Případ Karla Löbla. Ministr vlády České socialistické republiky tajným spolupracovníkem StB
The Case of Karel Löbl: Minister of the government of the Czech Socialist Republic and StB secret collaborator

Summary/Abstract: An important figure in the Czechoslovak Socialist Party, Karel Löbl (born 1925) became minister of construction and technology in the government of the Czech Socialist Republic and a deputy of the Parliament of Nations of the Federal Assembly in 1968. He remained in important political posts until the fall of the Communist regime in 1989. After WWII Löbl became a member of the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party (ČSNS). He soon took a leadership role in the National Socialist youth organisation, actively standing up against Communist efforts to acquire a monopoly in the youth movement and supporting the policies of the then National Socialist Party leadership. However, after the Communists seized power in the state in February 1948 he joined a group acquiescent to the transformation of the party into an organisation serving the Communists under the name Czechoslovak Socialist Party (ČSS). He began actively cooperating with KSČ apparatchiks and even became a covert party member. While he left political life in 1949 he stayed in contact with former National Socialists, a fact that prompted the State Security (StB) to decide to acquire him as a collaborator. In 1954 it forced him to become an agent, an activity in which Löbl continued until 1968. When it became too much for the secret police to receive reports from a government minister, the StB itself brought the cooperation to an end.

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