Werner Teske was born on 24 April 1942 in Berlin and went to school from 1948 to 1960, graduating with the Abitur. In this time, he also played handball for an East German junior team. He studied economics at Humboldt University of Berlin from 1960 to 1964 and graduated with a degree in financial economics. A staunch communist,, he entered the SED party in 1966 and became an Unofficial collaborator of the Stasi in 1967 In 1969, he obtained his doctorate in economics and started working full-time for the Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung, the foreign intelligence arm of the Stasi. Teske was part of the East German delegation that accompanied the East Germany national football team to the 1974 FIFA World Cup, played in West Germany. He was promoted to Hauptmann in 1975 and sent abroad again to the 1976 Olympics. In the mid-1970s, Teske began to considerably doubt the political system in East Germany, and planned for a defection to West Germany using highly sensitive Stasi information and materials as an "entrance fee". However, in 1979 the Stasi tightened its internal security measures after the defection of, a Stasi Oberleutnant, to West Germany with sensitive information. In September 1980, Teske was arrested when irregularities in his work came to attention of the Stasi, and a cache of stolen documents was found in his work safe. Later, Teske was found to be embezzling operating money from his Stasi division, and another cache of documents was found stashed inside his apartment. Teske was tried at the 1st Military Criminal Division of the Supreme Court of East Germany, accused of "planned treason", and was found guilty of charges of espionage, desertion, and an illegal border crossing. Despite the defence counsel's argument that the defection had never occurred and no information had reached the West, Teske received the maximum sentence and was sentenced to death after a one-day trial on 11 June 1981. The severity of Teske's sentence might have been because of Werner Stiller's defection to the West two years earlier.
Death
On 26 June 1981, shortly after his trial, Teske was executed in the basement of on Alfred-Kästner-Straße, Leipzig, by executioner. Teske was shot in the back of the head using a semi-automatic pistol, after which his body was cremated and buried at the Südfriedhof. Teske's trial, execution, and funeral all were kept secret by the East German authorities, and this information was withheld even from Teske's closest relatives, including his wife who did not know she was a widow until after German Reunification in 1990. Until then, she had assumed her husband was being held somewhere in custody.
Posthumous rehabilitation
After German reunification, the sentence against Teske was overturned in 1993. In 1998, one of the judges and one of the prosecutors who had taken part in Teske's trial were sentenced for perverting the course of justice in 1998. These new rulings were justified by the fact that the original decision had been disproportionate even according to East German law, since Teske had planned but never actually committed the offenses he was sentenced for. Teske was the last person to be executed in East Germany before the death penalty was abolished in 1987, effectively becoming the last person to be executed in Germany.
Family
Teske was married to Sabine Teske. They had one daughter, who was 16 in 1981.
