communist regime by the selective scheduling of concerts and the
avoidance of critical political forums. In November 1977, Dehm and
Desoi each received a 500 DM bonus in recognition of their efforts.
Biermann later terminated his contract with Dehm and organized his
concerts himself. By December 1978, according to their MfS case
officer, Dehm and Desoi repeatedly failed to appear at prearranged
meetings.
Dehm’s high-profile career continued to prosper, not only as a
successful author, composer, and theatrical entrepreneur but also
later as a Social Democratic politician. In 1993, he was elected
to the Frankfurt municipal council and the following year to the
Bundestag. When allegations of his earlier Stasi connection began
to circulate, the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD)
held extensive and often acrimonious arbitration proceedings.
Even though Dehm had revealed his earlier activity to Biermann
in 1988, he disputed the charges and even threatened Joachim
Gauck (whose office possessed the Stasi files) with legal action.
In the end, the SPD decided to drop the charges when Dehm agreed
to leave the party and join the Partei des Demokratischen Sozialis-
mus (PDS). In 1996, a Frankfurt district court declared that Dehm
could be publicly referred to as a Stasi informer. His candidacy for
the Bundestag remained unsuccessful under the PDS banner, but
he regained a seat in September 2005 as a member of the newly
formed Linkspartei (Left Party).DEM’IANOV, ALEKSANDR (1911–1975). An Abwehr agent in
the employ of Soviet counterintelligence, Aleksandr Dem’ianov was
the son of a tsarist army officer killed in 1915. In the late 1920s,
he was admitted to a polytechnic institute in Leningrad (now St.
Petersburg), but his “gentrified origin” soon led to his expulsion. A
denunciation by one of his friends then resulted in an interrogation
by the Soviet secret police. Rather than send him into exile, officials
decided to use his connections to the Russian émigré community as
well as Moscow’s cultural elite and recruit him as an informer. It was
Dem’ianov’s prominent social standing and pro-monarchist family
background that attracted the attention of the Abwehr and the Ge-
stapo prior to the outbreak of World War II. Indirectly approached
in Moscow by a member of the German Trade Commission, he re-
78 • DEM’IANOV, ALEKSANDR