erations of its kind already functioning at the outbreak of World War
I. See also POKORNY, HERMANN.DECKNAME. A Deckname, or cover name, is a code name chosen to
conceal the actual identity of an intelligence operative. Informants
for the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit were generally allowed
to devise their own name, which usually bore a relationship to their
main occupation, such as figaro for a barber or pädagoge for a
teacher.
DEGE, WILHELM. See HAUDEGEN.
DEHM, DIETHER (1950– ). A well-known German songwriter, left-
wing politician, and agent of the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit
(MfS), Diether Dehm was born in Frankfurt am Main on 3 April
- Although he completed a doctorate in remedial education in
1975, his attraction to the radical protest movement in West Ger-
many proved stronger. Years earlier under the name “Lerryn” (a
combination of his nickname Larry and Lenin), he had started com-
posing and performing his own activist songs. His first contact with
Herbert Thur, a Stasi recruiter, occurred at a youth camp in the
German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1970, and an agreement was
concluded the following year at a meeting in Leipzig. According to
an MfS report, the young Social Democrat (code name willy) was
motivated primarily by political conviction. Soon large quantities of
information dealing with left-wing groups at the university and artis-
tic circles in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) found their way
to East Berlin. His wife, Christa Desoi, became increasingly involved
in his activities, and in 1976 the MfS recorded her recruitment as an
agent (code name christa).
An important role fell to Dehm and Desoi after the expulsion of
Wolf Biermann from the GDR in 1976. They had met the popular
singer-songwriter shortly before through journalist Günter Wallraff,
who housed the dissident during his first months in the FRG. Dehm
followed the instructions of the MfS to strengthen his relationship
with Biermann in order to provide a full accounting of his mood and
activities in the FRG. When Dehm became Biermann’s first Western
manager, he attempted to neutralize the negative public image of the
DEHM, DIETHER • 77