In 1983, Markus Wolf, head of East Germany’s foreign intelligence service (akin to the CIA and MI6), requested that Klaus sit for an interview in which the scientist dutifully described his childhood, his education, his exile, and the atomic bomb, something he had never done before, except with the Soviets.
* * *
—
By mid-1987, it was clear that Klaus was dying from lung cancer. He lay in the hospital for a number of weeks, and when his nephew Klaus visited him on January 28, 1988, they chatted as always, but his nephew had a particular question. The film director Joachim Hellwig was pushing to make a movie of his life. Is that something he wanted? Klaus said absolutely not. A few hours later he died.
The next day, obituaries in Western newspapers highlighted his conviction for espionage, one noting that he had died thirty-eight years and a day after his confession in London. Those in Eastern newspapers spoke of his lifelong dedication to the party as a scientist, professor, and communist while successfully developing nuclear energy for East Germany. The condolence from the Academy of Science listed honors he received including the Karl Marx Medal, the country’s highest civilian honor.
His funeral, a solemn state affair, took place on Thursday, February 11, 1988, at Friedrichsfelde Cemetery in Berlin, the resting place of honored socialist and communist leaders, starting with Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, murdered during the Weimar troubles that first roused Klaus to activism. It was carefully arranged to last fifty minutes.
Just before 3:00 p.m., Grete and the family entered the Festival Hall door, which was flanked by an honor guard, and walked to the first row. In front of them were the East German flag, the urn, and Klaus’s fifteen medals resting on pillows. In the background were numerous wreaths from scientific groups and the East German government that added softness and warmth. One was from the Russian delegation, the first time that the Soviet Union had ever openly acknowledged him.
The organist played Chopin and a string quartet played Vivaldi, after which Herbert Weiz, the minister of science and technology, gave the eulogy, a respectful and thankful description of Klaus’s scientific contributions and sense of responsibility for humanity. He also cited Klaus’s hope for a future dependent on nuclear power that enabled the economic growth of “the Lands of Red October.” He described Klaus’s life path through Los Alamos and the end of World War II, then compressed time to have Klaus suddenly appear in Dresden—no mention of Harwell and prison.
In the audience among the 115 invited guests were state officials, members of the scientific committees, the SED Central Committee, colleagues from the ZfK, and Johanna Zorn, a member of the Free Socialist Student Group in Kiel in 1932, the woman who used canes to walk because of beatings by the Nazis and whom Klaus had visited in Berlin when he first arrived. Another guest was thirty-five-year-old Vladimir Putin, a KGB agent stationed in Dresden. No high-level Russian officials attended.
Except for the eulogy, music accompanied every movement. The Polish socialist protest song, “Whirlwinds of Danger,” and a Chopin funeral march accompanied mourners and the soldiers carrying the urn, the wreaths, and the medals from the hall to the Pergolenweg section and Klaus’s marble tombstone. He was laid to rest amid drumrolls, a trumpet solo, and finally the “Internationale.” A film crew captured the moment for the documentary about Klaus, his rejection of the project notwithstanding.
* * *
—
The actual production of the documentary began a few months later. Its proposal requested that knowledge of the project be limited to a few and that interviews be held with his KPD contacts from the London days: Jürgen Kuczynski and his sister Ursula (a.k.a. Sonya) and the friends and relatives of Hans Kahle. Even forty years after his death, Kahle haunted Klaus’s life. Included in the proposal was the caveat to the producer “where necessary, give a signal to the intended interviewees, ‘You are allowed to talk about Klaus Fuchs, the circumstances, and the times!’” Also included were many interviews with family—Grete, Christel, and his nephew Klaus—and surviving physicists from Los Alamos (for example, Hans Bethe) and German physicists who worked on a bomb for the Nazis.
Väter der tausend Sonnen (Fathers of a Thousand Suns), a production of the East German government’s film studio, premiered in (the former East) Berlin at the Academy of Arts on January 4, 1990, two years after Klaus’s death. For the first time it revealed his espionage activities, the fall of the Berlin Wall two months before having brushed aside any hesitation related to this taboo.
