Germany’s quiet retreat from a thirty-year surveillance practice marks a return to legal fairness after a policy that caused stigma rather than security.
by Massimo Introvigne
Germany is known for its reliability. Sometimes this is impressive—like with its precise engineering, on-time trains, and organized archives. Other times, it leads to oddities, such as the fact that for almost thirty years, the country’s domestic intelligence service monitored Scientology, long after the political fears of the 1990s had faded. The Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (Office for the Protection of the Constitution) has now discreetly ended this monitoring, much like someone quietly shutting a door they wish they had never opened. There was no deep institutional reflection—just a bureaucratic sigh.
The official reason is that the agency needs to focus its efforts on more pressing issues: violent extremism, Russian spying, cyberattacks, and terrorism. All these threats are, to say the least, more credible dangers to public order than the notion of Scientologists in Munich plotting a coup. However, the timing also indicates a realization that surveillance had become a costly routine without a clear purpose.
The roots of this monitoring date back to the 1990s, a time when Germany was still adjusting to reunification and the political elite was particularly receptive to alarming stories about “cults.” Scientology became an easy target. The movement faced accusations of having “anti-constitutional aims,” a phrase in Germany that carries significant weight in national security cases. Yet, the evidence never materialized. What followed were years of observation, reports, and legal battles—none of which resulted in a single validated finding of anti-constitutional actions.
As the years passed, the world changed. The Cold War ended, the internet emerged, and Germany’s security priorities shifted dramatically. Nonetheless, the Scientology file remained active, possibly because closing it would have meant admitting that the whole effort was driven by pressures from politicians or Christian “cult counselors” trying to eradicate the competition instead of real risk. Over time, several states quietly stopped the monitoring, with Baden-Württemberg being the latest to recognize that the movement posed no real threat. Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia had already pulled back. Now, the federal office has finally caught up.
The human cost of this policy was significant. In Germany, being labeled as an observation target by the Verfassungsschutz is not a neutral classification. It acts like a scarlet letter. Employers get anxious, public contracts vanish, and career opportunities dwindle. Some Scientologists found themselves barred from entire industries. This led to numerous lawsuits, and in these cases, the courts were quite consistent: Article 4 of the Basic Law protects freedom of religion and belief, and this includes Scientologists.
Judges reminded the state—often with barely hidden frustration—that discrimination based on religion is unconstitutional unless there is solid evidence of misconduct. After almost thirty years of surveillance, such proof remained stubbornly absent. The courts made this clear repeatedly. Despite this, the intelligence service continued to act as if the next report might finally reveal the smoking gun that never existed.
As a result, the federal office’s decision to end surveillance is an acknowledgment that a controversial policy has reached its natural conclusion. Germany had long set itself apart in Western Europe regarding its stance on Scientology, employing public warning campaigns, loyalty questionnaires, professional exclusions, and intelligence monitoring. These actions drew criticism internationally, especially in the United States, where officials occasionally questioned why a democratic ally treated a minority religion as a hostile intelligence entity.
Ending the surveillance will not instantly erase the stigma built over three decades. It also won’t immediately fix the professional and social harm faced by individual Scientologists. However, it does send an important message: in a constitutional democracy, extraordinary monitoring of a religious group cannot become permanent when no wrongdoing is found. Eventually, the lack of evidence becomes evidence of absence.
From the standpoint of scholars studying new religious movements, the federal office’s choice is overdue and logical. It brings a sense of balance back to German security policy. It subtly acknowledges that the fears of the 1990s never materialized. It also opens the door for a more mature discussion about religious diversity in a democratic society.
Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio. From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.
