ABSTRACT
Dr Walter Linse was kidnapped in broad daylight on 8 July 1952, from the street outside his home in Lichterfelde-West. The 48-year-old was a Department Head for the Free Jurists. The kidnappers were all career criminals serving long sentences in East Berlin. The gang was made up of murderers, bank robbers, burglars and prostitutes, carefully selected by the Stasi. The SED loudly claimed that western culture deliberately rendered young people criminal, in order to exploit them for ‘psychological warfare’. After the kidnapping, the criminals carried on committing crimes in the western sectors; ultimately this made them easier to catch. In November 1952, a 21-year-old ‘girl journalist’, Ruth P. from East Berlin, fled to the West and confessed to involvement in the Linse kidnapping. Her job had been to provide surveillance of selected West Berliners to assist in their extraction. The Stasi file switches straight from Linse’s ‘arrest’ to the months of interrogation he underwent.
