Dieter Popp

Dieter Popp (24 November 1938 – 27 November 2020) was a West German insurance agent who worked as a spy between 1969 and 1990. He was based in Bonn, at that time the so-called provisional capital of the German Federal Republic (West Germany). His espionage work was undertaken on behalf of the Military Intelligence Service of the East German National People's Army.

In 1990, during the run-up to reunification, Dieter Popp was arrested. In 1991 he was sentenced to a six-year prison term and heavily fined for what one source terms "aggravated espionage". Taking into account the time he spent held in pre-trial investigatory detention, he ended up serving four years of his six-year term. Released in 1994, he continued to believe passionately that East German intelligence operatives such as himself had been "missionaries of peace" ("Kundschafter des Friedens"). By keeping Soviet negotiators well briefed on the secret goals, methods, and red lines of their western counterparts in respect of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks he had contributed to the containment of east–west tensions and prevented the Cold War from exploding into a hot war as a result of western hubris and misplaced over-confidence. Over time it was the lessening of that east–west tension that opened the way to understandings between Mikhail Gorbachev and Helmut Kohl that put an end to the separate German Democratic Republic. In 1995 Dieter Popp co-founded and became the chair of an organisation of those whose beliefs in this respect were similar to his own, known as "Kundschafter des Friedens fordern Recht e.V." ("Missionaries of Peace demand Justice").

Life Provenance and early years Dieter Popp was born in Berlin. His father was a Communist (which had been illegal since 1933) and involved in resistance activity. His mother was a "non-Aryan". In 1939 his mother's grandfather, a member of a Jewish family and a leading surgeon in Chemnitz, was arrested in the operating theatre where he was working and deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp where he was subsequently murdered. The family were bombed out of their Berlin home in 1944 and evacuated roughly to the north, to Fürstenberg/Havel, formerly his father's hometown. Here they ended up living very close to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. He later recalled seeing the emaciated women inmates - mostly left-wing political prisoners - being marched through the town in rows of five. He would never forget the reactions of the gawping townsfolk: they saw these women, not without a certain warped sense of pride, as "their own prisoners".

The winning team At the prompting of his handlers, in January 1969 Popp moved to Bonn, which at that time was the centre of the West German government. His target was the West German Defence Ministry. Popp and Schleffer were identified in intelligence sources by the cover names "Asriel" and "Aurikel". The two friends could barely believe their luck when Streffer, who had a background in business administration, found a job at the Ministry of Defence and was assigned in 1970 to the "planning staff", quickly becoming a respected civilian employee.

Modalities of espionage Within a relatively short time of his arrival at the ministry, Egon Streffer had access to Defence Ministry documents covered by virtually the entire range of "secrecy classifications". One reason for Streffer's rapid promotion was that most of his colleagues had taken jobs in the ministry hoping that foreign travel would be a part of the job. There was minimal competition for a desk job as a low-profile clerk based permanently in sleepy Bonn. He worked alone in his office, located in an annex of the main staff office. In the judgement of one commentator, supervision of ministry staff was clearly very lax ("Die Kontrolle der Mitarbeiter war offensichtlich überaus lax"). There was no proof offered for the suggestions that his death had been AIDS related.

According to Popp's own record, as he pronounced sentence the presiding judge also quietly wished the convict well and ordered the handing over of a small Christmas present in recognition of the imminent Christian "celebration of love" ("Fest der Liebe"): other sources make no mention of this detail. Following the sentencing, his experience of the prison system in North Rhine-Westphalia was further expanded by lengthy periods of incarceration at Hagen and Remscheid. Popp's fellow applicant was Gabriele Gast, a former employee of the West German intelligence service ("Federal Intelligence Service" / "Bundesnachrichtendienst" / BND) who had been sentenced to a jail term because she was found to have spied on behalf of East German intelligence between 1973 and 1990. Like Popp, she lived in the Rhineland. She and Popp shared a passionate belief that after the collapse of East Germany they had been wrongly imprisoned by the German authorities for doing the right thing. They shared the same Munich-based lawyer. Beyond those details, their cases would appear to have had little in common. For both of their cases, however, the question which the court was called upon to determine concerned the actions of the German state. The court had to decide whether or not the German state had breached Article 6 § 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which covers the right of an individual to a fair trial. The court's decision, communicated on 25 February 2000, was that no such breach had taken place. The group, founded in 1995, comprises people who served the German Democratic Republic intelligence services before 1989, and who reject the idea that they have any reason to apologise for their contributions:

"The task of the East German spies was the protection of our country and its allies. Our task was not to win a war but to help prevent any such war. ... After the defeat of Socialism in Europe we continue to strive for peace ... [Our theme] is war and peace and the role of the secret services. ... After the Cold War ended the "peace dividend" failed to materialise. More wars were waged and the idiocies of the arms race continued while the secret services apply surveillance methods which technically they continue to perfect. Hubristic capitalism turns out to be not merely the scourge of the third world, but is dividing rich from poor ever more starkly even in the societies of the rich countries. It may well be that this capitalism has itself already passed its peak."

The Left Popp was a member of Communist Platform, an association within "The Left" Party. The predecessor party of "The Left" party was the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) which traced its roots back to the old East German Socialist Unity Party. For September 2004 Dieter Popp was selected as a PDS candidate in Bonn for the local municipal elections. He was listed sixth on the party's candidate list, and in his election district he received 75 votes, equivalent to 1.7% of the district total.