a shipyard worker, he took part in the November Revolution of 1918
and joined the German Communist Youth League the following year,
soon holding his first leadership position. Gyptner also worked for
the Communist Youth International, traveling between Berlin and
Moscow; he was elected to its executive committee in 1922 and then
reelected in 1924. Working under different code names—magnus,
richard, and alarich—he also handled various assignments for the
secret apparatus of the Comintern. Engaged in illegal work in Ger-
many in 1933, he was eventually forced to flee. He was also briefly
in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. His son Rudolf, born in 1922,
was trained in undercover work in the Soviet Union and sent to oc-
cupied Poland in August 1944 as a radio operator. German forces,
however, captured and shot him two months later.
Gyptner returned to Germany in 1945 as a member of the “Ul-
bricht Group,” the first German delegation arriving from the Soviet
Union. He served briefly as the vice president of the People’s Police.
His ambassadorial postings included the People’s Republic of China,
Egypt, and Poland. Retiring in 1964, he died on 2 December 1972.GYSI, GREGOR (1948– ). A leader of the East German reform com-
munist party who was accused of earlier involvement with the Minis-
terium für Staatssicherheit (MfS), Gregor Gysi was born in Berlin
on 16 January 1948, the son of a diplomat of the German Democratic
Republic (GDR). Although trained in his youth as a cattle farmer, he
studied law at Humboldt University in East Berlin, becoming in 1971
one of the few licensed attorneys in the GDR. He defended many
notable dissidents, including Rudolf Bahro, Robert Havemann,
Lutz Rathenow, Ulrike Poppe, and Bärbel Bohley. A member of the
Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED) since 1967, he later
became a vocal advocate of reformist policies in the spirit of glasnost
and perestroika in the Soviet Union. With the collapse of the GDR in
1990, Gysi emerged as the general secretary of the SED’s successor,
the Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus (PDS), and gained a seat
in the Bundestag in the first postunification elections. His quick wit
and relative youthfulness made him a natural leader in the eyes of
many East Germans.
In 1992, accusations circulated that Gysi had been a Stasi infor-
mant who passed on information to the MfS regarding his dissident
156 • GYSI, GREGOR