11 questions · History
Early on the morning of 24 April 1974, officers knocked on Günter Guillaume’s door in Bonn. The unremarkable man, for two years a personal aide to Chancellor Willy Brandt, opened the door and said a sentence that went into the history books: he was an officer of the National People’s Army and a member of the Ministry for State Security, and he asked them to respect his honour as an officer. With that, one of West Germany’s biggest spy cases was out in the open. It had all begun in 1956. Guillaume and his wife Christel came to the West as supposed refugees from East Germany and settled in Frankfurt. In truth they had been sent by the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance, the foreign intelligence arm of the Stasi led by Markus Wolf. Guillaume joined the SPD in 1957, worked his way up as a diligent and reliable party man and reached the Chancellery in 1970. Soon he was travelling with Brandt and organising his diary. In the summer of 1973 he spent the holidays with the chancellor in Norway, where secret telexes even passed through his hands. The domestic security service already suspected him but let him carry on in order to gather evidence. After the arrest Brandt took political responsibility and resigned in May 1974; Helmut Schmidt became chancellor. The Düsseldorf court sentenced Guillaume in 1975 to 13 years in prison. In 1981 he returned to East Germany in a spy exchange. In 2003 the British playwright Michael Frayn turned the affair into an acclaimed stage play.
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Willy Brandt
Guillaume handled Brandt’s party appointments and travelled with him.
💡 Did you know? Never before had a West German chancellor’s close aide been an East German spy.
Markus Wolf
The Main Directorate for Reconnaissance (HVA) was the foreign arm of the Ministry for State Security.
💡 Did you know? Wolf later called the exposure a serious setback, because it toppled Brandt, of all people, whom East Berlin actually valued.
1974
On his arrest he identified himself as an officer of the National People’s Army and of State Security.
💡 Did you know? With that admission he handed investigators evidence they would otherwise barely have had.
Helmut Schmidt
Brandt took political responsibility and resigned in May 1974; Schmidt governed until 1982.
💡 Did you know? The affair was compounded by fears that Guillaume knew details of Brandt’s private life.
Frankfurt
There both soon found their feet in the local SPD, just as their masters in East Berlin had planned.
💡 Did you know? From Frankfurt began a career that took him into the Chancellery 14 years later.
SPD
As a reliable party worker he rose step by step, all the way to the Chancellery.
💡 Did you know? His handlers had told him to present himself as an especially loyal Social Democrat.
Christel
She worked as a secretary for the SPD in Hesse and was arrested on the same day as him.
💡 Did you know? She was sentenced to eight years and was also freed in an exchange in 1981.
Norway
Because few staff came along, the telexes from Bonn crossed his desk.
💡 Did you know? The security service already suspected him but let him carry on in order to gather evidence.
13
He served only part of it: in 1981 he returned to East Germany in a spy exchange.
💡 Did you know? Back in East Germany he was honoured as a hero of reconnaissance and published a memoir.
Michael Frayn
The play shows Brandt and Guillaume as two men strangely close to each other.
💡 Did you know? In a 2003 German TV film about the affair, Brandt’s own son Matthias played the spy Guillaume.
Foto: Pelz · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Günter Guillaume
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