Sexuality: Stasi Romeos Paper

“The unfortunate woman must have been devastated to discover that her lover had disappeared. But in a choice between saving an agent and saving a romance, I had to be ruthless.” 1 Ministerium für Staatsicherheit “Stasi Romeos” Allison Brown HIST 4990: History of Sexuality Dr. Hampton December 14, 2022 “The unfortunate woman must have been devastated to discover that her lover had disappeared. But in a choice between saving an agent and saving a romance, I had to be ruthless” wrote Markus Wolf in his autobiograph2y.As a past Stasi officer and the creator of the “Stasi Romeos” during the height of the Cold War in Berlin, Wolf developed a program which would deliver intelligence and results for the East German government which offered a new perspective on a historical precedent in espionage of using romance or sex to gain intelligence. The Stasi Romeos were developed by the Stasi likely in the early 1970s by Wolf. As defined by Jens Gieseke Tin he History of The Stasi, East Germany’s Secret Police, 1945-1990 (2015)Stasi Romeos are briefly defined as “the so-called “Romeo” method, seeking out single women and assigning carefully chosen MfS [Stasi] agents to make advances towards them. This went so far as enacting fictitious marriages … it was often only after their exposure that these women would realize what was going on, that their supposed lovers had merely been using them.” 3 In this essay, I first discuss what the Stasi Romeos were and how they were developed and then go on to argue that Stasi Romeos were the perfect operation to appeal to unmarried, young, middle-class women and then briefly analyze how the Stasi Romeos are remembered in historiography and in the modern setting. A brief note regarding historiography on this topic helps to further understand the historical context and contribution of this essay. Academic scholarship regarding Stasi Romeos is limited as there is a lack the availability of primary sources regarding the topic because of strict modern-day German privacy laws. The majority of academic scholarship regarding the Stasi Romeos is from other works on the Stasi, with brief mentions as a side note to other Stasi espionage operations, especially with regards to reconnaissance as a form of Stasi influence. This essay primarily consists of first-person accounts of women who were targeted by Stasi Romeos and the autobiography of Markus Wolf, who created the program, ran the operations, and includes details of women impacted and Romeos from his perspective. For women who were targeted by Romeos, I use the oral histories and interviews from Gabriele Kliem and Margaret Hike as they are some of the only women targeted by the Romeos to share their own personal stories, and were both persecuted by the West German government for espionage-related charges, or spying for the East German government. To begin, an introduction to the Stasi is necessary. Formally known as the Ministry for cein, isterium für Staatsicherheit, or what is commonly State Security, or State Security ServiM known as the Stasi served as the state’s surveillance and secret police agency for the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). The Stasi is infamously known as one of the most feared 1 institutions of the East German government as it facilitated a time of state mass surveillance and a distinct disregard for personal liberties and privacy. The Stasi developed in a post-World War II vacuum of violence and government mistrust in East Germany in the USSR-controlled zone. The law establishing the ministry, formed with the forerunneKroomf missariat 5 and modeled similarly to the Soviet NKVD, the precursor to the Soviet KGB, was passed by the East German legislature in 1950, only four months after the establishment of the German Democratic Republic. Under the direction of Erich Mielke, from 1957 to 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Stasi became a highly effective secret police organization. In East Germany, the Stasi sought to infiltrate and influence every sector and institution of society and Germans’ personal lives. Often known, the Stasi achieved such success in their infamous surveillance due to their tapping of intimate personal and familial relationships. The Stasi accomplished this goal both through its official apparatus and through a vast network of informants and unofficial collaborators knowffi snionzielle a Mitarbeiter. At the height of Stasi surveillance in East Germany, this network of informants was the primary driver of intelligence and information for the USSR-backed government. By 1989, the Stasi relied on as many as two million citizen informants in addition to over one hundred thousand state employees to carry out this mass surveillance. In 1989 as well when the Stasi headquarters and data were found by the “West”, the Stasi had collected files on more than six million East German citizens, more than one-third of the population. Any and all information was recorded by the state for reasons deemed to be against the state or a perceived threat to communist control. Average citizens primarily were those recorded in the Stasi files and persecuted as East German, USSRbacked surveillance, knew no bounds. Those limits would be pushed with the blurring between espionage and sexual