# Kurt Schulze

Kurt Schulze (28 December 1894 in Pyritz, 22 December 1942 in Plötzensee Prison) was a German resistance fighter associated initially with the Communist International (Comintern) and then later as a career Soviet military intelligence officer. Schulze became a radio operator and trainer. He worked with an anti-fascist resistance group that was associated with Ilse Stöbe and Harro Schulze-Boysen, that was later known the Red Orchestra by the Abwehr, during the Nazi period.

## Life

Schulze was born in 1894 into a poor family of bakers, the seventh of ten children. His father was Hermann Schulze and his mother was Anna Schulze née Koft
In 1900, the entire family moved to Berlin. After graduating from public school in 1909, Schulze trained as a salesman for colonial goods i.e. tea, coffee, spices, sugar, chocolate, rice, cocoa and tobacco, then worked as an assistant salesman. Before Easter 1913, he'd moved to Hamburg to find work and took a job as a cabin boy on a ship bound for Venezuela. A year later, he returned to Germany and worked as an employee in various places. In May 1916, he was conscripted into the Imperial German Navy in Kiel, and received an education as a radio telegraphist (WT) and aircraft radio operator on the light cruiser SMS Stuttgart. After the end of World War I, he was unemployed. From 1920, he worked at his father's company as a driver for a cargo taxi. In the same year, he became a member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Until 1928, he was a member of the Pankow KPD workers' association in Berlin, where he met Walter Husemann.
Between 1929 and 1931, Schulze worked for the AM Apparat [de] of the Comintern in Brandenburg. During 1929, he was recruited by the GRU and visited Moscow, where he learned radio cipher techniques. When he returned, Schulze became the main point man for Soviet intelligence in Berlin on questions of WT. During the next decade he received at least 3 sets for distrubution from officials either based at the Soviet embassy or from the Soviet trade delegation.
On 8 September 1929, he married Mart Leishner. After the death of his father in 1932, he became the owner of his taxi operation, which he sold in 1935. He moved to Petershagen and began working as a representative for a Berlin cheese factory. In 1939, he moved back Berlin. In 1940, he began working as a truck driver at Deutsche Post.

## Intelligence career

When Schulze started his career as a Soviet agent, he left the KPD and began working illegally. Schulze was a member of a small Arier espionage network that received intelligence from the German diplomat Rudolf von Scheliha. It included the resident spy in Berlin, the journalist Ilse Stöbe known as "Alta", the trade envoy Gerhard Kegel [de] along with the couple Marta (Margarita) and lawyer Kurt Welkisch [ru].
In 18 October 1941, technical director of a Soviet Red Army Intelligence unit in western Europe Leopold Trepper, ordered Brussels based Anatoly Gurevich to visit Berlin to see Harro Schulze-Boysen and Arvid Harnack, so as to restore the connection to Soviets. Travelling as a Simexco employee, ostensibly on a five day visit to the Leipzig Autumn Fair, he first paid a visit Ilse Stöbe and in Berlin but couldn't locate her. He then visted Schulze at his home in Spinolastrasse 14 in Karow to gave have him a new cipher key to be used by Ilse Stöbe for radio communcations and gave him a 1000 Reichmarks for expenses. However, the cipher key was never used by Stöbe.

## Awards and honours

* Order of the Patriotic War, 1st class