A priest on orders of State Security
Stáhnout obrázek
Blažej Müller was born on 26 March 1929 in Olomouc into a Catholic family. From 1946 he was a member of the Salesian monastic community in Fryšták, after a two-year novitiate he took his first vows in August 1948. During the K Action in April 1950, the Salesian house in Fryšták was raided by State Security (StB) and the People‘s Militia and Blažej Müller was interned together with other religious in Osek u Duchcov. He was forced to work on various construction sites, then in 1952 he was called up for military service. After returning to civilian life, he took up a job, while continuing to maintain contact with the Salesians. In 1954, the StB subjected him to a long interrogation, during which he exposed the entire Salesian network. From then on, the secret police maintained regular contact with him and obtained information from him that at least contributed to the arrest of some of his confreres. He was officially recruited in December 1956, when he became an agent under the code name Dub. A file on his person preserved in the Security Forces Archive shows that he regularly received a financial reward for informing the Communist authorities and that the secret police assessed him as a reliable and important collaborator. After the arrest of key leaders of the Order in Czechoslovakia, the Ministry of the Interior began to prepare his posting abroad, and in October 1958 State Security staged his „escape“ across the border to Austria. There, however, Müller was lost to intelligence service for several years, and he probably made no active efforts to re-establish contact. He studied theology in Italy and was ordained a priest there in 1964. From 1964-1965 he worked as a priest in the USA, but then returned to Vienna, where the intelligence service resumed cooperation with him in 1967. He worked as the director of the Czech department of Catholic Charities in Vienna, which enabled him to meet many Czechoslovak emigrants and people who had managed to travel to the West for a short time. He helped them and also informed the authorities about them. He provided information about hundreds of people, some of whom were then persecuted. After the Velvet Revolution, he returned to Czechoslovakia and his past as a secret agent came to light. The interview took place in 2008, six years later Blažej Müller died.