An insight into Cold War espionage through the life and career of Karl-Heinz Kurras, a notorious Stasi spy.
Written by expert Sven Felix Kellerhoff, this is was one of the GDR’s best kept secrets…until now.
Nobody had expected his exposure as a Stasi agent. But by 2009, the time had come: around two dozen volumes of files from the former GDR secret service exposed the most notorious officer the West Berlin police had ever spied on.
On June 2nd, 1967, Karl-Heinz Kurras, as a civil servant, shot and killed the student Benno Ohnesorg during a demonstration – allegedly in self-defence, which nobody believed, but which could not be refuted because of the false testimony of a witness. The shooter was therefore acquitted for lack of evidence.
If it had been known at that time what was found 42 years later through research in over 111km of shelves in the Stasi files, at least part of the latest German history would have turned out differently.
Because in 1955, Kurras had already committed himself to spying for the GDR state security. He literally wrote: “I declare that I am ready to maintain the greatest silence towards everyone with regard to my work. I am not in contact with any other organization or person regarding this or similar work. Should I be approached, please let me know immediately. I will sign my reports with the code name “Otto Bohl”. This declaration of commitment was signed with his name: Karl-Heinz Kurras.
In the following twelve years, Kurras delivered internals to the West Berlin police in East Berlin. The volumes of his Stasi files show without a doubt that he was a top source, probably even the most important agent that the GDR secret service agents ever managed in the West Berlin police.
Kurras was paid very well for his services: from an initial DM 550 in 1955, his fee rose to DM 4,500 in 1966. In the first two months of 1967 alone he received 2,000 marks and in May of the same year he received 1,000. Given the average monthly net income of 668 marks in mid-1966, this was a generous wage.
After the fatal shot on June 2, 1967, the Stasi broke off contact with Kurras, who was now considered an enemy of the left-wing movement of 1968 and was followed by journalists. His agent file was placed under lock and key in a particularly secret part of the Stasi filing system. That is why it largely survived German reunification and was only discovered by chance in 2009.
Thousands of sheets of reports by Kurras himself, his commanding officers, and his two most important couriers provide unique insights into the practice of spying in Berlin during the hottest times of the Cold War, the years before and after the construction of the Berlin Wall.
It is precisely possible to understand how Kurras kept in contact with his clients, how he drove conspiratorially to the eastern part of the four-sector city before August 13, 1961 to meet his commanding officer, and how he crossed two eastern Berlin pensioners who were allowed to freely cross the border kept in touch.
His file also contains one-time codes for encrypting secret messages, instructions for warnings on the GDR radio, original postcards with which Kurras confirmed orders, and numerous other details of his activity as a spy.
Further material can be used to determine the damage he caused. For example, information from Kurras was critical to extortion and disinformation campaigns in the late 1950s. He made it possible for a Stasi agent, who later became his courier, to look into secret documents belonging to the West Berlin police. After the wall was built, Kurras revealed information about escape helpers and superiors as well as about Stasi agents who had been sent to the West but who then revealed themselves to the authorities of the protecting powers and became double agents.
However, the Kurras file does not answer one question: Why did he shoot Benno Ohnesorg on June 2, 1967? It was not an order from East Berlin, because the murder, which was never punished, meant that the State Security lost its most important spy in the West Berlin police.
Capital of Spies
By Bernd von Kostka and Sven Felix Kellerhoff
For almost half a century, the hottest front in the Cold War was right across Berlin. From summer 1945 until 1990, the secret services of NATO and the Warsaw Pact fought an ongoing duel in the dark. Throughout the Cold War, espionage was part of everyday life in both East and West Berlin, with German spies playing a crucial part of operations on both sides. The construction of the wall in 1961 changed the political situation and the environment for espionage – the invisible front was now concreted and unmistakable. But the fundamentals had not changed: Berlin was and would remain the capital of spies until the fall of the Berlin Wall. In this book Journalist Sven Felix Kellerhoff and historian Bernd von Kostka describe the spectacular successes and failures of the various secret services based in the city.
Bernd Von Kostka is curator at the Allied Cold War Museum in Berlin.
Sven Felix Kellerhoff is a journalist.
Casemate | Hardback | £25.00
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