Walter Barthel (journalist)

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Walter Barthel in 1969 in the West Berlin editorial office at Extra-Dienst

Walter Barthel (born November 19, 1931 in Augustusburg ; † September 22, 2003 in Thum ) was a German journalist, a double agent in the 1960s and a founder of the left-wing weekly newspaper Berliner Extra-Blatt , the socialist daily newspaper Die Neue and the Democratic Socialists Party .

Professional and political activity

Barthel grew up in Saxony and joined the FDJ and SED at an early age . He went to the barracked people's police and became a political officer. There he produced reports for the Ministry for State Security (MfS) of the GDR as early as the 1950s . Barthel studied economics at the Humboldt University in Berlin . Because of disputes with the "University Party Leadership" he left the university and the GDR and moved to West Berlin in 1956. .

Working for the Ministry of State Security

In West Berlin, Barthel did an evening school diploma and then studied political science. In 1956 he joined the Socialist Student Union (SDS). In 1959 he offered the MfS u. a. internal documents from the work of the SDS. According to Hermann Weber, he probably did the informing work because of the high pay. Barthel was the IM "Kurt". In February 1960 Barthel won the full-time position of secretary of the SDS. Barthel delivered bundles of reports. Sometimes new elaborations came every day. It provided information on all internal matters of the SDS. He also gave the MfS advice on how to search the SDS office inconspicuously at night. Barthel also provided information about the Otto Suhr Institute and, on behalf of the Stasi, contacted the former high FDJ functionary Heinz Lippmann, who defected from the GDR to the Federal Republic of Germany with 300,000 DM . With the consent of the Stasi, Barthel was also recruited by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution in October 1960 . His agent name there was "Student". Barthel moved to Cologne to contact and spy on the protection of the constitution as well as to get in contact with Heinz Lippmann. At the same time he began a journalistic work there for the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger .

Walter Barthel succeeded in sneaking Heinz Lippmann's trust. Lippmann and he became friends. Barthel occasionally wrote articles for the magazine Der third Weg , whose founder and editor was Heinz Lippmann. The magazine propagated socialism with workers' self-administration based on the model of Yugoslavia and campaigned against GDR communism. Most of the authors were refugee former citizens of the GDR. The magazine was financed by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

Barthel's agent activities were discovered in 1994 in the Gauck authority by Hubertus Knabe (later director of the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial ) and his staff. Barthel's agent activity was already barred by then.

In 1966 Barthel joined the “Novembergesellschaft”, in which Johannes Agnoli and Klaus Meschkat were also active. He was a leading member of the Republican Club Berlin - alongside Hans Magnus Enzensberger , William Borm , Wolfgang Neuss and Ossip K. Flechtheim - and State Secretary of the Berlin SDS alongside the executives Klaus Meschkat, Horst Mahler , Bernd Rabehl and Rudi Dutschke . He supported the movement for the expropriation of Springer and personally “auctioned” the “goosefoots” on Kurfürstendamm, with which the GDR has been apostrophized in almost all West German newspapers. Knabe (not a contemporary witness, but for many years with Gauck ( Federal Commissioner for the Stasi documents ) collaborating file researcher) tries today using Barthel's example to prove that the left student movement, the APO , in West Berlin and West Germany is not autonomous and internal emerged: He names the MfS as responsible . He insinuates that the various movements of that time were "GDR-friendly forces" and holds that Barthel reported as an eyewitness to the Kölner Stadtanzeiger about the shooting of Benno Ohnesorg .

Walter Barthel was friends with Dietrich Staritz , who was also an MfS agent from 1961 to 1972. Weber claims that Barthel was an agent when he left the GDR and that he subsequently recruited his friend Staritz for the MfS.

Newspaper work from 1966 to 1982

Barthel worked from 1966 under Stefan Reisner in from Augstein planned but unrealized after some zero numbers daily newspaper Today and then founded with Carl "Charly" Guggomos aka IM Gustav the Berlin special edition , from 1968 for 14 years of the Berlin Extra service (ed ) came out with two issues per week. Barthel (editorial name “WaBa”) was managing director and editor of this press service for 14 years. The extra-duty crew was led by Guggomos and Barthel; further employees were Martin Buchholz , Hannes Schwenger , Horst Tomayer , Stefan Reisner and Rainer Hachfeld .

In his articles, Barthel clearly distanced himself from the cadre parties SED / SEW / DKP , was outraged by the traditional communist press and castigated their “coded language”; Newspapers like Die Truth , UZ or Neues Deutschland again sharply attacked the extra service . It was later revealed that the ed had nevertheless received small sums of money from GDR channels at intervals. The ed expressed sympathy for the inner-party opposition group Die Klarheit and gave it space, while at the same time the SEW / SED described these “Eurocommunist desk socialists” as “cuckoo eggs” and “business of the enemy”.

