pointing to his contact with Noel Field, a former American communist
spy who had become the director of the Unitarian Service Committee,
the SED stripped him of his executive functions and party member-
ship. His situation only worsened in the wake of the Rudolf Slansky
trial in Prague. Arrested on 4 December 1953—fours days after Slan-
sky’s execution as a “traitor, saboteur, spy, and Zionist”—Merker was
placed in Brandenburg Prison in East Berlin and underwent prolonged
interrogation by both officials from the MfS and the NKVD (Soviet
People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs).
Despite repeated death threats to his family as well as scripted
encouragement by a planted cellmate, Merker refused to make a
public confession and was therefore tried secretly on 29–30 March- According to one of the charges, he was a paid agent of Jew-
ish capitalists in New York and Mexico City who had helped him
and his wife in their wartime escape from France. Concluding that
Merker had pursued deviant policies “in close association” with the
Slansky group in Prague, the GDR’s highest court sentenced him
to eight years in prison. Ten months later, however, shortly before
Khrushchev’s “secret speech” and the advent of de-Stalinization, he
was released from prison. The court then rescinded its earlier verdict,
declaring that the evidence was insufficient to support a “condemna-
tion” of the man. In spite of his promise to remain silent about the
matter (public knowledge of the secret trial and sentence remained
suppressed until the demise of the GDR), full exoneration never oc-
curred. Readmitted to the party but not allowed to hold office again,
Merker worked as a proofreader in the Volk und Wissen publishing
house. He died on 13 May 1969.
MERTINS, GERHARD (1919–1993). A major West German arms
dealer engaged by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Gerhard
Mertins was born in Berlin and served in a parachute regiment during
World War II. After working briefly for Volkswagen, he established
an export firm in Switzerland focusing on Africa and the Middle
East. In mid-1965, an agreement was reached between Mertins (code
name uranus) and the BND, whereby his firm Merex, relocated to
the Federal Republic of Germany, would sell arms to neutral coun-
tries at low prices in order to undercut the influence of the Soviet
bloc. On 26 November 1975, after reviewing eight transactions
296 • MERTINS, GERHARD