with Turkey, but frail health prevented him from accepting the offer.
He died on 29 January 1882. An alleged autobiography of Stieber
published in 1978—Spion des Kanzlers: Die Enthüllungen von Bis-
marcks Geheimdienstchef (The Chancellor’s Spy: The Revelations
of the Chief of Bismarck’s Secret Service)—has been revealed as a
forgery.STILLER, WERNER (1947– ). A major defector from the Hauptver-
waltung Aufklärung (HVA) to the Federal Republic of Germany,
Werner Stiller was born in Wessmar (Saxony-Anhalt) on 24 August
1947, the illegitimate son of a Silesian immigrant. He took a lead-
ing role in the official communist youth organizations, although the
Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 aroused in him the
first stirrings of doubt about the legitimacy of the ruling regime in the
German Democratic Republic (GDR). Nevertheless in 1970, while a
student of physics at Karl Marx University in Leipzig, Stiller agreed
to be an informer for the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit. A full-
time position with the HVA followed shortly after the completion of
his doctorate in 1971. Choosing the code name stahlmann, he was
assigned to a subsection of the Sektor Wissenschaft und Technik
(SWT) and given responsibility for the recruitment of Western physi-
cists who could supply the GDR with much needed research data.
Although Stiller received numerous commendations for his work
and advanced to first lieutenant, his increasing disillusionment with
life in the GDR caused him to make contact with the Bundesnach-
richtendienst in May 1978. It occurred through a new acquaintance,
Helga Mischnowski, whose brother, living in the Federal Republic
of Germany, then alerted officials of Stiller’s desire to defect. On 18
January 1979, fearing that his detection was imminent, Stiller made
a daring escape from the Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse to West Berlin,
using a falsified assignment sheet and stolen departmental border
pass and bringing with him about 20,000 microfilmed documents
from the Normannenstrasse headquarters.
The damage to the HVA was severe. Besides giving Western
officials their first detailed knowledge of the SWT, his informa-
tion led to the immediate arrest of 17 GDR spies (15 were warned
in time and exfiltrated). Among those later caught and convicted
were a number of Stiller’s own agents: Reiner Fülle (code name
STILLER, WERNER • 447