birthday greetings sent in the late 1950s from East Berlin had matched
the birth dates of the Guillaumes—he was to be left in place and
observed only on special occasions. Brandt reacted incredulously
after being belatedly briefed and tested his aide himself by some-
times leaving carefully ordered papers on his desk in the evening.
West German security officials later received much criticism for
handling matters with such evident unprofessionalism, for it was
not until nearly a year afterward—on 24 April 1974—that Guil-
laume and his wife were arrested at their Bonn residence. Clad
only in a bathrobe, he defiantly asserted, “I am a citizen and of-
ficer of the GDR. Do respect that.” This open admission not only
constituted a serious breach of his own espionage training but was
probably the only evidence that could guarantee a conviction. In
addition, after becoming aware of his surveillance, neither he nor
his superiors took any steps to facilitate the family’s escape from
West Germany.
Although Brandt announced his resignation several weeks later
citing “negligence” on his part, a government inquiry the follow-
ing year, headed by Theodor Eschenburg, concluded that the Guil-
laume affair provided the “occasion” but was not the root cause of
the chancellor’s fall from power. For the GDR, the affair seemed a
Pyrrhic victory. While the MfS had achieved an almost ideal pen-
etration, attracting the extraordinary interest of the KGB, the amount
of high-level intelligence acquired by Guillaume was, according to
the surviving System der Informationsrecherche der Aufklärung
data bank, surprisingly small. Most likely, Markus Wolf, the head
of the Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung, never anticipated that his
officer would ascend to such heights in the Brandt government, as
evidenced by the fact that the Guillaumes had kept their own names
following their immigration to Frankfurt. Knowing that a security
check could be the couple’s undoing at any time, Wolf had proceeded
with extreme caution. Moreover, having earlier bribed a deputy of the
opposition Christlich-Demokratische Union (Julius Steiner) to save
the chancellor from a no-confidence vote in the Bundestag, he deeply
regretted Brandt’s departure from office and its negative impact on
the West German policy of Ostpolitik (or liberalization of relations
with the Warsaw Pact countries)—“the greatest defeat we had suf-
fered up to that time” in his words.154 • GUILLAUME, GÜNTER