Karl Behrens

, Berlin Behrens was the second child of Minna and Carl Behrens. His siblings were Lisa (born in 1908) and Walter (born in 1915). Behrens came from a working-class family. As a young man in 1927, he became a scout in the Rabenstein Scout group. ==Career==

On 15 May 1924 Behrens started a locksmith apprenticeship in his attempted coup against Hitler, in what became known as the Stennes Revolt. In 1931, he temporarily joined Otto Strasser's Black Front before moving to join the Communist Party of Germany(KPD) at the end of 1932. and the interpreter Bodo Schlösinger, whose wife was Rose Schlösinger. Behrens joined the oppositional discussion circle around her husband Arvid Harnack. In 1935, he was arrested for selling the communist newspaper, Gegenangriff (Counterattack) but was released as there was no firm evidence. In 1935, he resigned from the KPD. In 1938, Behrens began working as a design engineer at the giant AEG turbine factory in Brunnenstrasse in Berlin. ==Resistance==

Behrens became one of Arvid Harnack's closest comrades-in-arms in the resistance. Through his work at the AEG factory as a designer and his contacts with former KPD officials, he was able to provide political, economic and military information to the Soviet People's Commissariat for State Security (NKGB), where he was assigned the code name, Lutschisti (Shining One, Ray of Light or Beamer). In February 1939, Behrens married Clara Behrens, née Sonnenschmidt, a stenotypist in the OKH and they had two sons and a daughter together. Fischer was eventually captured and was executed at Sachsenhausen concentration camp. ==Arrest==

In April 1942, Behrens was conscripted and in May 1942 was assigned into an artillery unit, as a radio operator. In Haguenau he completed basic training. On 22 July 1942, he was moved to Kraków, then by train on the 24 July, was moved to Lemberg in Ukraine. In a barracks near Simferopol, he underwent further training in preparation for operations at the front. Behrens was then moved to Tosno on the Eastern Front where he began his first military operation. He was arrested on 16 September 1942 at midday, on the Eastern Front outside Saint Petersburg, then Leningrad. On 20 January 1943, he was sentenced to death by the 2nd senate of the Reichskriegsgericht and executed in Plötzensee Prison. His wife Clare Behrens survived the war and became a tailor. ==Literature==

• • • • • ==Awards and honors==

• On 6 October 1969, he was posthumously awarded the Order of the Patriotic War First Class by the Soviet Union. • On 18 November 2009, a commemorative plaque was dedicated by the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district office at Karl Behrens' former home at 22 Yorckstraße (corner house to 91 Möckernstraße). • Karl Behrens is honoured with a stumbling stone at 12 Huttenstraße in Moabit, Berlin. ==References==