THE government is making much out of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s state visit to Cyprus this week, as a German head of state finally returns President Makarios’ official visit to Bonn way back in 1962.
Whether or not the visit is a sign of improving relations between Germany and Cyprus or an effort by the European Union powerhouse to get more involved in the Cyprus problem and remove a thorn in the side of the 27-member bloc, one thing is clear – both countries will be eager to forget a highly embarrassing incident dating back more than 30 years.
In what became known as the ‘Great Conspiracy’ in July 1978, the late President Spyros Kyprianou, accused Paul Kurbjuhn, a former councillor of the West German embassy in Nicosia of being part of a subversive network seeking to over throw the Greek government and his own. This network included Cypriot politicians Tassos Papadopoulos and Glafkos Clerides, Eli Fuchs, an Israeli football coach working in Cyprus, Nissi Beach Hotel owner Kikis Constantinou – who was taken into custody in his speedos – and Princess Zena de Tyra formerly Zena Gunther.
Kyprianou said the German diplomat had been deported and declared persona non grata and claimed that the one pulling the strings was Joseph Strauss, leader of the right-wing Christian Social Union party and later prime minister of Bavaria, a post he held from November 1978 until his death in October 1988.
The details of Kyprianou’s astonishing ‘bombshell’ were published in Phileleftheros newspaper on July 15, 1978. “Josef Strauss’ party in west Germany, has spread its tentacles to Cyprus and is pulling the strings of the conspiracy to cause political upheaval and social and economic unrest in the two countries, with the purpose of causing a change of regime, and furthering illegitimate solutions to the Cyprus issue,” the newspaper wrote.
Phileleftheros added: “The aim of the conspirators is the toppling or the physical annihilation of President Kyprianou and of Greek Prime Minister Constantinos Karamanlis. This to subjugate the peoples of both countries to fascist rule, and derail their national and other problems from the course of their just and right solution.”
Then, on July 19, 1978, in a speech marking the fourth anniversary of the Turkish invasion of the island, Kyprianou said the conspiracy which had aimed to undermine the Greek Cypriot struggle, erode the domestic front and weaken the state, had been nipped in the bud.
Kyprianou failed to provide any details to support his claims, citing “reasons of internal security and public order and reasons of wider national interest … since investigations are continuing”.
The reaction was swift. Kyprianou’s inclusion of Greece in the conspiracy had enraged Athens, which made immediate representations, forcing Nicosia to deny Greece was involved.
As for Kurbjuhn himself, it soon became clear he had not been deported but left the island of his own free will.
“After he left, Kyprianou said he had been deported,” said veteran journalist Alecos Constantinides who covered the unfolding crisis with outraged disbelief. “It was crazy at the time. It is difficult to describe.”
According to journalist and writer Makarios Droushiotis, the German diplomat had left the island on July 17, 1978 after learning of his supposed involvement in the conspiracy through the press a few days earlier. He was never questioned, nor presented with any evidence.
Naturally, the claims, apart from the harm they did inside Cyprus, dealt a serious blow to relations between Bonn and Nicosia.
“The Germans were incensed by the whole affair … to the point where they thought of withdrawing their ambassador,” Nicos Rolandis, Cyprus’ foreign minister at the time, told the Sunday Mail.
A meeting was hurriedly arranged in Germany between Rolandis and West German Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher, with the Cypriot diplomat effectively called upon to save the day.
“Before leaving I asked the president what answer I should give if asked what evidence we have on Kurbjuhn and Strauss,” Rolandis said.
Kyprianou instructed Rolandis to ask Kriton Tornaritis, the attorney-general at the time.
“Look Nicos, I have nothing,” was Tornaritis’ reply, according to the former foreign minister.
Rolandis went to Kyprianou with this, and the president said “I have my information, and you should think and give a proper answer.”
Despite the tension, Rolandis was hosted at a villa near Bonn, usually reserved for heads of state.
“He (Genscher) wanted to confer the visit more importance,” said Rolandis.
Such was the importance Germany put on the affair, especially since Strauss was allegedly involved that reporters, photographers and television crews had crowded outside the villa.
It was not long before Genscher asked the question Rolandis had been expecting.
“I said look, the president had some information but it subsequently looks like they have no basis,” Rolandis told his German counterpart.
Rolandis then repeated his statement to the press, also expressing his regrets for the whole affair.
The Germans were satisfied, Kyprianou was satisfied and that – officially at least – was more or less the end of the incident.
Genscher, however, seemed to have held a grudge against Kyprianou, agreeing only once to meet the Cypriot president face to face in the next five or so years.
It was a common secret that Kyprianou was not well, at least during some periods of his two terms in office, and officials who worked with him were well used to his seemingly erratic behaviour at times.
In 1983, for example – on the day of the presidential elections, when Kyprianou was seeking re-election – Kirykas newspaper, the mouthpiece of Tassos Papadopoulos’ Enosis Kentrou (union of the centre) party, published on its front page a medical prescription for 1,680 sedative pills for Kyprianou. In the event, Kyprianou was re-elected with 56 per cent of the vote.
Years later, Kurbjuhn discovered that a deportation order had never been signed for him, nor had his name ever been placed on the stop list. He returned to Cyprus and filed a lawsuit for libel against the government, demanding compensation for the destruction of his diplomatic career. According to Droushiotis, Kurbjuhn was forced to withdraw his suit, when it became clear it wasn’t going to go anywhere.
Although he was later compensated by the government during the administration of President Giorgos Vassiliou, elected in 1988, it is understood that no official apology was offered.
