Erich W. Isenstead Papers

Erich W. Isenstead was born Erick Wolfgang Eisenstadt in Berlin-Neukoelln, Germany in 1918, to Elly and Dr. Joseph Eisenstadt. Erich attended the Kaiserin Augusta Gymnasium in Berlin, where he studied Classics and German history. Following an incident in 1936 in which Joseph was detained by Nazis and badly beaten, the Eisenstadt family emigrated to New York in 1937 and began the process of naturalization. In straitened circumstances and unable to pursue an academic career, Erich worked in the hotel industry for several years. Erich and Joseph were baptized at the Lutheran Church of the Holy Trinity in New York City in 1940. Becoming a citizen in August, 1943, and being drafted into the army in April 1944, Erich served in a Combat Engineer Batallion in the European Theater during the final year of the war, and applied successfully for transfer to the District Information Services Control Command in Munich, where he was assigned to the Intelligence Branch as an interrogator. As a gifted student with a scholastic bent, and a (recent) former German national, Erich proved himself invaluable to the rapidly developing U.S. efforts to denazify Bavaria and to understand and influence the political culture of occupied Germany.

According to Erich,

"[w]hen this organization was absorbed by Military Government for Bavaria and became Information Control Division, I civilianized and continued in the Intelligence Branch as Intelligence Field Officer mainly concerned with vetting and screening applicants for information media licenses. In October 1947 I became Acting Chief of the Field Research Section, being charged with all vetting operations in Bavaria and the checking of public opinion reactions. In July 1948 I was confirmed in this position which had been incorporated in the newly established Intelligence Division, OMGB. In January 1949 I became Acting Chief of the Research Branch, Intelligence Division and was approved in that job on 4 March 1949. In this position I was responsible for intelligence collection all over Bavaria as it pertains to Military Government, liaison with other intelligence agencies operating in Bavaria, special projects such as Paper Clip, and the files, library, and archives of the Division. The Branch consisted of 5 other American and 30 German personnel."

Erich was still only 30 years old when he became Chief of the Research Branch, and he continued to work in the field of intelligence throughout the existence of the Office of Military Government, U.S. (OMGUS) and its civilian successor, the Office of the High Commissioner of Germany (HICOG), eventually transitioning to the newly formed CIA in a career that spanned the entire Cold War period. Erich Isenstead died January 24, 1994; his pastor and eulogist Theodore Schneider said of Erich's later career, "[h]is work is praised, but it can never be reported."