Documents have emerged in the German press showing that policeman Karl Heinz Kurras, who shot student Benno Ohnesorg during a demonstration in West-Berlin in 1967, was a spy for the East-German secret police STASI. After trial, Kurras was acquitted due to lack of evidence.
The shot that killed Ohnesorg on June 2 1967, was to gain profound influence on the history of post-war Germany. Soon after the fatal shooting, the left radicalised and developed its own violent group in 1970, the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF). Now a letter has been found that proves policeman Kurras to be a spy for the East-German secret service STASI since 1955.
Helmut Müller-Enbergs and Cornelia Jabs found the documents in the STASI archives. In a letter Kurras pledged to gather information among the West-German police of which he was a member. Kurras, now 81, appears also to have been a secret member of the Socialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED), the ruling party of the former East German Republic, which stemmed from a merge of the social democratic party SPD and the communist party KPD in 1946.
The research findings on Kurras will be published in the magazine ‘Deutschland-archiv’ at the end of this month. It is not yet clear whether the article of Müller and Jabs will give proof of an explicit STASI assignment for the killing of Ohnesorg or of any other direct link with Kurass’s STASI commitment.
Ohnesorg, a married student in linguistics and a member of an Evangelical Church group, was one of the demonstrators protesting against the visit of the Persian shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, who was seen as a dictator and an accomplice of American policy in the Middle-East, after the CIA had staged the downfall of Pahlevi’s predecessor Mohammed Mossadeq.
The shah was to attend a Mozart opera when the demonstration in front of the Opera House was violently dispersed. Ohnesorg was shot at 20.30 hrs. in the Krummen Strasse, while dozens of others were wounded. The number of demonstrations in the country notabely increased after the shooting.
The killing of Ohnesorg is seen by historians as the start of the political movement of 68 in West-Germany. Ohnesorg’s death later served the radical anti-capitalist Rote Armee Fraktion to legitimise its own use of violence. RAF killed 34 political and industrial leaders and kidnapped and wounded many others. The Berlin terror group ’2. Juni’ also defended its acts by pointing to the slaughtering of Ohnesorg. After the fall of Berlin and the reunification of East- and West-Germany, it became known that STASI had given support to RAF and RAF-members.
The letter by Kurras in translation:
“Berlin, April 26 1955
Obligation!
Stemming from my insight that as a member of the Stummpolizei* I am not serving a good cause, I have decided to offer my labour to peace.
Although I am politically untrained it is my opinion that the path taken in the East represents the right political track.
To help this development I am prepared to give familiar representatives of the State Security Service truthful information coming from the Stummpolizei.
I declare to be prepared to maintain the utmost silence to everyone on my activities.
I am not connected to any other organisation or persons concerning these or similar tasks.
I will sign my messages with the pseudonym “Otto Bohl”.
Karl-Heinz Kurras”
*Stumm-Polizei (often abbreviated as StuPo) was the name of the West-Berlin police in East-Germany. It was called after one of its founders Johannes Stumm (1897-1978).
Pictures on Kurras, his letter and Ohnesorg’s death.
UPDATE
Kurras’s role as a STASI spy was almost revealed six years ago, writes The Local (Germany’s News in English).
Meanwhile, the son of the late student leader Rudi Dutschke, who was seriously wounded by a gunshot in 1968 from which he never completely recovered, wants further investigation into the possible role of STASI in the attack on his father.
