Erwin Tiebel

It is known that he had an elder brother, Martin, born in 1901, and a younger brother, Siegfried, born in 1917.

Erwin Tiebel (10 November 1903 - 17 August 1981) was a German lawyer.

Erwin Tiebel attended school in Radeberg (Dresden) from 1910, passing his Abitur (school leaving exams) in 1923.

He studied Law at Leipzig and Berlin between 1923 and 1928, passing his first level law exams in 1927 and the second level exams in 1934.

Between 1928 and 1934 study was combined with work in the courts at Dresden, Bautzen and Leipzig.

During the late 1930s he began working for the security services.

After the Nazis took power he joined the Leipzig chapter of the party in April 1933.

In 1934 he joined an existing law practice as a qualified lawyer in Saxony, but almost immediately changed tactics, setting up in private practice as a self-employed lawyer in Radeberg.

Tiebel was introduced to Johannes "Hans" Clemens by a local bank manager in Autumn 1938.

The bank manager had recruited Tiebel the previous year as an informant for the local branch of the security services, required to report on matters such as the state of mind of the people and their attitude towards the government authorities.

He was now told that his reports should go directly to Clemens.

Clemens was working for the "Sicherheitsdienst" (security services) as head of the "field office" in Dresden.

The Sicherheitsdienst operated as a branch of the Nazi paramilitary Schutzstaffel ("SS") organisation.

This meant that involvement with the security services implicitly meant involvement with the SS, and in 1940 Tiebel became what he described at a subsequent interrogation an "automatic applicant" for SS membership.

Clemens instructed him to keep an eye open for people in the business community who might be recruited to work for the service.

Tiebel gave Clemens a number of names over the next few years and subsequently found that Clemens had contacted the individuals involved.

Clemens became not just his point of contact with the intelligence services, but also a friend.

Activities carried out on behalf of the security services at this stage were not so onerous, however, as to impede Tiebel's regular work in his law office.

In 1941/42 he was placed on the SS payroll in respect of his security services work and given a job at the Dresden command post: the work involved "scanning reports from about 28 so-called field offices", identifying points of significance in respect of commerce, agriculture, administration, transport and law.

He then provided summary reports for Berlin.

He received a "monthly stipend" of 250 marks for this work and at this stage was still able to undertake his own work as a lawyer.

His involvement became progressively more time consuming and after 1943 he restricted his law work to existing cases.

That year he was recruited into "Amt VI" (literally "Office 6"), the department in Berlin that dealt with political foreign intelligence.

He worked on "commercial matters", especially with regard to "currency transactions in foreign countries".

Switzerland was a particular focus, though plans that he should himself be posted to Switzerland came to nothing.

However, in 1943 he was moved to Berlin, recruited into "Amt VI" (literally "Office 6"), the department that dealt with political foreign intelligence.

It was probably in 1943 that Erwin Tiebel was introduced to Heinz Felfe, though since the two both came from Dresden it is entirely possible that the two of them had come across one another informally at an earlier date.

As the Red Army approached from the east, preceded by powerful reports and/or rumours of atrocities against civilians, a key objective for many Germans who were (or had been) members of the Nazi political or security establishment was to get away, even if this meant moving towards the invading armies from the west.

After 1945, with housing in desperately short supply, he eventually found lodgings with a young couple called Pohl at Lendringsen in the Sauerland region, east of Dortmund.

Pohl was a construction contractor.

The Pohls had recently inherited a building business which they were expanding in order to participate in the necessary construction boom that followed the destruction of war.

Tiebel worked for a couple of years on the construction sites and thereafter remained with Pohl as a senior member of the growing business, working in a commercial and management capacity.

He was told that his supervisor intended for him to be transferred to Switzerland, to work in an "intelligence capacity", but the transfer never took place, and he was based in Berlin till the war ended, in May 1945.

The boys' father, Paul Tiebel, who died in 1948, is described as a "master mechanic".

Tiebel was one of three men arrested on spying charges on 6 November 1961.

The other two were Heinz Felfe and Tiebel's old friend, Hans Clemens.

They were all found guilty and sentenced on 22 July 1963.

The court determined that Erwin Tiebel had worked as a courier and he received a three-year jail sentence.

Felfe and Clemens were sentenced respectively to fourteen and eleven years, though none of the three men would serve out their full jail terms.

Erwin Tiebel was born in Dresden.