Len Beurton

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Leon Charles Beurton , also known as Leonard Beurton , Beuston, Benston or Brewer (born February 19, 1914 in Oxford , England , † October 29, 1997 in Berlin ), was an English communist and agent in the service of the Soviet intelligence service GRU and the second husband of Writer Ruth Werner (Ursula Hamburger, Ursula Kuczynski).

During the Spanish Civil War he was a member of the International Brigades . From 1939 he was together with Alexander Foote ( Jim) agent in the Swiss network of Ursula Hamburger. He appeared there under the code name Jack or John Miller . At times he also appeared as Kuczynski's dummy man. Beurton was a cipher in Sándor Radó's network from 1940 and is considered to be one of the key figures in the spy ring of the Red Three (this is the name used to refer to the Red Chapel groups in Switzerland in the USA ). In 1940 he married Ursula Kuczynski and thus helped her to obtain British citizenship. In the late summer of 1942 he returned to England after working for several years in Switzerland and volunteered for the British Army. In 1945/46 he belonged to the British occupation forces in Berlin.

At the beginning of 1950 he followed his wife on her flight from England to the German Democratic Republic and lived by her side until his death in 1997. In the post-war period he worked for the ADN news agency .

Len Beurton was buried in the Baumschulenweg cemetery in the Treptow-Köpenick district of Berlin , near which he had lived with his family since 1950.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. US National Archives, files released in 2004
  2. ^ A b c Helmut Roewer, Stefan Schäfer, Matthias Uhl: Lexicon of Secret Services in the 20th Century ; Herbig, Munich (2003); ISBN 3-7766-2317-9 , p. 60