the Central Powers. The mission proved a failure after Frobenius
declared himself a German officer to Italian authorities. Considering
his presence a threat to Italy’s neutrality, they threatened him with
internment. After the war, he founded an institute in Frankfurt am
Main (which included a noted collection of facsimiles of prehistoric
paintings and engravings) and later became a professor at the univer-
sity. He died on 9 August 1938 in Biganzolo, Italy.FRONTAUFKLÄRUNGSKOMMANDO (FAK). Literally, “front
reconnaissance commando,” a Frontaufklärungskommando was
a small mobile Abwehr unit deployed near the front lines during
World War II for a variety of purposes. See also WALLI.
FUCHS, JÜRGEN (1950–1999). A writer, psychologist, and promi-
nent dissident in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Jürgen
Fuchs was born in Reichenbach (Saxony) on 19 December 1950.
Following his required military service, he studied social psychol-
ogy at Jena. His first literary publications began to appear in 1971,
but four years later his writings were banned throughout the GDR
and his university degree was revoked because of “damage to the
university’s reputation.” Detained for 10 months at Berlin-Hohen-
schönhausen in 1976, he later described the intense experience in
his book Vernehmungsprotokolle (Interrogation Record). Despite his
subsequent deportation to West Berlin, officials of the Ministerium
für Staatssicherheit (MfS) continued to make Fuchs the object of
Zersetzungsmassnahmen (decomposition measures) to isolate and
weaken him. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification, he
worked for the Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssi-
cherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Re-
publik, the government agency in charge of the files of the MfS. He
came, however, to take a critical view of its operations—specifically
its employment of former MfS officers and its bureaucratic mode of
operation—as reflected in his 1998 novel Magdalena. Strongly sus-
pecting that the MfS had surreptitiously exposed him to radioactive
material, Fuchs died of leukemia in Berlin on 9 May 1999.
FUCHS, KLAUS (1911–1988). The nuclear physicist who delivered
atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union, Klaus Fuchs was born in
120 • FRONTAUFKLÄRUNGSKOMMANDO