Joachim Krüger (Antiquarian)

Joachim Krüger (* 1910 in Wüstewaltersdorf , Waldenburg district ), also Joachim Krüger-Riebow , was a German music dealer , antiquarian , book thief and allegedly an agent of the Gehlen organization .

Life

Krüger attended high school in Stendal up to Obersekunda. He trained as a music dealer and worked in Magdeburg and Königsberg . There he was sentenced to prison terms for theft and forgery. In 1943 he joined the Wehrmacht special unit in Brandenburg . In Rhodes , Kruger fell into British captivity and came to Egypt. After his return to Germany, he became a member of the GDR radio station and joined the SED .

Shortly after moving to the music department of the Berlin State Library , he became its director for 8 months in 1950 and was able to steal valuable autographs , unique items and other rarities that he took to West Berlin and some of them from Beethoven in Bonn -Archive handed over. Its director, Joseph Schmidt-Görg , accepted Beethoven's conversation books without informing the library in Berlin.

In the meantime, Krüger opened the Bayreuth antiquarian bookshop and systematically turned out to be a library thief, also in Göttingen . He was tried several times and was often imprisoned throughout his life. In the negotiations he always referred to the Gehlen organization, so that the investigations often took place in camera.

There is no information about his whereabouts after his release on August 18, 1961, or his death .

literature

• Martin Hollender: Krüger alias Dr. Krüger-Riebow: book thief, antiquarian and agent in the Cold War. In: Library: Research and Practice . Volume 30, Issue 1. de Gruyter, 2006, pp. 69-75. on-line
• Eveline Bartlitz / Hans Schneider / Ute Schwab: The Krüger-Riebow case in the memory of three contemporary witnesses. Additions and corrections . In: Library: Research and Practice . Volume 31. Issue 1. de Gruyter, 2007, pp. 84-89.