In 1975, a Düsseldorf court found the Guillaumes guilty of trea-
son, sentencing him to 13 years of imprisonment and her to eight
years. In 1981, despite government assurances that they would serve
their full sentences, the Guillaumes were exchanged for a number of
convicted Western spies. Upon his return to East Berlin, Guillaume
was lauded by the GDR leadership, promoted to lieutenant colonel,
and given the country’s highest decoration, the Order of Karl Marx.
The Guillaumes divorced the same year, and their son, Pierre, later
applied for permission to return to West Germany. Although no lon-
ger active in the HVA, Guillaume was awarded a doctorate from the
Juristische Hochschule des MfS in 1985, and three years later his
lengthy memoirs Die Aussage (The Testimony) appeared. Immune
from prosecution following the reunification of Germany, he testified
at the 1993 trial of Markus Wolf, now calling himself a “partisan of
peace.” On 10 April 1995, he died near Berlin as Günter Bröhl, hav-
ing remarried and adopted his new wife’s name. Christel Guillaume
died in March 2004.
British writer Michael Frayn’s 2003 play Democracy explored the
complex personal relationship that developed between Brandt and
Guillaume. In the same year, a German television film, Im Schatten
der Macht (In the Shadow of Power), featured Willy Brandt’s young-
est son, Matthias, in the role of Guillaume.GUSTAV. A commando action intended to eliminate an escaped
French general, Henri Giraud, Operation gustav originated in an
order conveyed to Abwehr head Wilhelm Canaris, largely at the
urging of Adolf Hitler. Yet Giraud, who fled from the Königstein
fortress near Dresden on 19 April 1942, managed to arrive safely
in North Africa via Vichy France, as the order was ignored by both
Canaris and his assistant Erwin Lahousen. They held that such
an action ran counter to established rules of warfare and therefore
fell outside the Abwehr’s operational jurisdiction. Giraud became a
leading figure in the French Committee of National Liberation, fre-
quently clashing with Charles de Gaulle.
GYPTNER, RICHARD (1901–1972). A Comintern emissary who later
had a diplomatic career in the German Democratic Republic (GDR),
Richard Gyptner was born in Hamburg on 3 April 1901. Trained as
GYPTNER, RICHARD • 155