GLOBKE, HANS (1898–1973). The object of a major disinformation
campaign by the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS), Hans
Globke was born in Düsseldorf on 10 September 1898. Earning a
doctorate in law at Giessen, he entered the Prussian civil service in
1921 and was transferred to the Interior Ministry in 1929. A merger
of the Prussian and Reich ministries in 1934 gave him the responsi-
bility of coauthoring all papers dealing with racial questions involved
in martial law. In this capacity, Globke wrote a semiofficial com-
mentary on the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935. Yet as his defenders
pointed out, he never joined the Nazi Party, and he attempted to pre-
vent a more strident legal interpretation by Nazi ideologues. Besides
his close contacts with the German civilian and military resistance,
Globke met regularly with the Catholic bishop of Berlin and sup-
plied him with confidential information gathered within the Reich
administration.
In 1953, Globke’s selection as state secretary of the Federal
Chancellery solidified his close relationship to Chancellor Konrad
Adenauer. Globke provided the main conduit for Reinhard Gehlen
to the Bonn government and played a key role in the elevation of
the Organisation Gehlen to the Bundesnachrichtendienst in 1956.
Following the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann by the Isreali Mossa-
din 1961, the MfS helped coordinate the attempt to link the two men
in the public’s mind. Its culmination was Globke’s trial in absentia
in East Berlin in July 1963 and a sentence of life imprisonment. Ad-
enauer, however, stood firmly by his trusted aide until the end of his
government three months later. Globke died in Bonn on 13 February
1973.
GOLD, FRANZ (1913–1977). A Soviet agent and later officer of the
Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, Franz Gold was born in Boten-
wald near Brünn (now Brno, Czech Republic) on 10 October 1913.
Trained as a butcher, he became active in the communist party of
Czechoslovakia. His military service began in 1935 with the Czecho-
slovakian army but was terminated with the country’s annexation by
Germany in 1938. Arrested briefly by the Gestapo, Gold later fought
in the Wehrmacht but was captured by the Red Army in 1940 and
sent to the Antifa school in Gorki. Besides helping to cofound the
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