nist party led to his expulsion for “petty bourgeois behavior” and
loss of his government job. Recruited by the OG, he in turn enlisted
Barczatis (code name Gänseblümchen), who regularly supplied
him with detailed confidential information from Grotewohl’s office.
Laurenz then met with his control officer several times weekly in
West Berlin.
Although the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit had been alerted
early on about the couple’s potential espionage, Barczatis was highly
regarded by Grotewohl, and no concrete evidence had been produced.
In late 1951, close surveillance (code name Sylvester) was insti-
tuted, covering at least five informers. Their arrest did not occur until
4 March 1955 after Barczatis was spotted taking home a report on
preparations for an industrial fair in Leipzig. During their secret trial
six months later, Laurenz conceded his guilt but attempted to protect
Barczatis, maintaining that she believed the procured information
was only intended to aid his journalistic career. Both were found
guilty of “malicious boycott agitation” and executed by guillotine in
Dresden on 23 November 1955. In his closing statement before the
court, after pleading in vain for clemency, Laurenz remarked that the
“joke of my fate” involved having written a doctoral dissertation on
capital punishment in history.BAUER, LEO (1912–1972). A German communist who worked for
Soviet intelligence but later resettled in the West after his impris-
onment, Leo Bauer was born in Skalat, Galicia (now Ukraine), on
18 December 1912, the son of a watchmaker. Breaking with his
family’s Jewish religion after their move to Chemnitz, he joined
the Social Democratic youth group before transferring his alle-
giance to the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands in 1932. The
advent of the Nazi regime resulted in his brief detention and sub-
sequent exile in France. In 1939, following his participation in the
Spanish Civil War, Bauer was interned at Le Vernet, France, but
escaped to Switzerland the next year. At war’s end, he was elected
to the Hessian state parliament as a communist, but he moved
to East Berlin in 1947 and became the principal editor at the
radio station Deutschlandsender as well as an informant for Soviet
intelligence.
20 • BAUER, LEO