of Ostpolitik. This emotional reunion—Honecker had worked under
Wehner at the time of the Saar plebiscite—marked the beginning of a
more cordial relationship between the two Germanys, and Honecker
ordered the MfS to reevaluate Wehner’s history, particularly his al-
leged treason while in Sweden. The resulting report absolved Wehner
of all charges, and wotan came to an official halt in 1978. The GDR
leadership ignored copies of Wehner’s handwritten notes, supplied
to them by the KGB in 1967, in which he had revealed the names of
more than 20 alleged Trotskyists among the German emigrants and
offered to help the NKVD in their “processing.” Not until 1993 were
the relevant documents from his NKVD file published.
In the aftermath of the Günther Guillaume affair of 1974, Weh-
ner aroused the displeasure of Willy Brandt, who, despite the lack
of tangible evidence, firmly believed that the loss of his chancel-
lorship could be traced to his fellow social democrat and longtime
rival working secretly in conjunction with the GDR. Wehner’s
autobiography, Zeugnis: Persönliche Notizen 1929–1942 (Wit-
ness: Personal Notices 1929–1942), which was written during his
Swedish captivity, appeared in 1982, and he retired from public
life the following year. After a long period of illness, he died in
Bonn on 19 January 1990. In 1997, Markus Wolf, former head of
the Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung, described Wehner as “a per-
son of irreconcilable differences” and a long-term Einflussagent
of the MfS, but he soon issued a correction, stating that “never and
in no way” had Wehner offered his services to the GDR. See also
WIENAND, KARL.WEIBERG, HEINRICH (1911–1984). The founding head of the Sek-
tor Wissenschaft und Technik (SWT) of the Hauptverwaltung
Aufklärung (HVA), Heinrich Weiberg was born in Berlin on 20
January 1911, the son of a bookbinder. A member of the Wehrmacht
during World War II, he was held in Soviet captivity from 1945 to
- Returning to Germany and briefly working in a sulfuric acid
factory, the former chemistry student joined the Ministerium für
Staatssicherheit in 1951 and was assigned to its foreign intelligence
division. Under his unassuming, academic-style leadership, the SWT
steadily took shape, receiving official status in 1971 and becoming
one of the HVA’s most significant divisions. Weiberg left the SWT
486 • WEIBERG, HEINRICH