Karl Laurenz (11 September 1905 - 23 November 1955) was trained as a lawyer, but worked, for much of his life, as a German journalist and specialist translator.
His studies included a dissertation which he wrote with the title "De poena capitali mutandis in temporibus" ("On the Death Penalty through the ages").
In 1934, in a lead article that he wrote for the Neue Freie Presse, he condemned an attack by Nazi party supporters on a barracks in Brno, but otherwise he was for the most part apolitical.
With positive beliefs forfeited, he identified himself as a "pacificst multiculturalist" (als "pazifistischen Kosmopoliten"), acknowledging "just three gods": the law, justice and common sense.
He married on 28 February 1929, which resulted in the birth, in around 1930, of two daughters who ended up, after the war, in Vienna and subsequently with Laurenz's brother at Kirrlach near Karlsruhe.
[6] Following his conscription Laurenz had the good fortune not to be sent to the front line for several years, instead being assigned to work on the training of new recruits.
[7] Elli Barczatis was six years younger than Laurenz, and was building a successful career inside the SED (party) and, after 1949, in the German Democratic Republic.
[10] At the start of 1950 his employers sent him to take up a post in Leipzig as a legal advisor to the central Germany Trading Centre for solid fuels ("feste Brennstoffe" coal and lignite).
In January 1951 Laurenz obtained work with a Berlin lawyer called Dr. Greffin which, as matters turned out, landed him in more trouble.
[8] Laurenz sought out Greffin and resumed working for him, albeit on a casual basis and without any fixed employment contract.
In return for a monthly payment of 400 Marks Laurenz would report on economic matters, politics and culture in East Germany.
Elli Barczatis, as the trusted secretary of Otto Grotewohl, enjoyed access to secret documents which she showed Laurenz in the belief that he needed them for his work as a journalist.
In November 1954 a hair was carefully attached to on a letter from Otto Grotewohl to the Soviet Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav Molotov.
[9] Under judicial pressure at her subsequent trial, Barczatis confirmed that she had taken papers home in order to show them to Laurenz, but this was never proven.
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.
B. wenn irgendwo […] in der demokratischen Presse geschrieben worden war, dass bei irgendeinem Bau, was weiß ich, die Toiletten nicht funktionierten.
[…] Es war jedenfalls ein Krampf, diese zwei Meldungen in der Woche zusammenzubekommen, denn ich durfte grundsätzlich nichts mehr berichten, was bereits in der Zeitung stand oder durch den Rundfunk gegeben war.
Von Laby weiß ich, dass die Organisation in Westberlin eine eigene Funkanlage hatte, um wichtige Nachrichten per Funk sofort weiterzugeben.
Und ich muss feststellen, dass in meiner ganzen zweijährigen Tätigkeit von mir aus nicht eine einzige Meldung per Funk weitergegeben worden ist."
Since the trial records 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 handlers 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,[14] 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.
[24][25] The court determined that Kleine and her fellow judges had knowingly imposed disproportionately heavy penalties, and she was sentenced to a five-year jail term.