Horst Hesse

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Horst Hesse (born May 12, 1922 in Magdeburg ; † December 16, 2006 in Schwedt / Oder ) was a member of the GDR State Security and a GDR spy . Infiltrated into the headquarters of the Military Intelligence Division in 1955 , he succeeded in stealing two safes with the complete agent files from the MID headquarters in the “Schlag” campaign in May 1956 and bringing them to the GDR.

Life

Horst Hesse came from a working-class family. He was a trained precision mechanic and worked temporarily in the Magdeburg Krupp works. When he was just under 20, he was called up for military service in 1942. During the war he was seriously wounded twice, first while withdrawing from Africa near Tunis , then in 's-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands . In April 1945 he was taken prisoner by Ludwigslust in Mecklenburg, but was released early because of a leg injury. After an odyssey through West Germany, he returned to his destroyed hometown Magdeburg in October 1945 . At the end of the 1940s he joined the People's Police . After a short time as a security policeman, he was transferred to the border department . From 1948 he was a member of the SED .

His agent work began when he was recruited by a former neighbor named Rudolf Voigt as an agent for the Military Intelligence Division (MID), a US intelligence agency. The Ministry of State Security , which had informed Hesse of this recruitment attempt, then decided to use him as a double agent . The MID, which led him under the code name Lux, regularly supplied Hesse with material prepared by the MfS on objects belonging to the Red Army in Magdeburg. In this way he was able to gain Voigt's trust, which enabled him to steal documents from his apartment and forward them to the MfS. Due to the loss of these documents, from the perspective of the MID, Hesse was unmasked and could not officially return to the GDR, so the MID decided to use him elsewhere.

After weeks of checks by the MID, he first worked for a few months as an interviewer in the Bremen refugee camp . In June 1955 he was finally transferred as Horst Berger to the MID headquarters in Würzburg , where he was responsible for evaluating letters and telegrams from the GDR to the Federal Republic. He was able to gain the trust of his MID superiors very quickly and thus rise to the position of head of the agent advertising department. At the same time he kept in regular contact with the MfS.

In May 1956, Hesse carried out the "Schlag" campaign, during which he succeeded in stealing two safe cabinets from the unguarded MID headquarters and bringing them to the GDR. In addition to the complete list of agents of the American military espionage service in Germany, these also contained several thousand blank ID cards from West German institutions, attack plans and information about so-called silent radio that should be activated in the event of war.

As a result of this action, 521 employees led by the MID were exposed, which led to the arrest of 140 people in the GDR. Hesse was sentenced to death in absentia by a US military court . Aktion Schlag provided the template for the DEFA- produced film classic For Eyes Only (1963).

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personal data
SURNAME Hesse, Horst
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Berger, Horst (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German spy
DATE OF BIRTH May 12, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Magdeburg
DATE OF DEATH December 16, 2006
Place of death Schwedt / Oder