Wolfgang Vogel; Integral in Cold War Swaps

Wolfgang Vogel, 82, an East German lawyer who became the go-between for thousands of spy swaps and prisoner exchanges during the Cold War, died Aug. 21 at his home in the Bavarian city of Schliersee after a heart attack.

An unofficial emissary who operated in the twilight world of postwar divided Germany, Mr. Vogel had the unlikely distinction of winning the confidences of West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and East German leader Erich Honecker. They and thousands of East Germans desperate to flee to the West relied on Mr. Vogel's intermediary skills, and also knew that Mr. Vogel was the man who could make it happen.

In addition to helping arrange East-West prisoner exchanges, he facilitated the 1962 exchange of Brooklyn-based KGB spy Rudolf Abel, for Francis Gary Powers, the U.S. pilot shot down over the Soviet Union while piloting a U-2 spy plane. He also crafted the complex exchange agreement that freed Anatoly Shcharansky (future Israeli cabinet minister Natan Sharansky), the Jewish dissident who was imprisoned by the Soviet Union for almost nine years as an alleged U.S. spy.

For 30 years, Mr. Vogel negotiated ever-more-complex deals that involved multiple governments, as well as hard currency and raw commodities that East Germany desperately needed. He facilitated the return of most major Eastern bloc spies, several U.S. and British agents and an Israeli pilot imprisoned in Mozambique.

He negotiated the release of 33,755 countrymen convicted of political crimes in the East and arranged for the departure of an additional 215,019 East German civilians. Their freedom was bought by the West German government, who paid their East German counterpart a cumulative $2.4 billion. The West Germans also paid Mr. Vogel more than $200,000 annually for his services.

A dapper man who rode around gray and grim East Berlin in a gold-colored Mercedes, his wife at the wheel, Mr. Vogel bridled at accusations that he had profited from the grim business of selling people.

"Such statements hurt and anger me," he told a French TV correspondent in 1978, "especially if I get attacked personally, called a playboy, a privileged person, and it is inferred that I have Swiss bank accounts. What I do . . . gets twists and presented as conspiratorial. But I am convinced that we have done well for the citizens of both German states."

Wolfgang Heinrich Vogel was born Oct. 30, 1925, in Wilhelmsthal, Silesia, then in eastern Germany. After serving in the Luftwaffe during World War II, he and his family were forced from their homes when advancing Soviet armies moved in and a postwar treaty yielded Silesia to Poland. He settled in Jena in the Soviet zone of occupation and studied law at the local university before transferring to the University of Leipzig, graduating in 1948.

After serving a legal apprenticeship to a senior judge, he took a position in the East German Justice Ministry in 1952. By decade's end, he had opened a law practice in East Berlin and gained the right to practice in West Berlin as well.

He also established a relationship with the East German state security and spy agency known as the Stasi. First an informant and then a "secret collaborator" -- code name Georg -- he became a protege of Stasi officer Heinz Volpert, who recognized his potential.

As a spy trader, the suave young lawyer had his first success negotiating the release of American students accused of helping East German friends escape to the West. Through that and subsequent cases, he became a familiar figure to attorneys working for the West German government and to U.S. lawyers.

He became even more familiar when the Soviet KGB recruited him in 1957 to bargain for the release of Abel, who had been convicted in a Brooklyn court two years earlier of running a Soviet spy ring. When the Soviets shot down the U-2 piloted by Powers in 1960, they had a hostage to offer.