or interpersonal relationships with the development of the Stasi Romeo program under the direction of Markus Wolf as the Stasi Main Directorate for Reconnaissance. Although not entirely new in espionage work, the Romeos would be unique in its wide reach, impacting at least 34 women and create a lasting impact across Germany as numerous sensitive and classified documents were relayed through the Romeo program. The Stasi Romeo developed by Wolf was incredibly successful, in his autobiography he writes "When it began, I had no idea of the harvest it would bri4nW g.o"lf also notes in his autobiography that he was inspired by the work of the KGB in this field and how combining espionage and sex would be revolutionary for counterintelligence and especially reconnaissance. Early on in the Cold War, the RussiK an om itet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB) worked to develop “sexpionage” or other means of blackmail through often more harsh practices and operations. Kriste Macrakis in Seduced by Secrets: Inside the Stasi’s Spy-Tech World (2008) on this writes, “Whereas the KGB became notorious for its sex schools and use of women as “honey traps” to seduce men, the Stasi seems much more prudish but did develop the reverse gender 2 5 strategy of targeting Western secretaries using male Rome T ohs. e”Stasi operation was much more extensive than operations of the KGB, with long term efforts being valued over short term operations with fewer deliverables. Stasi agents were assigned to develop long-term relationships with their sources. Wolf believed that these targets from Romeos had more connections and potential than traditional male reconnaissance missions, as often these women were connected to their embassies or places of work in unique ways. As translators or secretaries, they saw most documents from their workplace and were frequentally also responsible for their bosses' private correspondence and greeted guests entering the buildings. These connections and attributes made these women the prime targets for the Romeo program, especially as in Bonn most of these women were not in prior relationships. The Stasi Program developed in the years following WWII in Bonn which is described as a location full of young women from across Western Germany who were interested in working for the newly formed government in diplomatic posts, most notably secretaries. Also worth noting is that single women in Bonn especially outnumbered single men, creating discrepancies and a lack of partners available for some. The discrepancies between gender in Bonn and across other regions in Western Germany not only open vulnerability perhaps for Romeos, but also for other German women to potentially perceive threats in their own communities. Gabriele Kliem, a woman who was targeted by the Romeo Program and in a “relationship” with a Romeo for seven years wrote, "Bonn was a very quiet town … Translators and secretaries were hardly ever invited to official social functions, and single women were eyed suspiciously by married women. It was almost impossible to find a boyfriend, and if you found one, almost impossible to keep him - the stakes were very high. The competition was enormo6 uKl s.e"im lived with other staff of the U.S. Embassy, certainly these views were shared with other single women in Bonn, perhaps her roommates or others who worked at Western Embassies. Marianne Quoirin, the author o Afgentinnen aus Liebe [The Spies Who Did It For Love], writes that women pursued by agents were usually vulnerable in some way, "Perhaps she had been left by her boyfriend, or her mother had recently died, or she didn't have many friends. When the romeo approached her, he already knew everything about her—her likes and dislikes, her history. One woman told me that the agent who approached her knew she was interested in the environment, and after two days he was calling her his 'little herb witch'. So they got to the point pretty quickly."7 The work of the Stasi Romeos in advance in researching these women indicates the resources in which the Stasi conducted their initial work through developed networks andinoffizielle Mitarbeiter. This information and knowledge made it easier for Romeos to “recruit” or more accurately construct relationships with these women which would yield results for reconnaissance efforts for the Stasi. 3 In Agentinnen aus Liebe, Quoirin is able to ascertain statements and interviews from Gabriele Kliem previously unavailable to the public. An interesting aside in her work is the physical attractiveness of Stasi Romeos as she writes, "the women definitely weren't going for good looks. It was the old-fashioned manners … flowers, wining and dining, and, most importantly, these men listened to women. Men often don't, so that was very attractive. Sex didn't play a major role. It was important for Gabriele and a couple of the other women, but actually, it mattered rarely.8"Again, this speaks to the nature in which Stasi Romeos would find West German women often single or widowed as a result of WWII or isolated in their community. Gerhard Dietzel was a Stasi Romeo who operated in West Germany for over twenty years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Beier was a Romeo who ideologically agreed with the Stasi and the German