A spy who loved me? Stasi manipulation revealed
BERLIN: When Hans Schulze was imprisoned in Communist East Germany back in the 1980s, he never thought he’d ever return once he got out. But now he regularly unlocks his old cell door to show tourists what life was like in a jail run by the Stasi secret police.
A West German responsible for his chemical company’s business in the East, Schulze was on his way to a trade fair in the East German city of Leipzig in 1986 when he stopped at a motorway service station and met a woman by chance.
Schulze (now 66) was fascinated by the welldressed woman and they began a relationship. The EastWest dimension of their liaison gave Schulze a thrill, but to this day he does not know for sure
whether she loved him or was just using him.
‘‘I didn’t know that she was an unofficial Stasi informant,’’ said Schulze, who gives tours of Hohenschoenhausen prison, where he spent some of his 13 months behind bars three decades ago, in eastern Berlin.
‘‘It was only later, when the accusation of spying was raised, that everything appeared in a different light.’’
Such themes of temptation, duplicity and betrayal that marked Cold Warera espionage have come back into focus in the runup to the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9 that brought about German reunification.
Schulze found out some time after he became romantically involved with the woman that her husband — from whom she was separated — worked for the Stasi, but he did not grasp the full extent until the media reported on her Stasi files in 2009.
Unbeknown to Schulze, his lover had been tasked by the Stasi with picking up solo travellers and business people from the West. She told him she wanted to flee to the West and Schulze still isn’t sure whether that was her personal desire or whether the Stasi wanted her to continue working for them in the West.
Three years before the fall of the Wall, Schulze was arrested at the border as he tried to leave the East. A letter the woman had written about her husband’s work was found in his car, as was some money she wanted Schulze to take to the West.
Schulze was accused of spying and a day later his lover was arrested, though he is not sure what the charge against her was.
East German authorities ultimately sentenced him to 21⁄2 years in prison for currency crimes and helping prepare an illegal border crossing. — Reuters