His new position, however, proved short-lived. In August 1950,
Bauer was arrested and charged with having cooperated with Noel
Field, who had been convicted as an American agent by a Budapest
court. In late December 1952, after intensive interrogations at Ber-
lin-Hohenschönhausen and Karlshorst, a Soviet military tribunal
handed down death sentences for Bauer and Erica Glaser (a former
lover whom he had lured to the German Democratic Republic to
prove his loyalty). With the death of Joseph Stalin the following
March, they were both sent instead to Soviet labor camps in Siberia.
In 1955, owing to new diplomatic ties between Bonn and Moscow,
his 25-year sentence ended, and Bauer returned to the Federal Re-
public of Germany, where he resumed his journalistic career and also
became an advisor to the Social Democratic leader Willy Brandt.BAUERMEISTER, ALEXANDER (1899–1940). The leading Ger-
man spymaster on the Eastern front during World War I, Alexander
Bauermeister was born in St. Petersburg, the son of a prosperous
businessman. Active as an agent of Abteilung IIIb prior to the war,
he left the Russian capital in 1914 and was given new intelligence
responsibilities based in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia).
His primary accomplishment—together with Ludwig Deubner, a
professor at the University of Königsberg—was the acquisition and
decoding of Russian military communications, which contributed
significantly to the major German victory at Tannenberg in late Au-
gust. Bauermeister also assumed a prominent role during the armi-
stice negotiations between Germany and Russia in November 1917.
After the war, numerous publications appeared under his pseudonym
Agricola, including a popular account of his various exploits, Spione
durchbrechen die Front (Spies Break Through: Memoirs of a Ger-
man Secret Service Officer). He died in Rome in 1940.
BAUERNSCHMID, KARL EDUARD (1801–1875). An Austrian
spy who briefly worked for the Mainzer Informationsbüro (MIB),
Karl Eduard Bauernschmid was a student of law as well as a trainee
of the Polizeihofstelle (Police Ministry) in Vienna. His mastery of
several foreign languages coupled with his clear literary talent made
him especially well suited for the surveillance of foreign journal-
ists, a primary aim of Austrian chancellor Klemens von Metternich.
BAUERNSCHMID, KARL EDUARD • 21