Aleksander Radler

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Aleksander Radler (born May 17, 1944 in Posen ) is an Austrian, later Swedish Lutheran theologian who worked as an unofficial employee of the Ministry of State Security.

Life

Radler grew up in the German Democratic Republic , but remained an Austrian citizen and was therefore able to enter and leave the country unhindered. In 1965 he was recruited by the Ministry for State Security as a "secret employee" and was given the code name IM "Thomas". He studied Protestant theology at the Humboldt University in Berlin , later at the University of Jena , and reported regularly on contacts. In July 1968, he revealed the names of several fellow students who had entrusted him letters to West Berlin to his senior officers. As a result, six students were sentenced to between two and three and three quarters of years imprisonment for "planned flight from the republic" or "acts against the state" (one of the students wrote that he had been blackmailed for "active anti-communist work in an illegal student organization"). Two of them took their own lives in prison. About 23 young people were prosecuted through his IM work. In total, this was 50 years of imprisonment. In order to protect cyclists, the Stasi let him continue his studies in Sweden, but continued to support him financially and let him continue to report. Over the years he rose to IMB ("Inofficial employee of the defense with enemy connections or for the immediate processing of people suspected of hostile activity").

At the University of Lund cyclists in 1977 due to work on the image of Friedrich Schleiermacher in the Swedish theology Dr. theol. PhD. From 1982 to 1985 he was a professor at the Åbo Akademi . In 1988 he completed his habilitation with a study on Erik Gustaf Geijer . In October of the same year he was appointed professor of theology at the University of Jena thanks to the advocacy of the MfS. In 1991 he switched to the professorship for systematic-ecumenical theology and ethics at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. In 1994 the Berlin pastor Dietmar Linke published the first information about Radler's IM activity. Radler then gave up his professorship at the theological faculty in Halle in 1995 and returned to Sweden, where he became kyrkoherde (chief pastor) in Burträsk . He was also a member of the local parliament for Kristdemokraterna and an associate professor at Umeå University . In 2011, the Swedish historian Birgitta Almgren described the case in the book Inte bara spioner ... Stasi-infiltration i Sverige under kalla kriget (Not only spies ... Stasi-infiltration in Sweden during the Cold War), albeit anonymously. In spring 2012 the newspaper Expressen revealed the identity of IM “Thomas” with Radler. He initially denied stasis, but resigned his pastoral office that same year after the Church of Sweden had initiated investigations against him.

On November 23, 2014, MDR television showed the documentary film Der Stasimann in Sweden (60 minutes) by Ryszard Solarz about Radler and his work for the Ministry of State Security . Radler wasn't ready for an interview for this film.

Fonts

  • Religion and ecclesiastical reality. A historical study of the reception of Schleiermacher's image in Swedish theology . (Studia theologica Lundensia 36). Liber / Gleerup, Lund 1977. ISBN 91-40-04459-9 .
  • Idéhistoriska perspective: från Augustinus till Luther: Kursbok i kristendomens historia . Lund Univ., Teol. inst. 1984.
  • Kursbok i kristendomens historia: teologihistoriska perspective . Lund Univ., Teologiska inst. 1985.
  • Kristen idéhistoria: kursbok i kristendomens historia . Lund Univ., Teologiska inst. 1988.
  • Peregrinatio religiosa: Studies on the concept of religion in Swedish romanticism. Part 1: Erik Gustaf Geijer's Christian personality philosophy (Bibliotheca historico-ecclesiastica Lundensis 18). Lund Univ. Press, Lund 1988.
  • (Ed. with Bengt Hägglund , Sven-Oscar Berglund, Joachim Heubach ): Luther and Barth (publications of the Luther Academy Ratzeburg 13). Martin Luther Verlag, Erlangen 1989. ISBN 3-87513-065-0 .
  • (Ed. with Udo Kern , Annegret Freund): Supporting tradition: Festschrift for Martin Seils on his 65th birthday . Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1992. ISBN 3-631-44992-5 .
  • Kristen dogmatics . Student literature, Lund 2006. ISBN 91-44-32311-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hanno Müller: How a Jena Stasi spy betrayed people who actually trust him. In: Thuringian General . October 27, 2014, archived from the original on October 28, 2014 ; accessed on August 11, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Jan-Erik Andelin: East German spy skötte professorship vid ÅA. In: Hufvudstadsbladet . August 4, 2012, archived from the original on June 25, 2013 ; Retrieved August 11, 2019 (Swedish).
  3. ↑ The Stasi man in Sweden - film by Ryszard Solarz. In: mdr.de . Archived from the original on June 22, 2015 ; accessed on August 11, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Radler, Aleksander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian, later Swedish Lutheran theologian
DATE OF BIRTH May 17, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Poses