Owing to his success, Seidowsky’s activities assumed an increas-
ingly international scope, aided by his appointment to executive posi-
tions within the state television establishment. In addition to helping
mount a disinformation campaign against Eugen Gerstenmaier, the
president of the West German Bundestag, he cultivated close con-
tacts with leading journalists and religious figures in Great Britain
and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). Despite some suspicion
within the MfS regarding his travels aboard, Seidowsky’s services to
the GDR received official recognition in 1973. The following year,
he began to work under the direct orders of the Central Committee
of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands. His assignments
included making preparations for the state visits of Erich Honecker
to Italy in 1985 and the FRG in 1987. While the collapse of the GDR
in 1989 prevented his appointment as ambassador to the Vatican, he
found a position with an international film company in Berlin after
reunification.SEIFFERT, WOLFGANG (1926– ). An important communist activist
and later critic of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Wolf-
gang Seiffert was born on 16 June 1926. In the early 1950s, he be-
came the secretary for agitation and propaganda in the West German
branch of the Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ; Free German Youth) and
editor of its GDR-subsidized magazine Junges Deutschland. When
the FDJ was declared illegal by West German authorities in 1953, he
was taken into custody and sentenced in 1955 to four years in prison.
Shortly afterward, however, he escaped to the GDR. There Seiffert
held a position in the West Department of the Central Committee of
the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED), charged with
handling relations with communists in the West German trade unions
and directing a newspaper for their membership. An intimate of Er-
ich Honecker, he counted among the small number of SED officials
apprised in advance of the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961
(Operation rose). Seiffert also directed the Institute for Foreign and
International Law and, beginning in 1972, was listed as an Inoffi-
zielle Mitarbeiter affiliated with the Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung.
In 1978, suspected of being a double agent, he was expelled from the
SED but permitted to accept a guest professorship in international
law at Kiel University, where he decided to remain. His writings
SEIFFERT, WOLFGANG • 415