In 1929 she joined the Gewerkschaftsbund der Angestellten, a trades union for clerical workers, and between 1929 and 1933 attended evening classes in order to gain a higher secretarial qualification.
[1] Although it was not instantly apparent to everyone, the creation of the SED was a necessary precondition for a return to one-party dictatorship in the Soviet occupied parts of Germany.
There are suggestions that Barczatis' own enrolment was not driven by deep political conviction, but rather can be seen as a shrewd career move at a time of savage economic destitution across Germany.
[3] She also became a member of the Society for German–Soviet Friendship and of the Democratic Women's League of Germany, which would cement her credentials in the eyes of the authorities as a reliable person.
She was hired in January 1946 to work as a secretary for Gustav Sobottka, a politician who at the time was the president of the National Administration for Energy Supplies ("Zentralverwaltung der Brennstoffindustrie").
[4] On 4 April 1950, Barczatis was switched to a job as chief secretary to Otto Grotewohl, the Prime Minister of East Germany.
[2] On 26 June 1951 the Ministry for State Security (Stasi) launched what they termed Group Action "Sylvester" against Elli Barczatis and Karl Laurenz.
Lexow reported suspicious behaviour by Barczatis which she said had taken place on the afternoon of 20 December 1950 between 15.30 and 18.00 in the cafe attached to the restaurant of a retail distribution centre (Handelsorganisation).
On arriving in the cafe, Lerxow had spotted Laurenz sitting alone, half hidden by a pillar, in a corner: she had assumed he was waiting to meet his longstanding girl friend, whom she identified in her statement as "Miss Rettschlag".
She then also noticed Elli Barczatis, whom she knew was now working a secretary to the prime minister, sitting at a separate table some distance away.
From 1952 - possibly earlier - Karl Laurenz was working with the Gehlen Organization,[4] an intelligence agency established under the auspices of the US occupation authorities in West Germany.
Elli Barczatis, the trusted secretary to prime minister Otto Grotewohl, was able to access secret documents, presumably including material that she had typed for her employer, and pass them to her lover, believing that he needed them for his work as a journalist.
A version of the recording, reduced to approximately 320 minutes, was found among the Stasi archives following the demise of the East German regime.
The original recommendation had been for life sentences, but the court condemned both defendants to death for "Boycott Agitation" under article §6 of the constitution.
[16] The East German media were not able to report specifically on the Barczatis case, because the trial was held behind closed doors "in camera".
[8] These take their lead from the former western intelligence chief, Reinhard Gehlen, who published his memoirs in 1971, describing Barczatis as "the first important link in the other part of Germany" ("der ersten wichtigen Verbindungen im anderen Teil Deutschlands").
Since the records of her trial have become available it has become evident that many of the "facts" which the court concluded Barczatis had passed to Laurenz for onward transmission to his western handler involved agenda items that could be found in the newspapers in both East and West Germany, concerning matters such as the scheduling of formal visits by Prime Minister Grotewohl.
Possibly of more interest to western intelligence would have been information on economic and industrial matters, such as supply shortages of certain raw materials,[3] or challenges involved in feeding the population, but here again, the espionage alleged seems to have been strangely trivial.
The court gave close attention to a problem in which Grotewohl's office became involved that had arisen in Dresden in December 1953, when bakers had been unable to produce traditional Christmas bread because the authorities, ignorant of the special characteristics of Christmas bread in Dresden, had failed to provide sufficient raisins.
[21] The court determined that Kleine and her fellow judges had knowingly imposed disproportionately heavy penalties, and she was herself sentenced to a five-year jail term.