His unhappiness with this position, however, led him to devise a
new arrangement with Tsar Alexander I, whereby he would relocate
to Germany as a foreign correspondent and report on current trends in
politics, science, religion, and law. The tsar accepted his proposal on
the condition that he uphold Russian interests in Germany and avoid
controversy. In 1817, Kotzebue returned to Weimar and established
the Literarisches Wochenblatt (Literary Weekly). Critical of the ex-
aggerated patriotism of the Deutschtümler, or hyper-Germanophiles,
it took particular aim at the Burschenschaften—the new student fra-
ternities dedicated to a moral and nationalist revival of Germany.
As a consequence, not only was one of Kotzebue’s books burned
at the Wartburg Festival staged by the Burschenschaften in October
1817, but Karl Sand, a theology student at the University of Jena,
resolved to bring Kotzebue’s life to an end. On 23 March 1819, after
declaring him “a traitor to the fatherland,” Sand plunged a knife into
the writer at his residence in Mannheim. Afterward, Sand claimed
that his victim was a “Russian spy.” While it is true that Kotzebue
was on the payroll of the Russian government and served as a spokes-
man for its policies, no attempt had been made to keep this affiliation
confidential. In addition, the reports he submitted tended to echo his
published observations and contained little if any covert information.
While Sand was tried and executed, Kotzebue’s death provided a
pretext for the prompt enactment of the Karlsbad Decrees proposed
by Austrian chancellor Klemens von Metternich. Besides banning
the Burschenschaften, removing certain university professors, and
expanding press censorship, they established an investigative com-
mission based in Mainz to ferret out revolutionary conspiracies.KRÄMER, KARL-HEINZ (1914–?). A valued but controversial
agent of both the Abwehr and Sicherheitsdienst (SD), Karl-Heinz
Krämer was born in Obernkirchen (Lower Saxony) on 24 December
- In 1937, while pursuing his legal studies at the University of
Hamburg, he joined the Nazi Party. After working briefly in London
under the German ambassador, Joachim von Ribbentrop, he was
drafted into the Luftwaffe with the outbreak of war and assigned to
the Abwehr post in Hamburg headed by Nikolaus Ritter. In May
1941, Krämer’s undercover work took him to Stockholm to obtain
military information about Great Britain and the United States. His
244 • KRÄMER, KARL-HEINZ