The Law of Unintended Consequences Kicks In...Again

Spy Fired Shot That Changed West Germany

By NICHOLAS KULISH
NYT

BERLIN — It was called “the shot that changed the republic.”

The killing in 1967 of an unarmed demonstrator by a police officer set off a left-wing protest movement and put conservative West Germany on course to evolve into the progressive country it has become today.

Now a discovery in the archives of the East German secret police, known as the Stasi, has upended Germany’s perception of its postwar history. The killer, Karl-Heinz Kurras, though working for the West Berlin police, was at the time also acting as a Stasi spy for East Germany.

It is as if the shooting deaths of four students at Kent State University by the Ohio National Guard had been committed by an undercover KGB officer, though the reverberations seemed to have run deeper.

“It makes a hell of a difference whether John F. Kennedy was killed by just a loose cannon running around or a secret service agent working for the East,” said Stefan Aust, the former editor in chief of the weekly newsmagazine Der Spiegel. “I would never, never, ever have thought that this could be true.”

(More here.)