[2] Karl Linke was born in Görsdorf, then on the north-western frontier of Bohemia which was a quarter in the industrial town of Grottau, and part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
During 1944 as the leader of a reconnaissance group he took part in armed Slovakian partisan operations and then in the Slovak National Uprising against the Axis government which erupted between August and October 1944.
[3] In 1946 Karl Linke returned to Czechoslovakia, between 1946 and 1949 taking a middle management job in a tape weaving factory in Hrádek nad Nisou ("Grottau" in some older German sources).
On 1 June 1952 he joined the Kasernierte Volkspolizei, a quasi-military division of the East German Police Service which would later come to be seen as the precursor to the country's national army.
More importantly, between 1952 and 1957 he served as chief of the German Democratic Republic's "Verwaltung für Allgemeine Fragen und Aufklärung".
Linke enjoyed the full confidence of the country's Soviet sponsors and his time in charge saw early successes for the service which was well supported by the political establishment.
[4] There was a move from Pankow to new premises in central Berlin (Behrenstraße 42–45) and in 1956 a change of name to "Verwaltung 19" ("Administration [department] 19") apparently in order to conceal the true nature of the organisation.
Suspicion fell in particular on Siegfried Dombrowski who was placed under close counter-intelligence surveillance in February 1957, and who had entered the service, like Linke, via the Kasernierte Volkspolizei.
Closer to home in July 1957 Karl Linke's housekeeper, Anna Kubiak, disappeared, accompanied by "sensitive documents",[1] and leaving behind her a West German passport in his name and ten thousand Marks in cash for a "start in a better life".