Eduard Zimmermann

Eduard Zimmermann (4 February 1929 – 19 September 2009) was a German journalist, television presenter and security expert. Life Eduard Zimmermann was born on 4 February 1929 in Alte Heide in the borough of Schwabing-Freimann in Munich, Germany to a teenage mother who worked as a waitress. Shortly before the Second World War Zimmermann moved to his grandparents house in Ottobrunn. At the end of the war Zimmermann moved to the city of Magdeburg where his mother had married a hotelier, and where Zimmermann was first employed at his stepfather's hotel. Following the Second World War the man who would later be known as a 'criminal hunter' and 'crook's bane' eked out a living as a thief and black market trader, for which he served a sentence at Fuhlsbüttel Prison. With a false identity and diploma he finally found work as a roadworks engineer in Sweden. Zimmermann returned to the Soviet occupation zone in Germany on an assignment for Dagens Nyheter newspaper. There he was charged with espionage in 1950 and sentenced to 25 years in prison. He served five years of his sentence in Bautzen and was released early on 17 January 1954 in the run-up to the Berlin Conference.