and estimates gleaned from numerous conversations proved quite
satisfactory to his VA superiors.
On 9 March 1967, Stoeber was arrested, as the Bundesamt für
Verfassungsschutz had observed him entering the Soviet embassy
and later ascertained that his identification papers had been issued
by West German officials in Scandinavia. Stoeber declared himself a
“proud citizen of the German Democratic Republic” in a manner not
unlike that of Günter Guillaume. Serving only part of his three-year
prison sentence, he returned to the GDR, where friends and relatives
had been led to believe that the trained engineer was part of a trans-
portation project in Mongolia.STOLPE, MANFRED (1936– ). A prominent East German politician
accused of being an informer for the Ministerium für Staatssicher-
heit (MfS), Manfred Stolpe was born in Stettin on 16 May 1936.
After completing his studies at Jena in 1959, Stolpe became a lawyer
for the Protestant Church in the German Democratic Republic (GDR)
and ultimately its chief negotiator with government officials. In
1970, despite the absence of a written agreement, the MfS registered
him under the code name sekretär, and for nearly 20 years, regular
meetings took place between Stolpe and his main MfS contact, Klaus
Rossberg. Neither had church leaders authorized his actions nor were
they apprised of these discussions by Stolpe himself.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall and his election as minister-
president of the state of Brandenburg, Stolpe’s past relationship with
the MfS came to light, causing a controversy of unusual and prolonged
intensity. While he explained that it was part of a strategy to “outwit”
the GDR through its own instruments of power, his critics—especially
many former dissidents—contended that Stolpe had been grossly
co-opted (one piece of evidence pointed to his acceptance of a presti-
gious state award in an MfS safe house). An investigative committee
of the Brandenburg state legislature found no “actionable involve-
ment” on his part, and even more significantly, in 2005 Germany’s
highest court ruled in Stolpe’s favor after an opposition politician
referred to him on television as a former MfS agent. Besides remain-
ing a highly popular figure in Brandenburg, he served as federal
transportation minister in the cabinet of Gerhard Schröder from 2002
to 2005.
450 • STOLPE, MANFRED