Early years Heinz Felfe was born in
Dresden, in the southern part of what was then the central part of
Germany. His father was a
Criminal Investigation officer (Kriminalbeamter). Two years later, in January 1933, the
NSDAP (Nazi Party) took power in Germany, and in 1936, the year of his eighteenth birthday, Heinz Felfe became one of Germany's (by then) nearly four million
Nazi party members
National socialist years 1936 was also the year in which Heinz Felfe joined the
SS / Schutzstaffel (membership number 286,288). as part of a broader strategy to undermine the
British currency internationally. Towards the end of the war he was promoted to the rank of
SS-Obersturmführer (roughly equivalent to a
First lieutenant) and, in December 1944, transferred to the Netherlands According to a credible 1969 press report much of his energy while in the Netherlands implied a personal rivalry with his father, a Dresden-based Criminal Investigation Officer of evidently overbearing character, who was by origin a member of Germany's
Sorbian ethnic minority. and
Bonn Soviet intelligence At some point between 1949
West German intelligence Barely two months after his formal recruitment by Soviet Intelligence,
Wilhelm Krichbaum recruited Heinz Felfe into the
Gehlen Organization in November 1951. Within the West German service, Felfe rose rapidly to the relatively senior rank of
Regierungsrat. Felfe also stated that he had provided the west with a detailed plan of the KGB headquarters in
Karlshorst on the south side of Berlin, something which Gehlen loved to show high-ranking intelligence chiefs from his country's western allies. As head of the department responsible for Soviet counter-intelligence, one of Felfe's longest running projects involved his leadership of "Panoptikum", an operation to uncover a "
mole" believed to be operating at a high level within the West German Intelligence Service. In the end, the target of "Panoptikum" would turn out to be Heinz Felfe. After his arrest in 1961, the court found that during ten years as an active double agent Felfe had photographed more than 15,000 secret documents and transmitted countless messages by radio, or using one of his personal contacts. From the West German perspective, however, his treachery inflicted serious damage. He betrayed the leadership of the Federal Intelligence Service. The same day the West German intelligence services received a message from their US counterparts, "Congratulations. You found your Felfe: we're still looking for ours" (
"Glückwunsch -- Ihr habt Euren Felfe entdeckt, wir unseren noch nicht."). but the available indications are that the CIC never shared their doubts with the CIA which was in some ways a rival operation. In the end it was a Soviet defector, a KGB major called
Anatoliy Golitsyn, who in October 1961 provided the decisive information that led to Felfe. Looking back there were those who judged the intelligence that Felfe obtained too good to be true. On the other hand, right up till his unmasking in November 1961 Felfe retained the stubborn backing of the agency's powerful chief, Reinhard Gehlen, who is on record with his appreciation of the quality of Felfe's intelligence. There are also suggestions in retrospective intelligence analyses that the sheer extent to which West German intelligence was penetrated by the Soviets during the 1950s may have meant that there were more senior people in it ready to protect Felfe than will ever become public. Clemens received a 10-years sentence for treason. On 22 July 1963 the
Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe found the three men guilty of spying for the Soviet Union. Their jail terms were set at 3, 11 and 14 years. The 14 year sentence went to Felfe.who had been convicted in the Soviet Union for spying because they had allegedly been caught writing down the license plate numbers of Soviet military vehicles on behalf of the CIA. The exchange took place at
Herleshausen, by then one of the few border check points still open along the
inner German border that divided East and West Germany. It came about only following massive pressure from the German Democratic Republic which threatened to break off the secret
political prisoner ransom scheme that the two Germanys had been quietly operating since 1964. It happened in the face of strong opposition from
Gerhard Wessel, who in 1968 had taken over from Gehlen as head of West German Intelligence. The number of political detainees exchanged for him and the extent of the pressure the Soviets were willing to apply through their East German proxies in support of Felfe's release testify to his importance in the eyes of Soviet intelligence. Following his release Felfe worked briefly for the KGB before returning to East Berlin where, in 1972, he became a Professor for
Criminalistics at
East Berlin's
Humboldt University. ==The memoir==