FRANKFURT () -- Like millions of other East Germans, boxer Axel Schulz was pressured by the communist regime's secret police into spying for them, he said in an interview published Wednesday.


And he agreed to do work unofficially for the Stasi because he didn't want to give up his boxing career at 16, Schulz said in an interview with the newspaper Bild.


Revealing for the first time the Stasi connection that has tainted East German writers, politicians and civil servants, Schulz, 26, said that he was first approached in 1986, when he was a 16-year-old preparing for the junior European championships and his stepfather had illegally crossed into West Berlin.


He said he received neither money nor gifts and made insignificant reports. "At the meetings, I always told them blah-blah," he said. "I never thought about it seriously."