Ursula Kuczynski
| Ruth Werner | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Ursula Maria Kuczynski 15 May 1907 Schöneberg (Berlin), Germany |
| Died | 7 July 2000 Berlin, Germany |
| Occupation | Spy writer |
| Political party |
KPD (1926) SED (1950) |
| Spouse(s) | (1929) Leon Charles Beurton (1940) |
| Children | (1931) Janina Hamburger(1936) Peter John Beurton (1943) |
Ursula Kuczynski (15 May 1907, Schöneberg, Prussia, German Empire – 7 July 2000, Berlin, Germany, also known as Ruth Werner, Ursula Beurton and Ursula Hamburger) was a German Communist activist who worked for the Soviet Union in the 1930s and 1940s as a spy, most famously as the handler of nuclear scientist Klaus Fuchs. She moved to East Germany in 1950 when Fuchs was unmasked, and published a series of books related to her spy work, including her bestselling autobiography, Sonjas Rapport.
Sources concerned with her espionage work in the 1930s/40s sometimes use the cover name originally suggested to her in Shanghai by her fellow intelligence operative, Richard Sorge: "Sonja", "Sonja Schultz" or, after she moved to Britain, "Sonya".
Ursula Maria Kuczynski was second of the six recorded children born to the distinguished economist and demographer Robert René Kuczynski and his wife Berta Gradenwitz/Kuczynski, who was a painter. The children were academically gifted and the family was prosperous. Her elder brother, Jürgen would later become a distinguished historian-economist who had a controversial relationship of his own with the espionage community. Ursula grew up in a small villa in the Schlachtensee quarter in the southwest of Berlin. When she was eleven she landed a screen role in the cinema musical version of Das Dreimäderlhaus ("The House of 3 Girls") produced in 1918 by Richard Oswald.
She attended the Lyzeum (secondary school) in Berlin-Zehlendorf and then, between 1924 and 1926, undertook an apprenticeship as a book dealer. She had already, in 1924, joined the left-leaning Free Employees league (AfA-Bund), and 1924 was also the year in which she joined the Young Communists (KJVD) and Germany's Red Aid (Rote Hilfe). In 1926, the year of her nineteenth birthday, Ursula Kuczynski joined the Communist Party of Germany.
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