Karl Laurenz

Karl Laurenz (11 September 1905 – 23 November 1955) was trained as a lawyer, but worked, for much of his life, as a German journalist and specialist translator. He was executed as a western spy on the guillotine in Dresden, Saxony, Germany. Approximately ten minutes later, Laurenz's lover, Elli Barczatis, was also executed.

Life In Brünn/Brno Karl Anton Laurenz was born and grew up in Brünn (since 1919 "Brno"), a large multi-cultural city, and at that time the principal city in the Austro-Hungarian territory of Moravia. His school career concluded successfully when he passed his school leaving exams ("Abitur"), which opened the way to university-level education. Remaining in Brünn, he studied Jurisprudence at the city's recently opened Masaryk University. His studies included a dissertation which he wrote with the title "De poena capitali mutandis in temporibus" ("On the Death Penalty through the ages"). By this time, following frontier changes mandated at Versailles, Austro-Hungary had ceased to exist, and Brno had ended up in Czechoslovakia. Defined according to its 1918 city limits, the city was predominantly German speaking, but several neighbouring municipalities had subsequently been concatenated into a new enlarged city area, as a result of which German speakers in Brno, such as the Laurenz family, were now a minority, albeit a very substantial minority. In 1924 Laurenz took a job as a contributing editor with the publishers of "Tageboten", while also moonlighting as a translator (from Czech to German), and sometimes obtaining work as a simultaneous court translator. He also worked as a correspondent for the Vienna-based Neue Freie Presse (newspaper) and the Ostrava-based "Morgen-Zeitung" ("Morning Newspaper").

Until 1939 Laurenz was a member of the German Democratic Liberal Party ("Deutsche Demokratische Freiheitspartei"; DDFP), founded in Czechoslovakia to preserve liberal political traditions on behalf of the German speaking minority. The party lost support after 1933, following the establishment of the more overtly nationalistic Sudeten German Party, but there is no sign that Laurenz himself defected from the DDFP as the political mood across Europe became progressively more shrill. In 1934, in a lead article that he wrote for the Neue Freie Presse, he condemned an attack by Nazi party supporters on a barracks in Brno, but otherwise he was for the most part apolitical. Even after the German invasion of 1938 Laurenz was not among the ethnic Germans who joined the Nazi party, and according to his own later testimony was reprimanded by the security services for his "lack of political sensitivity" (wegen "fehlendem politischem Fingerspitzengefühl") and then, despite his physical unsuitability, conscripted into the military in 1941. Laurenz himself later placed his political position during the 1930s firmly in the context of his work as a translator in the courts, which gave him deep insights into the political situation. With positive beliefs forfeited, he identified himself as a "pacifist multiculturalist" (als "pazifistischen Kosmopoliten"), acknowledging "just three gods": the law, justice and common sense.

Laurenz was a Roman Catholic. He married on 28 February 1929, which resulted in the birth, in around 1930, of two daughters who ended up, after the war, in Vienna and subsequently with Laurenz's brother at Kirrlach near Karlsruhe.

After the Second World War in the Soviet occupation zone Following his conscription Laurenz had the good fortune not to be sent to the front line for several years, instead being assigned to work on the training of new recruits. In contrast, Laurenz's career was going into reverse. Full details are hard to discern, although much later, following his arrest, hints emerged of inappropriate conduct towards female colleagues. At the start of 1950 his employers sent him to take up a post in Leipzig as a legal advisor to the central Germany Trading Centre for solid fuels ("feste Brennstoffe" coal and lignite). Not wishing to leave Berlin, Laurenz looked for work in journalism. In February 1950 he took a job with Berlin Radio, but was sacked after two weeks. and "deficient vigilance and bourgeois deviations" ("mangelnder Wachsamkeit und kleinbürgerlicher Abweichungen"). One mistake was speaking out against a new law cancelling weekend bonus payments for truck drivers.

In January 1951 Laurenz obtained work with a Berlin lawyer called Dr. Greffin which, as matters turned out, landed him in more trouble. Laby had already relocated from East to West Berlin a few years before. Through Laby, Laurenz met a man called Schubert. Schubert and Laby were both working for the US sponsored Gehlen Organization, the forerunner of the West German Intelligence Service. There is speculation that "Schubert" was a cover name used by West Germany's "chief spy", Reinhard Gehlen himself. According to Laurenz's later testimony, Laby introduced Schubert as the head of "some West German intelligence service", and explained that they wished to recruit Laurenz. In return for a monthly payment of 400 Marks Laurenz would report on economic matters, politics and culture in East Germany. Military matters would be expressly excluded.

By 1952, at the latest, Laurenz was working as a spy for the service, but without knowing precisely which secret service he was working for. Elli Barczatis, as the trusted secretary of Otto Grotewohl, enjoyed access to secret documents which she showed Laurenz in the belief that he needed them for his work as a journalist. In the files of West German intelligence the operation is identified with the cover name "Daisy" ("Gänseblümchen"). In the files of the East German Ministry for State Security ("Stasi") the code name "Sylvester" is used. Over the years Laurenz was paid several thousand Marks, while Elli Barczatis received from her lover a string of gifts large and small, ranging from chocolates to a radio receiver.

Leisurely investigation The authorities were already investigating Laurenz in 1951. presided over the Nbr. 1 Criminal bench ("1. Strafsenat") of the Supreme Court. Neither Barczatis nor Laurenz had any legal representation. Apart from the two of them, the court officers and the prosecutors, only Stasi officers were present in court.

The original recommendation had been for life sentences, but the court condemned both defendants to death for "Boycott Agitation" under article §6 of the constitution.

At around 3 in the morning on 23 November 1955 Laurenz was taken from his cell to the execution room at the National Execution Facility in Dresden and guillotined. Elli Barczatis was guillotined approximately ten minutes later.

Laurenz was posthumously rehabilitated by the Berlin district court on 28 November 2006.

Further context and evaluation

The East German media were not able to report specifically on the trial which was held behind closed doors "in camera". But they did report in more general terms a massive unmasking and the successful arrest of more than 1,000 "Gehlen spies". Most of these were, of course, not spies but political detainees.

Contrasting assessments exist concerning the importance of Laurenz and Barczatis to western intelligence. Those who identify them as important sources Much subsequent comment has concluded that Gehlen, whose intelligence career had been widely discredited by the time he wrote his memoirs thanks, above all, to Heinz Felfe, had reasons of his own to emphasize any available positive aspects of the role played by the West German intelligence service during the early 1950s.

Since the trial records have become available, it has become evident that many of the facts which the court concluded Barczatis had passed to Laurenz for onward transmission to his western handlers involved agenda items that could be found in the newspapers in both East and West Germany, concerning matters such as the scheduling of formal visits by Prime Minister Grotewohl. Possibly of more interest to western intelligence would have been information on economic and industrial matters, such as supply shortages of certain raw materials,

Judge Helene Kleine, one of the panel of judges who had condemned Barczatis to death, was still alive in 1995, and was charged with manslaughter, false imprisonment and legal violations. The court determined that Kleine and her fellow judges had knowingly imposed disproportionately heavy penalties, and she was sentenced to a five-year jail term. The sentence was suspended, however.