The Ministry for State Security, commonly known as the Stasi, was the state security service and secret police of East Germany from 1950 to 1990. It was one of the most repressive police organisations in the world, infiltrating almost every aspect of life in East Germany, using torture, intimidation and a vast network of informants to crush dissent.
The spy film, also known as the spy thriller, is a genre of film that deals with the subject of fictional espionage, either in a realistic way or as a basis for fantasy. Many novels in the spy fiction genre have been adapted as films, including works by John Buchan, le Carré, Ian Fleming (Bond) and Len Deighton. It is a significant aspect of British cinema, with leading British directors such as Alfred Hitchcock and Carol Reed making notable contributions and many films set in the British Secret Service.
BRD is an unofficial abbreviation for the Federal Republic of Germany, informally known in English as West Germany until 1990, and just Germany since reunification. It was occasionally used in the Federal Republic itself during the early Cold War; it was commonly used between 1968 and 1990 by the ruling party of the German Democratic Republic, resulting in a strong deprecation of its use in West Germany. The East German regime had previously used the term "German Federal Republic", which it abbreviated as "DBR", to refer to West Germany. The most widely used abbreviation for West Germany in the country itself was its ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code "DE", which has remained the country code of reunified Germany.
Spooks is a British television spy drama series that originally aired on BBC One from 13 May 2002 to 23 October 2011, consisting of 10 seasons. The title is a colloquialism for spies, and the series follows the activities of the intelligence officers of Section D in MI5, based at the service's Thames House headquarters, in a highly secure suite of offices known as The Grid. In the United States, the show is broadcast under the title MI-5. In Canada, the programme originally aired as MI-5, but later aired on BBC Canada as Spooks.
Erich Gimpel was a German spy during World War II. Together with William Colepaugh, he took part in Operation Elster ("Magpie") an espionage mission to the United States in 1944, but was subsequently captured by the FBI in New York City.
The Main Directorate for Reconnaissance was the foreign intelligence service of the Ministry of State Security (Stasi), the main security agency of the German Democratic Republic, from 1955 to 1990.
Jeffrey Martin Carney is a former United States Air Force intelligence specialist convicted of spying for East German Ministry for State Security. One of Stasi's most successful spies, code-named "Kid" or "Uwe", Carney became alienated and angry at the U.S. Air Force and U.S. policies under President Ronald Reagan. He began handing over U.S. military documents to the Stasi while working in West Berlin for the U.S. Air Force. After his transfer back to Goodfellow Air Force Base in 1984, Carney decided to once again request permanent asylum in East Germany. His whereabouts remained unknown until 1990 and he was carried on the rolls as a deserter.
Maria Schrader is a German actress, screenwriter, and director. She directed the award-winning 2007 film Love Life and the 2020 Netflix miniseries Unorthodox, for which she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series. She also starred in the German international hit TV series Deutschland 83 (2015), known for being the first German-language series broadcast on US television.
Anna Winger is an American writer, producer, screenwriter, and photographer who lives in Berlin, Germany. She is creator of the television dramas Deutschland 83,Deutschland 86,Deutschland 89, and Unorthodox. She is a co-writer of the limited series Transatlantic, produced for Netflix and aired in 2023.
Das Traumschiff is a German television drama series by ZDF. The series, about a cruise ship that travels to places around the world, debuted in 1981 and became one of the most-watched television shows in Germany. As of 2024, more than 100 episodes have been produced. It was primarily filmed and set aboard the MS Deutschland cruise ship as it sailed to tourist destinations around the world. The destinations depicted are usually the result of product placement. In 2015, the depicted ship was switched to the MS Amadea. The television producer is Wolfgang Rademann.
Kleo is a German action-thriller comedy television series co-created by Hanno Hackfort, Richard Kropf, and Bob Konrad for Netflix, premiering in 2022. It follows the revenge journey of a former East German Stasi assassin, Kleo Straub, after her arrest and subsequent imprisonment until the fall of the Berlin Wall.
An unofficial collaborator or IM, or euphemistically informal collaborator, was an informant in the German Democratic Republic who delivered private information to the Ministry for State Security. At the end of the East German government, there was a network of around 189,000 informants, working at every level of society.
Deutschland 83 is a 2015 German spy thriller television series starring Jonas Nay as a 24-year-old native of East Germany who is sent to West Germany in 1983 as an undercover spy for the HVA, the foreign intelligence agency of the Stasi. It is a co-production of AMC Networks' SundanceTV and RTL Television by the production company, UFA Fiction, with international distribution by RTL Group's FremantleMedia International and North American distribution by Kino Lorber.
Jonas Nay is a German actor and musician known for starring as Martin Rauch in Deutschland 83 and its sequels, Deutschland 86 and Deutschland 89.
Joerg Winger is an Executive Producer and Managing Director at Big Window Productions and a co-creator of the television drama Deutschland 83.
The Same Sky is a 2017 German TV series. It is set during the 1970s in the divided city of Berlin, depicting the Cold War. It portrays the fate of two families on either side of the Berlin Wall. The story revolves around the relationship between an East German "Romeo" agent – a spy who uses seduction as a way to unearth secrets — and his female targets in the West.
Gabriele Gast is a former double agent and East German spy. In 1973, Gast responded to a newspaper job advertisement purportedly placed by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. On 1 November 1973, she started to work with the West German intelligence service.
Deutschland 86 is a 2018 German spy thriller television series starring Jonas Nay as an agent of East Germany in 1986, in relation to the Angolan Civil War.
Heinz Rauch was a German activist and politician who fought against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War.
Siegfried Dombrowski was an East German army officer who rose to the rank of "Oberstleutnant" . He combined this with his role as deputy chief-of-staff of Intelligence Administration of the East German military intelligence agency. On 5 August 1958, accompanied by his wife and children, along with a substantial sum of cash, he escaped to West Berlin. For the western intelligence services he subsequently turned out to be a highly valuable source of information about the organisational structures under which their eastern counterparts operated.