Democratic Republic. In an interview later conducted by Quoirin as well he believed “I was fulfilling my patriotic duty, and it wasn't unpleasant," he says now. He would have four or five "cases" on the go at any one time: "I prioritized those I had the best chance of getting information from, and kept the others on a fairly long 9leTahde." ways in which Stasi Romeos were constructed and placed in communities gave them a unique importance which pursued reconnaissance and intelligence goals in a developed way with a high yield for success. Wolf as the creator of the Romeos himself acknowledged the Romeos had to develop a new role in a harsh environment, “In this political climate, I could not fail to by fully 10 aware from the very beginning of how rough the game had beco me.” Dietzel posed as a diplomatic officer for the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the West German Intelligence Service which would have worked closely with Kliem’s office. Brier would meet Kleim as a daughter of a West Germany Army officer after an advertisement was placed in a newspaper asked for professional contacts and translations on behalf of the BND. Once Dietzel and Kleim established relations, using his cover as a BND diplomatic officer he convicned Kliem to apply for a typist position with the then European Community in Brussels, "While she was there," recalled Dietzel, "she was able to set her eyes on an incredibly large number of papers, including secret documents. She would either photocopy or photograph them, and then bring them to me."11 This developed in their relationships as well as a physical relocation resulted in instant results for the Romeo Program which contributed to closing the gap in intelligence the Stasi gathered outside of Berlin which would further contribute to East German intelligence. Following some time of relationship building and engagement, the Stasi would stage “mock engagments” of sorts to satisfy Kleim in her relationship with Dietzel. In a separate marriage between another Romeo and West German woman, Quoirin describes the mock 4 wedding as one in which a “Stasi officer played the priest, and took her confession and later on another officer played her mother-in-law at a small recept1i2on." In 1984, after seven years of begging engaged, Kliem began to search elsewhere, outside of her relationship with Dietzel and met another man and was married within two years. When they were engaged, she had only seen Dietzel about once a month, and on nearly every circumstance which they met she gave him photographs or copies of documents from her Office of Defense Cooperation at the American Embassy as she was still under the guise he worked for the BND. Regardless of extensive information campaigns by the West German federal government warning women of Stasi tactics and espionage, Kleim would go on and recall that she never doubted Dietzel’s intentions as a BND employee and never inquired as to whom he was sharing the documents from the Office of Defense Cooperation with. Throughout Quoirin’s work and interviews in which Kleim recalled the relationship, she often spoke of being fearful of losing Dietzel, and the stigma even which would come if she was to leave their engagement after years of closeness and what it would mean for her personally. It was only at her trial for espionage against the West German Government and the United States in 1996 that Kliem discovered her past fiancé was spying on behalf of the East German government. Kliem’s trial was not dissimilar to the other women which would be tried by the West German Government for espionage following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Kliem recalled that during the trials the Stasi perpetrators on the stand would recall how she was tricked or misled by Dietzel, often as a point of pride as an agency doing their work, “ So they would sit and read and laugh and analyze and see how they could hurt me some more … to them, I was just a laboratory rat or worse—and to him, I was just a to13ol. As" Kliem’s trial in front of the newly unified Germany in 1996 continued she would share that “I would never have consented to a relationship if I had known he was East German … my father died in a Russian camp at the end of the war. I grew up in Berlin, and we hated anything Russian or East German. And Frank Dietzel knew that."14 Dietzel would die in a car accident before her trial, unable to offer testimony or redress. During her trial in 1996, Kliem was lucky in a sense that she was handed down a suspense and a fine for her “spying” against West Germany. Others targeted by the Romeos and tried in years prior faced prison sentences as well as charges which they would carry with them in applying for future positions as well as in personal spaces. From the few cases which went to court and have public records, none of the women targeted by the Stasi knew or had a realization that their partners were spies for East Germany. Kleim herself does not blame her Romeo for what happened, but rather the Cold War itself and 5 the division of Germany by other world powers, “If it hadn't been him [Dietzel] , they would have sent someone else. Firstly, I blame Germany—there were two systems, two people with the same language, and you would never know the other was the enemy. And