It was probably the only great adventure of her life, and also the last: After falling in love with a spy, Elli Barczatis risked everything for her lover. It is still unclear whether she really understood what she was doing.
She wasn’t what is commonly called pretty: Helene, known as Elli, Barczatis was 37 years old, had a rather angular face, a high forehead and a pointed nose. She dressed neatly and neatly, but certainly not daring or seductive. At 37 she was still “single”, and so it would later be in her convict file. It was there that Elli Barczatis met a man in 1949. A man who was the exact opposite of her: charming, extroverted, daring. Her unexpected lover was named Karl Laurenz.
What sounds like the beginning of a happy ending for the hard-working, dutiful secretary from Berlin, was in reality the beginning of the end. In 1955 Elli Barczatis would be beheaded, as would her lover.
A woman on the way up
Elli Barczatis was an exemplary GDR citizen. Immediately after the end of World War II, she joined the SED of her own free will, as well as the Society for German-Soviet Friendship and the Democratic Women’s Association of Germany. She had trained as a commercial clerk, received regular further training and, at the end of the 1940s, had worked her way up to the position of secretary to the President of the Central Administration of the Fuel Industry, commonly known as “coal”. A high position within an important company. Karl Laurenz also worked there, but although he had a high school diploma and even a law degree, he held a comparatively low post.
Laurenz too had been a supporter of the GDR regime at the beginning, but the Berliner, who had meanwhile worked as a journalist, quickly noticed that his sense of justice and the regime’s announcements could not be reconciled. In 1948 he joined the SED, in 1950 he was expelled again for “behavior that was harmful to the party”. Among other things, he had campaigned against the party leadership to maintain the weekend allowances for drivers that had been customary until then. Later, when he was working as a paralegal, he was charged with “favoring prisoners,” for which he was imprisoned for three months. Solitary confinement.
Fallen out of favor in the GDR
For Laurenz it was clear by then at the latest that his sympathies were more for liberal West Germany. Since the wall was not yet in place, he was able to establish contacts with West Berlin relatively unhindered – when he actually started working for the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) and whether he even knew that he was working for it is not certain. A former colleague from “Coal” played an important role: Clemens Laby. At this point he had already moved to West Berlin and acted as a contact for Karl Laurenz with the BND. Allegedly Laby only asked him to deliver “journalistic material” for the (after all, not entirely a lie) head of an “intelligence service”.
That was what he told his lover too. The exemplary GDR citizen, Elli Barczatis, may have found it wrong at first, but in any case extremely adventurous, when Karl Laurenz asked her whether she could get any interesting documents at her place of work. A question that practically came to mind – because the secretary was working for none other than the Prime Minister of the GDR, Otto Grotewohl, at the time. It is not known whether or how long she hesitated – but in the end she did her lover a favor. She was convinced that it would only help his career as a journalist.
The beginning of the end is a coincidence
The Stasi targeted the couple by a fatal accident: A former colleague of the two, who had also worked for “Coal”, recognized Barczatis and Laurenz in a café. She watched how they met there “cosnpirationally”, the secretary handed the man files. Apparently, the reason this meeting seemed strange to the woman was mainly the fact that Elli Barczak was so much higher in the hierarchy of the young state than the disgraced Karl Laurenz. She had previously known nothing of the relationship between the two, apparently both tried to be secret. The witness knew Laurenz from earlier times as a womanizer who had had several affairs in the company.
The ex-colleague reported the meeting to the Stasi. The then began to shadow the couple. Elli Barczatis was kept on file under the code name “Daisy”. But, although inexperienced as spies and probably not even one hundred percent clear about their own activities – the secretary and the journalist managed to evade the Stasi again and again. Although their phones were tapped and their mail intercepted, no evidence of espionage was found. So they finally resorted to a trick: a Stasi employee prepared a file with important documents in such a way that it could be determined if it were unlawfully removed from its place in the Prime Minister’s office. And Elli Barczatis fell into the trap.
Gallant gesture of the beloved
On March 4, 1955, the secretary was arrested when she was leaving the house where she lived with her mother and sister. Her lover was also arrested by the Stasi. Both spent the next six months in custody separately. They were constantly and aggressively interrogated, often throughout the night. The officers tried to play both off against each other, but that did not succeed – Laurenz even tried to the end to exonerate Elli. Whether he really loved the secretary remains to be seen – the 50-year-old had previously had a very changeable relationship life, had even been officially married since 1929 (and had two children from this marriage), he had broken the hearts of numerous colleagues in the forties and when he was seen in the café with Elli, he was officially still in a relationship with a “Fräulein Rebstock”.
It is possible that he deliberately courted Elli Barczatis with regard to his espionage activities, because she had access to important documents due to her job and because of her inconspicuous appearance did not often get attention from men. However – in this situation, in which it might have been advantageous to blame his lover, Karl Laurenz did exactly the opposite.
A merciless judgment
But finally the secretary herself collapsed under the relentless questioning and reported what she had done. She was remorseful and promised to see her mistakes. The couple went to court on September 23. Their trial lasted only a single day, neither of them had a lawyer on their side. Although both were originally given life sentences, the judge decided to sentence both of them to death. Parts of the trial were taped, including Elli Barczatis’ reaction to the verdict. She looks shocked, as if she had never before realized the consequences of the dangerous favors she’d done her lover.
Exactly two months after the verdict was pronounced, Elli Barczatis was executed in Dresden at the age of 43 – she was beheaded with a guillotine. On the same day, Karl Laurenz suffered the same fate. Their corpses were cremated and buried anonymously. The public and Barczatis’ family did not hear of their fate for a long time. A year later, her sister Herta said in an interview with an American journalist that she had only recently learned that Elli had been convicted of being a spy and that she “suspected” that she had already been executed.
The involuntary spy was not rehabilitated until 2006
It was not until 2006 that Elli Barczatis was criminally rehabilitated by the Berlin Regional Court. One of the associate judges who sentenced her to death was therefore tried (and other disproportionately harsh sentences) in 1995 and was sentenced to five years in prison. But she never had to sit down.