The disintegration would probably have disappointed him, watching the ideals of communism crumble to the ground—ideals he held so close and had risked so much for. His faith was such, however, that he might well have seen it as another stage in the development of socialism.
EPILOGUE
Remembrances, Berlin, March 1989
A white-haired man dressed somberly in a gray suit and dark overcoat walked on the hard dirt path of Pergolenweg, in his right hand a small bouquet of Shasta daisies tied with a pink ribbon. He squinted into the sun on a chilly March day at Friedrichsfelde Cemetery. He was searching for something, and upon seeing it, he approached, leaned the daisies against the stone, and knelt down. He was in front of the grave of Klaus Fuchs. He bowed, straightened up, and paused—perhaps saying something to himself—bowed again, straightened up and paused, and bowed once more.
The man, Alexander Feklisov, bowed the first time to acknowledge his gratitude for having met Klaus; the second was on behalf of the Russian people; the third was to reflect the gratitude of all the people of the world. As he wrote in his memoir, “He [Klaus] wished we could live in a safer world and we probably owe him our lives.”
Feklisov was in East Germany so that the director Joachim Hellwig could interview him for the documentary. The next day he drove to Dresden to see Grete Keilson. When he had first communicated with her and said that he knew Klaus in London in the late 1940s, she knew who he was: Klaus’s last handler, the one never identified by MI5. “But why have you come so late?” she asked. Klaus and Feklisov never saw each other after their meeting in April 1949, even though Feklisov was in Russia much of the time that Klaus was in Dresden.
Feklisov didn’t have an answer. In normal KGB procedure, he would have met Klaus in Berlin in 1959 to interview him about his “failure.” When he didn’t receive the order to do so, he assumed that another intelligence officer had been dispatched. In his occupation, one didn’t ask about those things. He didn’t learn of the KGB’s 1960 interrogation of his former agent until after Klaus’s death. At that time, he asked why he had not been allowed to do the interrogation and never received a satisfactory answer.
Feklisov explained that he didn’t make that decision, and she told him, “Klaus waited to see you for some thirty years. Lately, he was saying that no Soviet comrade who had known him was probably still alive.” Feklisov stuttered a few remarks, not knowing how to respond.
Quoting Rabelais, Feklisov recorded in his memoir his final thought on Klaus: “Science without conscience is only ruin for the soul.” For Klaus, his conscience was a solid core at the root of a very complex man.
* * *
—
Someone once asked me if Klaus Fuchs was evil. Over the years, many have weighed in on this question. Some—especially back in the 1950s—thought he was a traitor, clear and simple. Others, mostly his scientific friends, thought him misguided but an honorable person, true to his beliefs—the person with noble ideals who otherwise would not have betrayed country and friends. And others commended him for saving the world—Official Secrets Act be damned.
He had his own answer, which he gave during his 1983 taped interview. As in any of his interviews, he wasn’t emotionally effusive, no baring of the soul to reveal what sustained him. Instead, he offered a simple moral reckoning, his own reflective evaluation:
There have been things in my life that I must admit I wou
ld do differently. Looking back at those 72 years I have lived, I can see all the mistakes I made and those I could have avoided. But I am deeply convinced that, in spite of all their mistakes and their negligent behavior, if the line of your life still took you towards the goal you had set once and for all; if you were able to reach that goal, or at least get closer to it, if going in that direction you did not lose yourself, nor squander your strength, committed anything contemptible, humiliated yourself, climbed over dead bodies, nor harmed others to get there; if you were able to maintain the moral course within your soul which in every language is called conscience, you can consider that your life is a success.
Whatever others thought, Klaus Fuchs deemed his life a success, undoubtedly feeling “the moral course” within his own soul. It sprang from his father’s teachings, zealously pursued, on the innate worth of the workingman uniquely blended with the political fire in Leipzig that reshaped the arc of his life. From there on, he never wavered even when his chosen goal compelled him to risk his life.
