22 Facts About Ursula Kuczynski

Ursula Kuczynski, known as Ruth Werner, Ursula Beurton and Ursula Hamburger, was a German Communist activist who spied for the Soviet Union during the 1930s and 1940s, most famously as the handler of nuclear scientist Klaus Fuchs.

Ursula Kuczynski moved to East Germany in 1950 when Fuchs was unmasked, and published a series of books related to her espionage activities, including her bestselling autobiography, Sonjas Rapport.

Ursula Maria Kuczynski was born in Schoneberg, Berlin, Prussia, German Empire on 15 May 1907, the second of the six children of the economist and demographer Robert Rene Kuczynski and his wife Berta Kuczynski, a painter.

Ursula Kuczynski grew up in a small villa on the Schlachtensee lake in the Zehlendorf borough in the southwest of Berlin.

Ursula Kuczynski attended the Lyzeum in Zehlendorf and then, between 1924 and 1926, undertook an apprenticeship as a book dealer.

Ursula Kuczynski had already, in 1924, joined the left-leaning Free Employees league, and 1924 was the year in which she joined the Young Communists and Germany's Red Aid.

In May 1926, the month of her nineteenth birthday, Ursula Kuczynski joined the Communist Party of Germany.

Ursula Kuczynski then took a job at Ullstein Verlag, a large Berlin publishing house.

Ursula Kuczynski headed up the MAB between August 1929 and June 1930.

Ursula Kuczynski divorced later that same year, and early in 1940, while still in Switzerland, married her second husband.

Len Beurton, like her, was working for the Soviet GRU, and like Ursula Kuczynski he came with an unusually wide range of names.

Ursula Kuczynski came with a British passport, and by marrying him Agent Sonya automatically acquired a British passport too.

Ursula Kuczynski Beurton was able to ensure that a substantial number of the parachuted OSS agents would be reliable communists, able and willing to make inside intelligence from the "Third Reich" available not merely to the US military in Washington, but to Moscow.

Ursula Kuczynski was able to pass to her Soviet employers information from her brother, her father, and other exiled Germans in England.

Ursula Kuczynski's visitors were unaware of or unconcerned by her periodic, and apparently casual, meetings with Fuchs in Nethercote, Banbury or on country cycle rides.

Ursula Kuczynski Beurton returned to East Berlin, in what had been the Soviet occupation zone and was now becoming the German Democratic Republic, in October 1949.

Ursula Kuczynski was later fired, reportedly because she forgot to lock a safe door.

Ursula Kuczynski's autobiography appeared in East Germany under the title "Sonjas Rapport" and became a bestseller.

Ursula Kuczynski seems never to have regretted or seen the need to apologize for her espionage.

Ursula Kuczynski was reluctant to join the criticism of the Soviet wartime leader:.

Ursula Kuczynski was released in 1952 but remained officially "banned" and was sent to Ukraine, only being permitted to return to Germany in 1955.

Ursula Kuczynski was able to escape to East Germany before her espionage activities became the subject of any trial or other retributive process.