officer. Membership in right-wing political organizations provided
further cover.
Unmasked in 1990 by Frank Weigel, a defector from the Sektor
Wissenschaft und Technik, Feuerstein was given an eight-year
prison sentence in 1992 by a Munich court but received an early
release two years later. Whether he was prepared to continue his es-
pionage career with the KGB after the fall of the Berlin Wall remains
the object of conflicting testimony.FEUERWERK. The first of a series of “concentrated blows” against
Western intelligence operatives and anticommunist resisters in
the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Operation feuerwerk
(Fireworks) took shape under the direction of Erich Mielke in late
October 1953. Relying on information supplied by double agent
Hans Joachim Geyer, the operation was directed principally at
agents working for the West Berlin branch of Organisation Gehlen,
although anyone previously identified as an “enemy of the state” was
also to be taken into custody. Its execution lasted only two days and,
according to an official count, resulted in more than 100 arrests. In
addition, Ernst Wollweber used this operation as well as those that
soon followed—pfeil and blitz—to publicize the dangers posed
by enemy agents to the general public.
FIGL, ANDREAS (1873–1967). The founder of the Austro-
Hungarian cryptanalytical bureau, Andreas Figl was born in Vienna
on 22 June 1873, the son of a hotel owner. Although his military ca-
reer with the infantry ended in 1910 because of an accident that left
him blind in his right eye, he was reactivated the following year and
assigned to the Evidenzbüro, where he began to construct the army’s
first codebreaking unit. Among Figl’s notable achievements during
World War I were early successes against Russian cryptograms and
the reorganization of radio interception operations on the Italian front
(dubbed “Austrowest”), which extended into Albania as well.
After the war, Figl received a long-term appointment in the For-
eign Ministry and wrote the book Systeme des Chiffrierens (Systems
of Codemaking) in 1926. Its sequel was suppressed by the Austrian
government for security reasons, much to his displeasure. Follow-
ing his retirement in 1936, he moved to Salzburg but joined other
FIGL, ANDREAS • 107