Joost Hensen

Counterfeiting Comrades: How East Berlin Promoted Ben Franklin Around the World... Joost Hensen

Remember the Berlin Wall? Well, late 1989, it came down. A year later, incredibly, the Soviet Union collapsed. The Iron Curtain lifted. West Germans and East Germans, the Bundesrepublik Deutschland and Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR), rushed into reunification. With the DDR defunct, the West German federal police showed up in East Berlin to investigate the ex-DDR's most notorious prison in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen. What they found included a surprise high-security printing plant. A major newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, reported the first details. But just as fast the news dropped off the media radar. Why? Be sure to read the full story. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Joost Hensen, originally from South Limburg, the Netherlands, is a veteran of the U. S. Air Force, a graduate of the universities of Nebraska, Arkansas, and of the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. During the 1970s, he worked out of Frankfurt, Germany. Most of the 1980s were spent in São Paulo, Brazil. This was followed by many years mostly in and out of Guatemala. Currently he lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. Earlier books include: "Oh, When We Were Young," and "Chlorine & Claudine."