1982 1 October: Helmut Kohl becomes chancellor of the FRG.
1983 22 April: BfV chief Richard Meier retires after a suspicious
automobile accident.
1985 10 March: Mikhail Gorbachev is elected state and party
leader in the Soviet Union. 11 June: A major East–West spy
exchange takes place on the Glienicker Bridge between Pots-
dam and Berlin. 19 August: Hansjoachim Tiedge of the BfV
defects to the GDR. 24 August: Margarete Höke of the Fed-
eral President’s Office is arrested as an East German agent.
September: Heribert Hellenbroich is dismissed as head of the
BND and replaced by Hans-Georg Wieck.
1986 5 April: La Belle discotheque in West Berlin is bombed by
terrorists.
1987 5 March: Wolf retires from the HVA and is succeeded by
Werner Grossmann.
1989 3 April: The GDR suspends the order to shoot along the
inner-German border after the last killing in February. 2 May:
Hungary begins dismantling its fortifications on the Austrian
border. 25 September: Monday night demonstrations begin
in Leipzig. 3 October: The GDR closes its border to Czecho-
slovakia. 4 November: More than 500,000 protesters gather
at the Alexanderplatz in East Berlin. 6 November: Mielke
orders the district MfS offices to destroy all incriminat-
ing records. 9 November: The Berlin Wall is inadvertently
opened through the confusion of the East German leadership.
17 November: Mielke resigns his office amid mounting pro-
tests; the MfS is renamed the Amt für Nationale Sicherheit
(AfNS) under Wolfgang Schwanitz. 6 December: Alexander
Schalck-Golodkowski surrenders to West German authorities.
7 December: Mielke is arrested.
1990 Gabriele Gast of the BND and Klaus Kuron of the BfV are un-
masked as former GDR agents. The British-American signals
intercept facility on the Teufelsberg in West Berlin ceases oper-
ations. 13 January: The AfNS is to be disbanded. 15 January:
East German dissidents occupy the state security headquarters
complex. 19 February: The Round Table approves the destruc-
tion of state security electronic databases. 8 March: By govern-
ment order, all Stasi agents are no longer bound to their original
xxii • CHRONOLOGY