initially as an airplane construction worker. Serving in the Wehrmacht,
he was taken prisoner by the Soviet Red Army in 1945. His return to
the German Democratic Republic led to his appointment as an edi-
tor for the radio station Deutschlandsender in 1952 and as a member
of the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit the following year. Rising
through the ranks of the HVA, Heim came to head the subsection
targeting the ruling Christlich-Demokratische Union in the Federal
Republic of Germany (FRG). Besides providing valuable information
about the structure of the HVA, his defection to the FRG on 15 May
1959 resulted in the unmasking of nearly a dozen East German agents,
including Wolfram von Hanstein. Heim’s assertion, however, that the
HVA maintained 2,000–3,000 agents in the West seemed exaggerated
to officials of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency at the time.HEIMSOTH, KARL-GÜNTHER (1899–1934). A right-wing neu-
rologist and Soviet agent, Karl-Günther Heimsoth joined a Frei-
korps unit following combat in World War I and became a close
acquaintance and correspondent of SA leader Ernst Röhm as well
as a spokesman for homosexual rights. Although a member of the
Nazi Party since May 1933, he was also seeking a reconciliation be-
tween nationalists and the National Bolshevik groups. He had been
recruited as an informant for the NKVD (Soviet People’s Commis-
sariat of Internal Affairs) the preceding year. Following a Gestapo
interrogation in February 1934, Heimsoth disappeared; his body was
reported found a month later in Berlin.
HEINRICH, BRIGITTE (1941–1987). A prominent West German
journalist, Green politician, and agent of the Ministerium für Staats-
sicherheit (MfS), Brigitte Heinrich was born in Frankfurt am Main
on 29 June 1941. With the advent of the student protest movement,
she became the press officer for the German Socialist Student As-
sociation in 1966–1967 and, several years later, the president of
the student parliament at the University of Frankfurt. Heinrich also
maintained close ties to various terrorist groups and was arrested for
illegal trafficking in weapons and explosives in 1974. Although ada-
mant in her denial of all charges—and released from custody shortly
thereafter for reasons of health—she received a 21-month prison
sentence in 1980. This verdict quickly became a major cause célèbre,
HEINRICH, BRIGITTE • 171