Ex-E. German Spy Chiefs Get a Break : Espionage: Bonn’s top court rules that treason trials are unconstitutional.

Germany’s Constitutional Court ruled Tuesday that former East German spymasters cannot be prosecuted for their Cold War-era espionage--a decision that could clear the names of several hundred spies scheduled to stand trial or already convicted.

Most prominent among the spies affected is Markus Wolf, head of East Germany’s foreign intelligence agency until 1987, a man often called the Cold War’s single most notorious spymaster.

Wolf, who ran a network of about 4,000 spies and obtained some of the West’s most precious secrets, was convicted in December, 1993, of treason and bribery and given a six-year sentence. He had remained free, however, pending Tuesday’s ruling on underlying constitutional points in his case.

The ruling, which had been awaited since 1991 and exceeds 100 pages, invalidates Wolf’s conviction on the treason charges. A Berlin court spokeswoman said that almost 700 other, lower-profile cases would now have to be reviewed.

“The decision . . . ends a long period of uncertainty, defamation and punishment,” Wolf said. He added, though, that he is afraid German prosecutors might find other laws with which to continue what he termed their “agent hunt.”

Although the Constitutional Court ruled that spymasters such as Wolf could not be convicted of treason, it left open the possibility that they could be tried for bribery, stemming from payments they made to West German officials and other sources who handed over secret documents.

The Westerners and others who betrayed their country were unaffected by this case and remain legally liable for their actions.

Tuesday’s ruling applies only to East Germans who were staff members of the state’s foreign spying department. It has no effect on the thousands of East Germans who were recruited into the Communist state’s vast, oppressive network of volunteer domestic spies and reported on the activities of friends, relatives and colleagues.

The court’s decision elicited strong reactions in Germany, where policy-makers and ordinary citizens alike are still struggling to sort out who was to blame for the excesses of the East German state; who were innocent victims, and how all of those involved should be punished or made whole under the laws of a new, united country.

Some critics reacted bitterly, saying the ruling amounted to a de facto amnesty for wrongdoers who clearly deserved to be punished. But some former East Germans applauded the decision, calling it evidence that their kind could still hope to get justice in united Germany, a country where anything and anyone eastern tends to be viewed in a negative light.

The ruling is “a victory for political reason,” said Lothar Bisky, chief of the Party of Democratic Socialism, the restructured former East German Communist Party.

Still other commentators complained that the ruling did not go far enough, as it cancels treason charges only against East German spymasters who ran networks out of their offices in East Berlin--and leaves the hapless Westerners they recruited as legally liable as ever. Some Westerners have been convicted of treason and are serving sentences of up to 10 years.

“It is totally unsatisfying,” said Hubert Dreyling, a Berlin lawyer who has represented several former East German officials in post-unification legal proceedings. “The big people are not punished, and the small ones get caught.”

The Constitutional Court suggested in its ruling that the former West Germans be treated leniently, and some observers are already calling for a full-fledged amnesty.

Dreyling said he thinks the new constitutional interpretation might even be used as precedent in other, non-spy cases stemming from East German times--prosecutions of those responsible for shooting escapees at the border, for instance, or of East German judges who handed down sentences that look excessively harsh under the laws of today’s unified Germany.

When East Germany united with West Germany on Oct. 3, 1990, West Germany’s legal code became the law of the land and prosecutors moved swiftly against the fallen Communist state’s alleged spies. In Berlin, investigations were launched into the activities of almost 700 staff members of the East German foreign spy agency. Thousands of suspected recruits in the former West were also investigated.

So far, only about a dozen of the former East Germans have gone to trial. Most of these cases have resulted in sentences of two years or less. But other proceedings bogged down over the constitutional question of whether East Germans could rightly be prosecuted under West German law for acts they had committed in East Germany.

Wolf, for one--a well-spoken man who is thought to have been the model for the “Karla” character in John Le Carre’s best-selling spy novels--said in his trial that no matter how nefarious his deeds may have appeared to West Germans, they were perfectly legal under East German law.

He also raised Germany’s constitutional principle of equal treatment under law, pointing out that while he was being made to stand trial, his direct counterpart in West Germany, Klaus Kinkel, the former federal intelligence chief, had been elevated first to justice minister, then to foreign minister and vice chancellor.

Some German courts found merit in such arguments; others did not.