Werner Stiller

Werner Stiller (born August 24, 1947 in Weßmar ; † December 20, 2016 in Budapest ) was a German agent and defector . From 1972 to 1979 he was a full-time employee of the Ministry for State Security (MfS) of the GDR , most recently in the rank of first lieutenant . He decided to overflow to the Federal Republic and offer himself to the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), from which he received the code name " Machete ". His escape from the GDR in 1979 with numerous secret documents to the West is still considered one of the most spectacular espionage cases during the Cold War .

Life

From 1966 Stiller studied physics at the University of Leipzig and graduated with a diploma . In 1970 he became an unofficial employee of the MfS with the code name "Stahlmann". From 1972 he worked full-time in the Enlightenment Headquarters (HV A) of the MfS, Sector Science and Technology (SWT), Department XIII, Section 1, and was responsible for espionage in the field of nuclear technology in the Federal Republic of Germany. With the promotion of his colleague Hans Peter, with whom he shared an office, to head of department, Stiller felt himself to be relegated to the position of head of department, since he had speculated on this post. In 1978 he contacted the BND, which initially sensed a trap. From then on, Stiller provided secret information to the BND until he escaped.

Escape to the Federal Republic of Germany

On January 19, 1979 Stiller fled to West Berlin with documents from the HVA via the service transfer of the Berlin Friedrichstrasse station . Stiller's friend Helga Michnowski was evacuated with the help of the German embassy in Warsaw . On the other hand, he left his wife, daughter and son behind in the GDR, where they were subjected to various harassments due to suspected complicity.

After the escape

In 1981, Stiller, endowed with a new identity , began a second life under the name of Klaus-Peter Fischer, born in Budapest. With the support of the US secret service CIA , he completed an economics degree in St. Louis and was an investment banker at Goldman Sachs in New York and London from 1983 to 1990 . Up until the end of the GDR, an MfS troop of investigators equipped with large resources tried to locate him in the West. The aim was to kidnap him to the GDR and condemn him to death there or to kill him in western countries. In the early 1990s, a team of reporters from the news magazine Der Spiegel found Stiller. At that time he was working as a stockbroker for the US company Lehman Brothers on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. At the end of the 1990s, Werner Stiller moved to Budapest .

Nicole Glocke , daughter of an Ostagenten run by Stiller, and daughter Edina Stiller published a book together in 2006 on the consequences of moving to the Federal Republic of Germany. Stiller died in Budapest in 2016.

Intelligence value of the defector

Stiller was questioned intensively by the BND for over a year after his defection. In doing so, he made a significant contribution to the identification of the "man without a face", the HV A boss Markus Wolf . A photo of Wolf, which was secretly taken by him on a business trip to Scandinavia, reached the news magazine Der Spiegel and was published there in March 1979 on the front page.

As a first lieutenant, Stiller was not part of the senior staff at the HVA. However, he forced his rise to the position of party secretary of his department in order to dispel reservations about himself and to obtain information beyond his direct area of ​​work. Stiller was able to give the BND extensive knowledge of the inner workings of the East German secret service, which the service used as a basis for its further work against the MfS. In addition, Stiller provided assessments of the MfS's relations with other secret services in the Eastern Bloc. The BND consciously unsettled the HVA about its own possibilities and restricted its ability to work by looking for further moles and by increasing mistrust and controls in its own area.

Numerous Ostagents were exposed and arrested by Stiller's transfer to the Federal Republic of Germany , France , Austria and the USA , including Alfred Bahr , Gerhard Arnold , Rolf Dobbertin , Reiner Fülle , Karl-Heinz Glocke , Karl Hauffe , Armin Raufeisen and Günther Sänger . More than 40 actual or suspected agents managed to evade criminal prosecution at short notice by fleeing to the GDR . B. Friedrich Tomberg or Hans-Sieghard Petras . These were then lost as "sources in the object". François Lachenal , Rolf Kreibich and Rolf Rosenbrock were wrongly accused of espionage.

