established Liberal-Demokratische Partei in the Soviet occupation
zone. In 1949, he became vice president of the first government of
the German Democratic Republic.
The previous year, however, acting on the advice from a clergy-
man and old friend from Meissen, he had made contact with the
American secret service and began to deliver detailed information
about the East German communist elite as well as high-level officials
from the Soviet Union. Upon the advice of his case officer, Carol
Tarney, Kastner (code name helwig) switched his allegiance to the
OG several years later. At the same time, he enjoyed the confidence
of Vladimir Semyonov, the political advisor to the Soviet Military
Government, but their joint plan for a neutralist reunited Germany
(with Kastner at the helm) came to naught with the failure of the Up-
rising of 17 June 1953. Although Kastner’s stream of information
regarding Soviet policy toward Germany continued to flow, his situa-
tion became increasingly precarious. Reinhard Gehlen arranged his
exfiltration to the Federal Republic of Germany in September 1956,
and Kastner became a lawyer in Bonn. He died of a heart attack on
4 September 1957.KAUDER, RICHARD (1900–?). One of the most productive Abwehr
operatives assigned to the Soviet Union, Richard Kauder was born
in Vienna on 6 September 1900, the son of a Jewish mother and a
former colonel in the Austro-Hungarian army. A mechanical engi-
neer by training, he became a sports equipment salesman in Berlin
before returning to Vienna in 1932 to sell real estate. In 1938, Jewish
persecution caused him to leave for Budapest, where he was turned
over to the Gestapo for lack of proper residency papers but released.
In 1939, alerted by his mother, the Abwehr approached him as a
potential recruit, but Kauder refused the offer and was rearrested by
the Gestapo. While in prison, he agreed to the Abwehr offer on the
condition that his mother be immune from persecution (his own ap-
plication for “Aryanization” was never approved).
Stationed initially in Budapest and using the cover name Richard
Klatt, Kauder also made official trips to Austria, Romania, Yugosla-
via, and Slovakia. In 1941, he was transferred to the Abwehr station
in Sofia. There he took over the remnants of an espionage system
that included a radio network established prior to World War II by
224 • KAUDER, RICHARD