Reports also emerged later that during the 1980s he had passed personal information on colleagues to the East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi).

[9] His evident travel privileges reflected his international eminence, but there are indications that his cultivation of the political establishment was also helpful in this regard.

[10] However, the Stasi files also disclose that by the 1980s he was regarded as unreliable by his handlers because he had failed to provide adequate disclosure of private contacts made during his trips abroad, and after 1987 his career as an informant was officially deemed to be over.

[4] Between 1992 and 1994 Klinkmann worked as Professor for Nephrology at the University of Bologna, where in February 1993 he was appointed Dean of the International Faculty for Artificial Organs.

[11] He also served from 1990 till 2002 as a permanent guest professor for Bio-engineering at Glasgow's Strathclyde University where he had been named an honorary graduate in 1988.

[citation needed] Horst Klinkmann met his future wife, Hannelore Kruse, when they were both medical students at Rostock.

[12] Klinkmann's own curriculum vitae refers to more than fifty awards and seventeen honorary memberships of medical organisations around the world, listing a few of them.