Klaus Croissant was a lawyer of the Red Army Faction

Red Army Faction

The radicalized were, like many in the New Left, influenced by:* Sociological developments, pressure within the educational system in and outside Europe and the U.S...

, an East German spy and a political activist for Berlin's Alternative Liste and after 1990 the PDS.

Croissant was shown by Kurt Rebmann, then Attorney General of Germany “to have organized his cabinet the operational reserve of West German terrorism”. A campaign against his imprisonment, in which in particular Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...

 and Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...

 took part, was organized in his favour. He was released under bail

Bail

Traditionally, bail is some form of property deposited or pledged to a court to persuade it to release a suspect from jail, on the understanding that the suspect will return for trial or forfeit the bail...

 and fled to France on July 10, 1977, before being stopped in Paris on September 30. There he applied without success for political asylum. In spite of some protests in Germany, France and Italy, the court of criminal appeal of the Court of Appeal of Paris decides in favour of the extradition to West Germany

West Germany

West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

 on November 16, 1977. Croissant was extradited the following day. In a platform published in Le Monde on November 2, 1977, Gilles Deleuze

Gilles Deleuze

Gilles Deleuze , was a French philosopher who, from the early 1960s until his death, wrote influentially on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus , both co-written with Félix...

 and Félix Guattari

Félix Guattari

Pierre-Félix Guattari was a French militant, an institutional psychotherapist, philosopher, and semiotician; he founded both schizoanalysis and ecosophy...

 wrote:
He was sentenced and jailed for supporting a designated terrorist organization for two and a half years. After his release, Croissant started to work for the Stasi

Stasi

The Ministry for State Security The Ministry for State Security The Ministry for State Security (German: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS), commonly known as the Stasi (abbreviation , literally State Security), was the official state security service of East Germany. The MfS was headquartered...

, which registered him 1981 as Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter "IM Thaler“, Reg. Nr. XV/5231/81. His girlfriend, the taz

Die tageszeitung

die tageszeitung , was founded in 1978 in Berlin. It is a cooperative-owned German daily newspaper which is administrated by a workers' self-management...

-publisher and green member of the European Parliament Brigitte Heinrich, was led by Croissant to join his work for the Stasi till her death in 1987. In 1992 his collaboration with the Stasi was made public.

Sources

• In „Erinnerung an einen Freund oder Die Amsterdamer Gewissenserforschung“ (Remembering a friend or researching conscience in Amsterdam)by Gaspard Dünkelsbühler in „Fern und nah, Gesichter, Stimmen 1950 - 70“, 2003

• Peter O. Chotjewitz: Mein Freund Klaus (My friend Klaus), Berlin 2007, Verbrecher Verlag, ISBN 978-3-935843-89-8