Lübeck. Although praised by his superiors for “outstanding work”
and eager to acquire the extra funds, he became fearful of detection
and withdrew his services in July 1955. Heidemann’s file remained
active (later under the code name rose) and was transferred from the
domestic counterintelligence department to the Hauptverwaltung
Aufklärung (HVA) headed by Markus Wolf in July 1978. Not until
eight years later—16 months following his guilty verdict—did HVA
officials place his file in the archives as inoperative. While conced-
ing his early relationship with the MfS, Heidemann declared that he
had been a double agent from the outset and had conveyed all his
payments to the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz office in Ham-
burg. A later head of the Hamburg office refused to confirm or deny
Heidemann’s statement.
The controversy over the Hitler diaries also became a contentious
issue in Cold War politics. Some authorities in the United States and
Britain (including a former deputy director of MI6) suspected that the
diaries formed part of an East German disinformation campaign de-
signed to sow discord among members of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, while both the Soviet Union and the GDR saw the pub-
lication as a belated attempt to rehabilitate Hitler. No documentary
evidence exists, however, to support either allegation.HOFER, HEIDRUN. A secretary at the Bundesnachrichtendienst
(BND) recruited by the KGB, Heidrun Hofer was the daughter
of a former Abwehr officer. Her seduction by one of the Romeo
spies—an East German Illegaler (code name roland) who claimed
to be a member of a right-wing patriotic society—occurred while
she was working in the Paris office of the BND in 1971. He then
introduced Hofer (code name rosie) to another Illegaler (code name
vladimir), in reality Ivan Dmitryevich Unrau, an ethnic German
born in Russia in 1914. At their meeting in Innsbruck, Austria, in
late February 1973, Unrau—claiming to be a leader of the neo-Nazi
underground—outlined the information that the KGB required. The
following year, Hofer was transferred to the BND headquarters in
Pullach and worked successively for the West European and North
Atlantic Treaty Organization liaison departments. On 21 December
1977, driving across the Austrian border to meet her control officer,
she was arrested by West German authorities. Hofer confessed, then
HOFER, HEIDRUN • 195