Soviet Union. His 1948 death sentence was subsequently revised to
20 years’ imprisonment due to new information. Released in 1953,
Steimle found employment as a high school teacher in Wilhelmsdorf
(Baden-Württemberg). He died there on 9 October 1987.STEINER, JULIUS (1924– ). A West German politician with ties to
several intelligence organizations, Julius Steiner was born in Stutt-
gart on 8 September 1924. During the 1950s, he was an informant
for both the Bundesnachrichtendienst and the Landessamt für Ver-
fassungsschutz in Baden-Württemberg. A member of the Christlich-
Demokratische Union (CDU), he was elected to the Bundestag in
- On 27 April 1972, the attempt of the CDU to topple the gov-
ernment of Willy Brandt failed because Steiner, along with Leo Wag-
ner of the Bavarian Christlich-Soziale Union, abstained from a vote
of no confidence. At a press conference in June, Steiner confessed to
having received a 50,000 DM bribe from Karl Wienand, the whip
of the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands. Wienand, however,
denied the charge before a parliamentary committee investigating the
matter. Yet in his 1997 memoirs, Markus Wolf, former head of the
Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung (HVA), stated that 50,000 DM had
been given to Steiner in order to keep Brandt in office, as his foreign
policy initiatives were viewed as highly advantageous to the German
Democratic Republic. In 2006, the HVA connection to Steiner and
Wagner was further confirmed by the Rosenholz data.
STEINHAUER, GUSTAV. A German spy responsible for pre–World
War I espionage in Great Britain, Gustav Steinhauer was born in
Berlin. After several years in the imperial navy, he held various jobs
throughout the world, including a position with the Pinkerton Detec-
tive Agency in Chicago, but returned to Germany in the early 1890s.
Reflecting a major reorientation of German foreign policy, the navy
engaged him to conduct intelligence missions to Britain. During the
Agadir crisis of 1911, he assumed the disguise of an optical goods
salesman, and on his last mission in July 1914, his assignment in-
volved surveillance of British warships in Scottish ports. Yet “N”
(naval intelligence) also gave Steinhauer responsibility for recruiting
agents—a task he performed with much less aptitude. Not only was
his amateurish network composed mostly of demimonde figures and
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