lawyers, Raphael Thomas and David Werdermann, filed suit against both entities. I recalled a lawsuit I had filed against the Federal Archives over a decade ago, in which I sued for inaction because they were doing nothing to prevent official documents from being hidden away in political party foundations. The matter ended up before the Federal Constitutional Court back then; while the ruling was favorable regarding the substance of the case, we lost on formal grounds because the Court in Karlsruhe held that I should have sued the owner of the files—the Chancellery—rather than the Federal Archives (BArch). I have since rectified this.


I lost my case before the Administrative Court of Koblenz in December 2021, and subsequently lost the appeal before the Higher Administrative Court as well. The judges accepted the Chancellery’s stance on secrecy and asked no further questions. The matter is now before the European Court of Human Rights, though I am pessimistic: in recent years, the ECHR has not issued a single ruling *in favor* of freedom of the press and information, but has instead rubber-stamped secrecy.