Fonts (selection)

• At the center of espionage. v. Hase & Köhler, Mainz 1986, ISBN 3-7758-1141-9 (English Beyond the Wall , Brassey's, Washington 1992, ISBN 0-02-881007-4 ).
• The agent. My life in three secret services. Ch. Links Verlag , Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-592-8 .
• The double agent - autobiography , Rotbuch Verlag, Berlin, 1st edition (2013), ISBN 978-3-86789-192-9 . (almost the same content as The Agent )

literature

• Thomas Raufeisen: The day on which father told us that he was a GDR spy. A German tragedy. Herder Verlag: Freiburg 2010 ISBN 978-3-451-30345-6 review
• Nicole bell, Edina Stiller: betrayed children. Two life stories from a divided Germany. Ch. Links Verlag: Berlin 2003 ISBN 3-86153-302-2
• Jens Gieseke :  Stiller, Werner . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Kristie Macrakis: The Stasi Secrets , Herbig Verlag, Munich, 2009, ISBN 978-3-7766-2592-9
• Ruth Hoffmann: Stasi children: Growing up in the surveillance state , List paperback, 2013, ISBN 978-3548611693

Movie

• The Red Jackal double agent Werner Stiller. TV agent thriller
• The spy that I was in Mediathek WDR
• The Agent - A double life between Stasi and BND on Youtube

Web links

• Literature by and about Werner Stiller in the catalog of the German National Library
• Article at DDR-Wissen.de
• If it had not been for 15 minutes ... ( Memento from February 25, 2002 in the Internet Archive ), The Wagner Blog, story of Stiller's flight from the GDR, recorded by the son of Stiller's girlfriend at the time (English)
• Uly Foerster, Dieter G. Uentzelmann: "That was like an adventure vacation " , interview in: Der Spiegel 24/1992, June 8, 1992.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Stasi defector - GDR double agent Werner Stiller is dead. In: Märkische Allgemeine. March 31, 2017, accessed March 31, 2017 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b} Christopher Nehring: The MfS defector Werner Stiller at the BND - The cooperation of the "brother organs" in the statements of an insider . In: al for Intelligence, Propaganda and Security Studies . tape 9 , no. 2 , 2015, p. 37-50 .
3. ↑ The chaos was huge . In: Der Spiegel . No. 14 , 1992, pp. 107-117 ( Online - Mar. 30, 1992 ).
4. ↑ ^{a b} Werner Stiller: In the center of espionage , v. Hase & Köhler, Mainz 1986, ISBN 3-7758-1141-9 ; English "Beyond the Wall"
5. ↑ Gray eyes . In: Der Spiegel . No. 22 , 1992, pp. 47-54 ( Online - May 25, 1992 ).
6. ↑ If It Had Not Been For 15 Minutes ( Memento from July 19, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
7. ↑ Otherwise we'll take your children away . In: Der Spiegel . No. 15 , 1992, pp. 70-71 ( online - April 6, 1992 ).
8. ↑ Gray eyes. A botched job with the Federal Intelligence Service endangered double agent Werner Stiller's escape from the GDR. May 25, 1992, accessed December 31, 2018 . 
9. ↑ Stasi hunt for Stiller . In: Der Spiegel . No. 40 , 1992, pp. 16 ( online - 28 September 1992 ).
10. ↑ Jens Gieseke : The Mielke Group ( Memento of December 13, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 806 kB) , Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-421-05481-9 , p. 183
11. ↑ Special Murder Order The Secrets of the Stasi ( Memento from January 10, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), ZDF, September 28, 2010
12. ↑ There is strength in rest . In: Der Spiegel . No. 13 , 1992, pp. 35-38 ( Online - Mar. 23, 1992 ).
13. ↑ ^{a b} GDR espionage: That makes them shake mightily . In: Der Spiegel . No. 10 , 1979, p. 70 ( Online - Mar. 5, 1979 ).
14. ^ RIAS report on the unmasking of GDR agents by the defector Stiller, March 8, 1979