Wolfgang Vogel

Wolfgang Vogel (30 October 1925 – 21 August 2008) was a German lawyer active in East Germany at the time of the Cold War who had brokered some of the most famous swaps of spies or exchanges against ransom of political prisoners between the Soviet bloc and the West. A bridge between two worlds during three decades, he came to symbolize the ambiguity of his time and environment, and his career was cited as material worthy of Len Deighton and John le Carré.^[1][2]

Personal life

Vogel was born in Lower Silesia on 30 October 1925, and he studied law in Jena and Leipzig after World War II and graduated as a lawyer. In April 1946 he married his first wife Eva, with whom he had two children, Manfred and Lilo. The couple were divorced in 1966. In 1974 Vogel married his second wife Helga Fritsch. Originating from Essen after meeting Vogel in 1968 she moved to the DDR in 1969. She worked as a secretary in Vogels office, in Berlin-Friedrichsfelde. Following German reunification until Vogel's death the couple lived in Schliersee in the Bavarian Alps.

Career

He was employed by the Stasi to make contacts among West German lawyers, which would gradually make him a broker for the spy swaps and prisoner exchanges which would make him famous in East Germany. His first swap negotiation was the trading of Francis Gary Powers and Frederic Pryor for Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher (Rudolf Abel). He also negotiated the exchange of Günter Guillaume in 1981, for captured Western agents. Overall, Vogel brokered the exchange of more than 150 spies and the exchange of Anatoly Shcharansky for Karl Koecher and his wife in 1986. He helped to broker the transfer of more than 34,000 East German political prisoners and 215,000 ordinary citizens to the West, beginning in 1964.

German reunification

After reunification, his Stasi links left him open to accusations of extortion, profiteering and tax evasion that culminated in his arrest and later conviction in a state court in Berlin in 1996 on five counts of blackmail which led to a brief imprisonment. He appealed; Germany's highest court found in his favor in 1998 on two of the cases, and prosecutors agreed to drop the others.

Vogel died in his home in Schliersee, Bavaria, after suffering a heart attack.

Legacy

In its report on his death, the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle stated that "during the height of the Cold War in the late 50s, Vogel was the only point man" between West and East Germany because the two states denied having any official contacts at the time.^[3]

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Resources