Lover and Spy
An attractive woman from East Berlin, who was working for a German service agency, was called by her (East) German co-worker. The man, who was much younger than her, persuaded her to meet him on a date. It turned into a stimulating conversation which turned into a flirt which turned into a relationship.
The couple moved into an apartment together. As the woman noticed after a while, her younger lover showed a distinct interest in her complete environment, her past, her social contacts, her customers, her address booklet – her friends’ and customers’ data. Unlike him who knew everything about her she found out hardly anything about him. He remained very reserved; he would not even tell her his parents’ address. She also began to notice acutely that her partner andco-worker seemed to have no friends.
But that wasn’t enough. When her friends came over to the couple’s residence in Berlin, her lover would treat them so dejectedly that they never came back. And he was did not hesitate to tell those stubborn friends of hers who refused to be scared off by his behavior that they were not welcome to the couple’s apartment. He obviously wanted to isolate the woman from all social contacts (social contacts are a valuable protection). Simultaneously he would entice the customers away that the woman had acquired by her own hard work. He himself had hardly any customers of his own yet he started to call her customers and put them on his customer list. When the woman turned to her (and his) East German supervisor for help because her co-worker and lover was slowly but systematically taking away her customer contacts, destroying her job, the supervisor did not help her – but him. The woman was forced to quit her job. The personal relationship had turned sour as well. The man was no longer earning any money, the woman had to rescue his credit rating by pitching in with 10,000 euros he hasn’t paid back yet, and her uneasy feeling that her partner was leading a double life was growing. There was something he was hiding, and he was always acting rather mysteriously as well.
After two years, the loss of her customers, career, numerous friends, ten thousand euros and a car he had ordered and she had paid, the woman had enough. She ended the relationship with him. In a short phone message he sent after her, he asked her sadistically whether she knew where her cat was – and to check in the freezer compartment ...
This happened in Germany at the beginning of the millenium – over 10 years AFTER the Berlin Wall came down and East Germany and with it its ”State Security“ called Stasi had officially been dissolved.
The woman’s name is Irina, she lives in Berlin and is being stalked, mobbed and terrorized by strangers since her youth in East Germany (for the rest of her story see a future blog entry).
And the man? He is listed by his name and birth date on the official salary list of the Stasi that was forwarded to us recently. Irina found him there and positively identified him. That former Stasi spy, who got the privilege by his employer, the Stasi, to study at an East German university and who had to learn Judo (jiu-jitsu) as part of his Stasi training shortly before the Wall came down, found and selected a stasi victim among the estimated 40 million women living in Germany. Was that a coincidence like the lottery principle? Or isn’t it rather much more likely that the data of Stasi stalking victims were passed on many years AFTER East Germany ceased to exist, and that he was set on to that victim as one of her many perpetrators?
Makes you wonder what he is doing in his other life today – unnoticed by German investigative authorities …
