"Der Schutzpatron der Westberliner Spionageorganisation Lemmer": ADN photomontage
Composite press image: a man on all fours, a 'BILD' newspaper in his back pocket, crawls toward a painted tunnel mouth in a wall while a stooping figure with the head of West German minister Ernst Lemmer points the way, banknotes in hand, a policeman behind him. The agency caption calls Lemmer the 'patron saint of the West Berlin espionage organization' (name-calling), and the montage turns that label into a staged scene.
- Date
- February 9, 1962
- Period
- Cold War
- Made by
- ADN-Zentralbild (GDR state news agency), montage credited to 'Schulz'
- Region
- Western and Central Europe
- Country
- East Germany
- Medium
- Photograph
- Issuer type
- Media
- Regime
- German Democratic Republic
- Leader
- Walter Ulbricht
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Demonize
- Themes
- Security and surveillance, Media and information
- Event
- Berlin Crisis 1961
- Techniques
- Name-calling
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive), Bild 183-90413-0001, via Wikimedia Commons, retrieved September 29, 2026
- Rights
- CC BY-SA 3.0 DE (Bundesarchiv cooperation release on Wikimedia Commons; file page states the licence)
Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-90413-0001 / Schulz / CC-BY-SA 3.0
Text on the object
[...]dbahnstr[...] [street sign at top left, cut off by the frame] BILD [on the newspaper in the crawling man's back pocket] [banknotes in the standing figure's hand: printed text illegible]
[...]dbahnstr[...] [street sign, cut off]; BILD [newspaper title]; [banknote text illegible]
The only legible lettering on the image is the cut-off street sign and the newspaper title. The words that carry the accusation are in the agency's original caption, kept in the Bundesarchiv record and quoted in notes, not printed on the picture. The committed file is Commons' 960 px rendering of a 595 x 800 px original, so it is enlarged rather than sharper.
