Austrian experts two years later as part of the radio surveillance
group within the Reichssicherheitshauptamt. He died on 11 No-
vember 1967.FINK, HEINRICH (1935– ). A leading East German theologian who
was an informer for the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS),
Heinrich Fink was born in Korntal, Bessarabia, on 31 March 1935.
Following his studies in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), he
became a professor of Protestant theology at Humboldt University in
East Berlin in 1979. His recruitment as an informer by Main Depart-
ment XX/4 (church affairs) of the MfS occurred in June 1968. Highly
regarded by his superiors, including MfS head Erich Mielke, Fink
(code name heiner) regularly submitted reports on a wide range of
issues, from confidential conversations with students to contacts with
church officials and theologians outside the GDR.
Although Fink became dean of Humboldt University following
the fall of the Berlin Wall, knowledge of his Stasi connection caused
his dismissal in 1992. Firmly denying any complicity, he was elected
to the Bundestag as a delegate of the Partei des Demokratischen
Sozialismus in 1998. Nevertheless, Germany’s highest court upheld
the charge, and his thick MfS file, once considered destroyed by his
handler in late 1989, was painstakingly reconstructed from pieces of
shredded paper.
FISCHER, WILHELM. A liberal journalist who worked undercover
for the Mainzer Informationsbüro (MIB), Wilhelm Fischer was
born in Prussia and served as a judge after completing his legal stud-
ies. Attracted to journalism as a full-time occupation, he became the
editor of several liberal newspapers in succession—the Rheinischer
Postillion, the Badische Zeitung, and the Mainzer Zeitung—as well
as a correspondent for a number of other German publications. Be-
ginning in May 1841, his reports to the MIB, which concentrated on
how the German press reflected the viewpoints of various political
parties, were submitted under the code name dr. lorenz. A confi-
dential assessment of the previous year characterized Fischer as an
“ultraliberal journalistic agitator of the first rank,” and he openly
acknowledged his underlying commitment to liberalism, freedom of
the press, and Prussia. Rather than viewing his admission as an im-
108 • FINK, HEINRICH