Gabriele Gast

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Gabriele Gast (born March 2, 1943 in Remscheid ) is a former German double agent in the Cold War .

Guest worked for more than 20 years as a foreign IM and spy for the Ministry for State Security (Stasi) and in the main investigation department (HVA; foreign secret service of the GDR ), from 1968 until the HVA was dissolved in 1989/90.

In addition, from 1973 until her exposure and arrest in 1990, Gast was an employee of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND; Foreign Secret Service of the Federal Republic of Germany), most recently with the rank of government director .

Life and education

Gast grew up in a conservative family. She studied political science and became a member of the RCDS and the CDU . In 1972, she was at the RWTH Aachen with Klaus Mehnert with the dissertation The woman in the Socialist Unity Party of Germany - a contribution to the study of the political role of women in the GDR doctorate .

In 1980 she applied for SED party membership; In 1986 she became a member of the SED.

Career as a double agent

In 1968, as part of the research for her dissertation, Gast undertook a study trip to the GDR, to Karl-Marx-Stadt . There she was recruited for espionage by a Stasi employee with the code name Karl-Heinz Schneider ("Karlicek"), who had been assigned to her by the HVA as a suitable " Romeo ". From then on she worked under the code name Gisela as a spy for the GDR secret service.

In 1973, Gast was hired by the Federal Intelligence Service in Pullach . Her code name there was Dr. Gabriele Leinfelder . In the Soviet Union department of the Federal Intelligence Service, Gast was promoted to government director in the course of the following years.

Exposure and arrest

Through statements by Karl-Christoph Großmann , deputy head of department at the HVA until 1987, Gast was exposed in 1990 and then arrested.

The following year she was sentenced to six years and nine months ' imprisonment and loss of her civil rights . She served a large part of her sentence from 1990 to 1994 in the correctional facilities in Munich and Aichach , during the numerous other trials against her former commanding officers , 15 months of which in intensified solitary confinement . In 1994 she was released early on parole after two-thirds of her sentence. In 1998, when the probation period set by the Enforcement Chamber expired, the remainder of the sentence was waived.

After imprisonment

Following her imprisonment, Gabriele Gast tried to work up her personal history, she made direct contact with those representatives of the GDR state power who had a direct influence on her life, with Markus Wolf , the former head of the HVA, with “Karlicek” Schneider , their recruiter, and to Großmann, who finally discovered their double existence. She described these conversations and their experiences in 1999 in her autobiography Scout for Peace . The title of the book refers to the official designation of agents of the Enlightenment Department, see Scouts of Peace . Gast arranged her new life relatively quickly afterwards and became an employee in an engineering office.

Even after her imprisonment she remained an “ardent communist”; Guest is the deputy chairwoman of the initiative group Scouts of Peace, founded in 1995, calling for law .

Publications

  • The political role of women in the GDR . Bertelsmann Universitätsverlag, Düsseldorf 1973, ISBN 3-571-09219-8 .
  • Scout of Peace. 17 years top spy in the GDR with the BND . Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-8218-0522-6 .

literature

Radio

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Harald Jähner: Gabriele Gast spied seventeen years for the GDR at the Federal Intelligence Service , spying for peace. Berliner Zeitung , June 12, 1999.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Susanne Koelbl: Pearl from Pullach , top spy and Romeo victim Gabriele Gast settles accounts with the men in the secret service. Der Spiegel 12/1999, p. 48f.
  3. ^ Klaus Eichner: Agent in the BND headquarters . Gabriele Gast in the West German espionage center. edition ost, 2015, ISBN 978-3-360-51034-1 ( google.de ).
  4. ↑ Harald Jähner: Gabriele Gast spied seventeen years for the GDR at the Federal Intelligence Service , spying for peace. Berliner Zeitung , June 12, 1999.
  5. ↑ The information on this is contradicting itself, while Koelbl ( Perle from Pullach , Spiegel 12/1999) records membership, Jähner ( Gabriele Gast , Berliner Zeitung, June 12, 1999) states that Gast returned the party book in 1986 because it was only awarded the status of "candidate".
  6. ↑ Gabriele Gast: Please, quite hostile. Germany's strangest authority moves to Berlin. To say goodbye to the BND, a former double agent comments on her work. SZ-Magazin, issue 13/2006, minutes: Rainer Stadler.
  7. ^ Arnold Schölzel: No unity fairy tale . September 28, 2015, accessed May 31, 2018 .
  8. ↑ Scout on behalf of socialism
personal data
SURNAME Guest, Gabriele
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gisela (code name HVA); Gabriele Leinfelder (code name BND)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German double agent
DATE OF BIRTH March 2, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Remscheid