After a dispute between Guggomos and Barthel at the end of the 1970s (Walter Barthel was the Bonn correspondent of the ed from 1973 to 1979 ), Barthel unsuccessfully published some issues from a Bonn special service and then tried his hand at a woodturning workshop . In 1978 the same group of journalists founded the left-wing socialist daily Die Neue . Not Barthel, but Guggomos and Buchholz had previously informed the SEW leadership in May 1978 of the planned discontinuation of ed in favor of a socialist-liberal daily for West Germany and asked the party for support; they wanted to forestall Christian Ströbele , who - it was said - started a left-wing daily newspaper in 1979. In 1982 Barthel was involved in the founding of the Democratic Socialists (DS) party, whose core consisted of dissenters from the SPD, headed by the Bundestag members Manfred Coppik and Karl-Heinz Hansen after their party expulsions.

After the turn

Barthel tried to reject the disappointment of many political friends about his opaque agent activities, arguing that the activities had basically served the peace and that he had never actually worked as an agent here or there in the years in question 1959–1968 (and after that, anyway, demonstrably) betray undogmatic, democratic-socialist attitude. The discussion about his activities, his left-wing being and his character started in 1994 and continued after his death; the violent reproaches made by Gerda and Hermann Weber in Leben after the “left principle” relate to the time before, the 1960s.

In 1990, immediately after the fall of the Wall, Barthel rode a Haflinger horse for four weeks about 850 km from Freisheim near Bonn "with homesickness" back to his old home, the Ore Mountains . Accompanied by a WDR TV team, he met his old mother at the Augustusburg destination . Barthel then settled in Leubsdorf with his wife Anna . There he worked as an administrator and caretaker on the property of his friend Martin Buchholz until he fell seriously ill and moved with his wife to Thum , where he died in 2003.

Barthel 1996 in Leubsdorf

Media activities (selection)

Print media

  • The third way
  • Cologne city gazette
  • Today / Berliner Extra-Blatt
  • Spandauer Volksblatt
  • Berlin Extra Service / Bonn Extra Service
  • German General Sunday Gazette
  • The new

Radio / TV

  • WDR 3 (radio)
  • WDR (TV)

literature

Broadcasts on Barthel

  • Karin Storch : Where did you go, what did you achieve? In: ZDF, broadcast in 1980
  • WDR A Journey from the Eifel to the Ore Mountains (eleven episodes about Barthel), AKS 258400, 1990
  • From the life of a double agent (editor: Jürgen Keimer, subject: W. Barthel); Critical diary; WDR 3, January 23, 1996
  • Tilman Jens : Spied on Springer. How the Stasi spied on a media company . ARD 1., broadcast on October 28, 2009

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hubertus Knabe: The infiltrated republic. Stasi in the west . Ullstein, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-548-36284-2 , p. 191.
  2. ↑ Hermann Weber: Life according to the left principle. P. 218.
  3. ↑ Hubertus Knabe: The infiltrated republic. Stasi in the west . Ullstein, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-548-36284-2 , pp. 191-197.
  4. ^ Michael Herms: Heinz Lippmann - portrait of a deputy. With a foreword by Hermann Weber . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-320-01869-8 , p. 213.
  5. ↑ Winkler: Ohnesorg and the GDR. Staggering from one lie to another. Why Karl-Heinz Kurras' career as an informant does not mean that Benno Ohnesorg was killed on behalf of the Stasi. Seen on www.sueddeutsche.de July 7, 2019.
  6. ↑ Günter Herkel: Informers and useful idiots ( Memento of December 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive ): (about Knabes The Discreet Charm of the GDR ) seen in: www.publikationen.html on August 16, 2010
  7. ^ [1] Sven Felix Kellerhoff : How the Stasi wanted to harm Axel Springer , seen on June 30, 2010 on www.welt.de
  8. ^ [2] Hubertus Knabe: How East Berlin mobilized against the Axel Springer Verlag , seen on August 12, 2010 on www.welt.de
  9. ↑ Hermann Weber: Life according to the left principle. Pp. 210-227.
  10. ↑ The Stasi and an anti-Springer project - expropriate Augstein! Jochen Staadt: expropriated Augstein , seen in www.faz.net on August 14, 2010
  11. ↑ [3] Holger Kulick: How did the GDR tame journalists? , seen on www.spiegel.de on August 13, 2010
  12. ↑ [4] (PDF; 113 kB) Hubertus Knabe: Frontstadt Berlin. The secret propaganda campaigns of the Stasi . In: The Political Opinion No. 381/2001, seen on August 13, 2010 on www.kas.de
  13. ↑ Ilan Reisin: Free of ideology and dogmatic or elastic and principled? In: Konsequent , Issue 2/1979, pp. 66–74.
  14. ↑ Documents on the history of SEW ( Memento from April 19, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Barthel, Walter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES WaBa (author abbreviation)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist and double agent
DATE OF BIRTH November 19, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Augustusburg
DATE OF DEATH September 22, 2003
Place of death Thum