then I blame myself. To wait and long for a man—if I hadn't given him that power over me, he couldn't have done it.” 15 Kleim’s own reflection of why she fell for her Romeo is fraught with the social and political climate in which she lived in Bonn. Her self-blame in the situation of her committing “espionage” against West Germany perhaps could be argued as a side effect of broader pressures in the state regarding the Cold War and espionage in tandem with the pressures put particularly on single women of her position. Similarly, at least 34 other West German women would be known for committing the same “espionage” and it could be argued that they potentially felt similarly regarding their “espionage” against their government. Wolf in his autobiography expressed no regret or contrition with his creation of the Romeo Program but instead would tout it as a development in intelligence practices during the Cold War, an achievement of sorts “As might have been expected, my Romeo agents had become the subject of frenzied analysis in the Western intelligence world … The secretaries were relentlessly portrayed as pitiful, misused victims, all of a certain age, single and hungry for love, delivered helpless into the arms of misfortune … They [Stasi Romeos] were sharp operators who realized that a lot can be done with sex. This is true in business and espionage 16 because it opens up channels of communication more quickly than other approaches.” Beginning to study and further understand the Stasi Romeos is crucial not only in historian's understanding of espionage and intelligence in Cold War Berlin and Bonn, but also the ways in which gender, sex, romance, and or any combination of the three can be utilized by an adversary in a society in which these concerns are amplified. Perhaps these women would not have shared top secret and secret documents with their Romeos if it had not had been for the state in which they found themselves as single women excluded or repudiated from society. Regardless of what could have or could have not been for these women, understanding and studying the Stasi Romeos is crucial in understanding more broadly how the Cold War, particularly in Berlin and Bonn in Germany, utilized societal structures of class and gender to pursue their own intelligence goals which would not only counter Western intelligence, but negatively impact at least 34 West German women unaware of what had occurred until years after at their own trials for espionage against their government. 6 MfS Deployment of “Romeo” and “Juliet” IMs or Agents The following piece of contextual information is missing from Novak’s autobiography: the Stasi had hatched a plan to deploy the twenty-two-year- old student as a Juliet agent. Juliets were romantic plants assigned the task of seducing suspects, either to elicit intelligence or to create incriminating evidence for laying charges. The MfS often tried to recruit women on the basis of their friendships or intimate relations with men.93 There are a num- ber of documented instances of the Stasi’s use of “operative beds,” namely, deploying prostitutes in operative work.94 Novak must have suspected that the Stasi wished to use her romantic attachment to her Icelandic friend Stenar, guessing the hidden meaning of the Stasi’s supposedly innocent comment: “You have the ability to make friendships very quickly?!”95 In her Stasi file Novak would later find unequivocal evidence of the Stasi’s plans for her: “The aim of the recruitment was to win her over to collaborating so that she could be put to work on male persons.”96 The Stasi officers’ approach was straight from the secret-service rule book. They first laid her personal aspirations on the table, then used her “trust” as “bait . . . to hook the fish onto the line.”97 The practice Novak describes here was later associated with infamous spymaster Markus Wolf, the ministry’s head of foreign espionage, the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance (Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung, hv a).98 Novak’s case illustrates that domestic espionage departments were experimenting quite early with Juliets. In all likelihood Novak’s reputation for sexual promiscuity fell under the category of blackmailable offenses that the Stasi liked to exploit. Novak was trapped with few options, all of which were unpalatable to her. Despite her treatment by the regime, Novak soon began to hatch plans to return to the life she had abandoned in the GDR. To return would be to make amends for what had gone terribly wrong. She wanted “to finish what she had not even really begun.” According to her, “I was already torn out, cut off, chased away, condemned, publicly branded a ‘traitor,’ without any prospect of correcting and defending this view. Condemned forever to work in the factories.”116 She continued to write desperately homesick letters to old friends, none of which ever reached their destination. The Stasi intercepted them all.117 In 1958 she managed to return and found work in a fluorescent-tube laboratory connected to a television plant. Although the plans to enlist Novak as a Juliet agent had failed, the MfS hatched further plans for involving her. Possibly it could not believe its luck when Novak decided to return of her own volition to the GDR. 7