Who is this man?The Person in the picture is a man by the name of Klaus Speer. In 1970, at age 25, he gained fame as the leader of a gang of pimps who had a Chicago-style shoot out on Berlin's Bleibtreustraße allegedly over shares of the city's prostitution market. In 1993, now officially the owner of a gym and a promoter of professional boxing matches, Speer was put on trial as the "Godfather of Berlin" on charges of fraud, extortion, assault, loan sharking, gambling, possession of an illegal weapon and corruption. Despite a vigorous defense put up by his lawyer and former prison buddy (convicted on terrorism charges) Horst Mahler, Speer was sentenced to stiff five and a half years in prison for illegal possession of a firearm and bribery. The other charges had been dropped or dismissed.
Doubts about his leading role in Berlin's underworld, which Speer himself has denied, increased rather than decreased in the course of the trial, and in a 2004 newspaper interview he declared that he has severed all ties with the underworld. Still, Speer continues to be one of the legendary figures of organized crime in Germany, especially in the eyes of journalists and law enforcement officials.