42 Facts About Hilde Purwin

Hilde Purwin was exceptionally talented as a linguist and had an unusually powerful memory.

Hilde Purwin was recruited by the Sicherheitsdienst in October 1939.

Hilde Purwin worked initially as a security services "mail clerk" but in July 1940 was transferred to Berlin where she became an Italian interpreter.

Hilde Purwin sorted and sequenced these, and buried them in a large carefully sealed tin under the strawberry patch beside the apple tree in the garden at the family home where her widowed mother still lived.

Hilde Purwin became "Hilde Blum" born in 1920 and was mandated, under the code name "Gambit", to identify and unmask Soviet agents operating in Berlin.

Hilde Purwin joined the Berlin Telegraf, initially as a volunteer reporter, and quickly rose to become a distinguished political correspondent.

Hilde Purwin formed a particularly good working relationship with West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.

Hilde Purwin regularly picked her out for impromptu "interviews" in the lobby or restaurant at the Bundestag even though he liked to open their discussions with the insight, "I do know that you vote for the wrong side, Mrs Purwin" - Hilde Purwin was a Social Democrat supporter and made no secret of the fact.

Hilde Purwin's father, Eduard Burkhardt, was a teacher.

Hilde Purwin completed her schooling in 1937 and went to Dresden to take a "Pflichtjahr" working as a childcare helper for the Madaus family who were the owners of a major pharmaceuticals company.

Hilde Purwin had intended to follow her year in Leipzig with a further year undertaking a similar course in francophone Lausanne in order to attain equivalent fluency in French but that plan was closed off by the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939.

Hilde Purwin informed "SS Sturmbannfuhrer Hermann" that "she was good with languages and wished to use them".

Hilde Purwin was transferred in July 1940 from the provincial mail room in Weimar to "Amt VI", the department in Berlin that dealt with political foreign intelligence.

Hilde Purwin reviewed Italian and Vatican newspapers and provided translations of those "showing certain anti-German tendencies".

Hilde Purwin seems to have failed, and was recalled to Berlin in November 1941.

Hilde Purwin wrote that her boss, Helmut Looss, "was simply not interested in the work and, therefore, let me do everything".

Hilde Purwin remained in Rome, undertaking the "Amt VI" work, and employed, formally, as secretary to the police attache, Herbert Kappler.

Hilde Purwin served between June 1936 and his sacking by Mussolini on 5 February 1943 as Foreign Minister.

Hilde Purwin began to fear for his personal safety and that of his family.

Hilde Purwin was to "make contact with Ciano in prison and find out from him where he had hidden the papers".

Hilde Purwin ranked directly below Kaltenbrunner and directly above Hottl.

Hilde Purwin was one of five defendants sentenced to death and killed by a firing squad on 11 January 1944.

Hilde Purwin complained to Kaltenbrunner after the war about his failure to live up to his promises in respect of the matter.

Directly after Ciano's killing Hilde Purwin Beetz was involved, together with Emilio Pucci, in helping Edda disappear over the mountains beyond Como into Switzerland.

However, Hilde Purwin Beetz had somehow got hold of two volumes of Ciano diaries that had been left by Edda while a patient at the "La Ramiola" clinic at Parma shortly before her husband was executed.

Hilde Purwin now found a job with a translation bureau in Munich.

Hilde Purwin was introduced as an "intern" into the office of Arno Scholz, a longstanding member of the German Social Democratic Party and now editor in chief of the "Telegraf", based in the British occupied sector of Berlin.

Hilde Purwin's husband was Carl Heinz Purwin, a trades unionist and journalist who at this point was identified as editor of "Welt der Arbeit".

Hilde Purwin herself had evidently come to the conclusion that she would rather be a political journalist than an intelligence agent.

Hilde Purwin later recalled in her unpublished memoirs that it was friendly advice from the former OSS agent Lawrence de Neufville that inspired her to embark on this new profession.

Staff concluded that Hilde Purwin "was too knowledgeable about the CIA's operations in Germany and could identify too many officers".

Hilde Purwin became Bonn correspondent for the Neue Ruhr Zeitung, remaining with the newspaper for more than three decades, till her retirement in 1984, and contributing to a number of other "left-wing" newspapers.

Hilde Purwin became, in the words of one sub-editor finding a title for an obituary published in 2010, "a Bonn institution".

Hilde Purwin was a committed member of the Social Democratic Party and the NRZ was a Social Democratic newspaper, but when the party achieved a poor result under the leadership of Erich Ollenhauer in the 1953 election she published her analysis under the headline "Heads must roll".

Hilde Purwin achieved a notable scoop in the late Autumn of 1959 when Chancellor Adenauer delivered an off-the-record background briefing to a small circle of selected conservative Press club journalists.

Hilde Purwin was not in a conservative clique, but she had nevertheless been one of the 22 founder members of the Bonn press club back in 1952.

Hilde Purwin was not permitted to take notes, but she was armed with her excellent memory, and the chancellor told her at some length why he thought that Ludwig Erhard was totally unsuitable to replace him.

An interview with Adenauer under these circumstances would have been a rare opportunity for any journalist, and Hilde Purwin took her chance and asked him about other issues, such as his policy in respect of East Germany.

Hilde Purwin left undeleted his potentially head-line grabbing statement that he hoped First Party Secretary Kruschev would soon visit him in Bonn.

Hilde Purwin subsequently developed a huge respect for the way that Helmut Schmidt approached his work as chancellor, commending his "Hanseatic sobriety".

Hilde Purwin made a number of television appearances in her capacity as a political commentator, notably with stalwart moderator-presenters Werner Hofer and Reinhard Appel.

Hilde Purwin was awarded the Order of Merit, 1st class in 1970 by Heinz Kuhn, at that time Minister-president of North Rhine-Westphalia.