applying for a position with the OG, Geyer (code name trell)
worked initially in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as an
investigator and later courier. Following the Uprising of 17 June
1953 , Geyer left his family in the GDR in order to become a desk
officer, then deputy director of the OG’s West Berlin branch. This
post gave him the opportunity to photograph confidential documents
in the evening with his Minox camera and relay them the following
morning to the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS), which had
engaged him as an operative two years earlier in Dresden.
When he erroneously believed his cover had been blown after
learning that two criminal police detectives had visited his apartment,
Geyer fled to the GDR on 29 October. His action unleashed a full-scale
search in East Germany as part of Operation feuerwerk for the 58
OG agents he had identified to the MfS. At least 20 were immediately
apprehended, including the editor of the Berliner Zeitung and leading
functionaries of the East German bourgeois parties. Those who escaped
to West Berlin received letters assuring them of “complete liberty, ac-
commodation, and a well-paid job” in the GDR upon their return. On
9 November, Geyer appeared at a press conference with a seven-page
prepared script to provide encouragement to potential defectors. The
Geyer episode exposed OG’s lax security precautions, notably the
excessive number of agents run by a single office and the blackmail
potential of immediate family remaining behind in the GDR.GIMPEL, ERICH (1910– ). A Nazi spy who landed in the United
States near the end of World War II, Erich Gimpel was born in
Merseburg (Saxony-Anhalt). Trained as a radio engineer, he received
an offer in 1935 to work for the Telefunken corporation in Peru. In
order to obtain an exemption from military service, he had to report
to the diplomatic legation in Lima, which asked him to observe and
report on shipping patterns in the port. In 1942, after Peru declared
its support for the United States and severed relations with Germany,
Gimpel was interned briefly in Texas before returning to Germany
on a neutral Swedish ship. The repatriation agreement forbade his
entry into the armed forces, but the German Foreign Office found his
fluency in Spanish an asset and employed him as a courier between
Berlin and Madrid, then a magnet for both Allied and Axis spies. He
also attended schools in Hamburg and Berlin run by the Abwehr.
138 • GIMPEL, ERICH