What does one make of a man whom many considered a hero for fighting the Nazis and whom others considered a traitor for betraying his country?
Fuchs’s actions left most people confused, but what they didn’t see was that his life, circumscribed from within, was consistent and constant to his unwavering set of ideals. He sought the betterment of mankind that transcended national boundaries. His goal became to balance world power and to prevent nuclear blackmail. As he saw it, science was his weapon in a war to protect humanity.
And what of the consequences of his deed?
Most of the scientists at Los Alamos shared his strong feeling that the United States should not have a monopoly on nuclear weapons, that the Russians should take part in the secrets and be partners. They would have their own bomb soon enough anyway, probably by 1951. The information Fuchs provided advanced their timeline by a year or two at most. Their nuclear stockpile of a couple of weapons in 1950 might have kept the United States from dropping an atomic bomb on North Korea. If so, was that a bad outcome? Was the person who made that happen evil or good, guilty or innocent, a traitor or a hero?
Emil and Else Fuchs in front of the old parsonage in Rüsselsheim, Germany, around 1914.
(COURTESY OF THE FUCHS FAMILY)
Else with baby Klaus in 1912.
(COURTESY OF THE FUCHS FAMILY)
Emil Fuchs, Lutheran minister, Quaker, and theologian.
(COURTESY OF THE FUCHS FAMILY)
Children playing with toy soldiers in trenches, ca. 1915 (left to right): Christel, friend, Klaus, Gerhard.
(COURTESY OF THE FUCHS FAMILY)
A day riding in Eisenach (left to right): Gerhard, Elisabeth, Christel, Klaus.
(COURTESY OF THE FUCHS FAMILY)
Klaus doing calisthenics with his cousins in 1926 (left to right): Christel, cousin, Klaus.
(COURTESY OF DIETMAR AND SILKE GÖBEL)
A happy twelve-year-old Klaus.
(COURTESY OF THE FUCHS FAMILY)
Klaus in a school play in Eisenach.
(COURTESY OF DIETMAR AND SILKE GÖBEL)
Klaus playing the violin, self-taught.
(COURTESY OF THE FUCHS FAMILY)
A somber family meal on the porch in Eisenach in the mid-1920s (left to right): Christel, Gerhard, Else, Elisabeth, Klaus.
(COURTESY OF THE FUCHS FAMILY)
Elisabeth and Klaus sawing wood in Kiel, 1932.
(COURTESY OF THE FUCHS FAMILY)
The Fuchs children in the early 1930s; first row (left to right): Karin (Gerhard’s future wife), Elisabeth, Christel; second row (left to right): friend, Gerhard, Klaus.
(COURTESY OF THE FUCHS FAMILY)
Gerhard during his underground days in Berlin leading the Red Student Group, 1933.
(COURTESY OF THE FUCHS FAMILY)
Klaus’s registration photo when he arrived in the UK in September 1933.
(THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES, UK, KV 2/1245)
The physics department at the University of Bristol, 1935–36; first row: Herbert Skinner (second from left) and Nevill Mott (fifth from left); second row: Klaus (third from left).
(COURTESY OF THE ARCHIVE OF THE H H WILLS PHYSICS LAB, UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL)
Gustav and Max Born in their backyard in Edinburgh in the late 1940s.
(COURTESY OF THE BORN FAMILY)
Rudi and Genia Peierls in New York, 1943.
(PHOTOGRAPH BY FRANCIS SIMON; COURTESY OF AIP EMILIO SEGRÈ VISUAL ARCHIVES, SIMON COLLECTION)
Elisabeth Fuchs-Kittowski and young son Klaus, 1937.
(COURTESY OF THE FUCHS FAMILY)
The Quaker Meeting House in Bad Pyrmont, Germany; a smiling Elisabeth far to the right in the left-hand window on the day before she died in 1939.
(COURTESY OF THE FUCHS FAMILY)
Internment Camp N in Sherbrooke, Canada; internee wearing uniform with red circle on his back, early 1940s.
(COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES OF CANADA, BASED ON PA-143492)
Ernest Hemingway with Hans Kahle during the 1937 Madrid Front in the Spanish Civil War (left to right): Hemingway, Kahle, German author Ludwig Renn, filmmaker Joris Ivens.
(© PROMETHEUS PICTURES [USA]; COURTESY OF AKADEMIE DER KÜNSTE, BERLIN, FILMFOTOS 118)
Klaus Fuchs’s ID photo for Los Alamos, 1944.
(LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LAB)
The tech area at Los Alamos, early 1940s.
(THE MANHATTAN PROJECT: AN INTERACTIVE HISTORY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY—OFFICE OF HISTORY AND HERITAGE RESOURCES)
Oscar and Mary Buneman with sons Peter and Michael in 1946.
(COURTESY OF THE BUNEMAN FAMILY)
A picnic near Harwell during the July 1949 visit of Emil and young Klaus (left to right): a woman in a bathing suit, Klaus Fuchs-Kittowski, Klaus Fuchs, Erna Skinner, a friend, Elaine Skinner, Emil Fuchs (white hair showing), and another physicist.
(COURTESY OF THE FUCHS FAMILY)
Guy Liddell, deputy director of MI5 and disciplined diarist.
(COURTESY OF BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES)
Harry Gold in an FBI mug shot after his arrest in 1950.
(THE U.S. NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION)
Michael Perrin, the coordinator for the British atomic bomb project during WWII and deputy for atomic energy at the Ministry of Supply while Fuchs was at Harwell.
(COURTESY OF THE PERRIN FAMILY)
Jim Skardon, MI5 Officer, and Henry Arnold, chief of security, Harwell, on March 1, 1950, the day of the Fuchs trial.
(COURTESY OF TOPFOTO)
Grete Keilson and Klaus Fuchs-Kittowski as they wait for Klaus’s plane to land on June 23, 1959, in East Germany.
(COURTESY OF THE FUCHS FAMILY)
The three Fuchs men in the garden of Klaus’s weekend house near Dresden ca. 1960 (left to right): Klaus, Emil, and nephew Klaus.
(COURTESY OF THE FUCHS FAMILY)
Christel with her daughters Heidi and Marianna visiting Klaus in Germany, 1960.
(COURTESY OF THE FUCHS FAMILY)
Klaus and Grete in the mid-1960s.
(COURTESY OF THE FUCHS FAMILY)
Acknowledgments
I owe a tremendous amount to many people.
Most of all, I thank the extended Fuchs family, the patriarch of which is “young” Klaus, who is now all grown up and who sat for many, many interviews with me, and his wife, Sabine, who was a gracious hostess for my multiple visits. His son Gerhard was instrumental in my acquiring court records from the 1930s and documents at the Bundesarchiv as well as pas
sing on family lore. Heidi and Marianna Holzer answered all my questions about their mother, Christel Fuchs, as did Steve Heinemann. Fuchs’s cousins Silke and Dietmar Göbel shared family genealogy and photographs.
Without their collected memories and mementos Klaus’s story would have lacked the understanding that Alan Moorehead tried to find from Max Born almost seventy years ago.
Another family intimately involved is that of Max Born, whose children and niece and nephew knew Klaus Fuchs. Many of them we have lost: his son, Gustav, and wife, Faith, daughter Irene Newton-John, niece Renata Koenigsberger, and nephew Ralph “Rolli” Elliott. His grandchildren who had heard the stories have been extremely supportive, with granddaughter Carey and husband Darren reading chapters and offering advice and grandson Bash giving guidance. Both Walter Kellermann and Walter Ledermann worked with Born and played in the physics/math quartet in Edinburgh with Klaus. Walter Kellermann’s recollections of internment and his memoir were priceless. And then there are the Born cousins: Anita Pollard, Katie Fischel, and Sophia Kingshill who regularly entertained me, offered advice, and read some chapters too.
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