West Germany Spies, Spies and More Spies

By Marguerite Johnson

Consider the cast of characters: 1) a trusted secretary seduced 17 years ago by an East German agent whom she has served faithfully ever since as a spy in the West German President's office, 2) a senior counterespionage official who thwarts a kidnaping attempt in Austria by a friend he met in a Cologne sauna, 3) a mysterious woman who places an obituary notice in the London Times for three people who never existed.

That tangled web of espionage might have made for amusing reading had it emerged from the pages of a spy novel. Instead it leaped from the headlines of West German newspapers last week, as the country's most serious spy scandal in more than a decade grew even wider. Chancellor Helmut Kohl found the revelations anything but amusing. In an effort to limit the damage, Kohl last week dismissed Heribert Hellenbroich, 48, chief of the Federal Intelligence Service.

Until he took over the service last month, Hellenbroich had been in charge of the Office for Protection of the Constitution (OPC), West Germany's counterespionage agency. As such, he was the boss of Hans Joachim Tiedge, 48, head of the agency's East Germany section, who defected to that country two weeks ago. Despite complaints from co-workers that Tiedge was a security risk because of his heavy drinking and mounting debts, Hellenbroich had refused to move or suspend him, an action that Kohl called "totally incomprehensible." Even so, Hellenbroich insisted that he had not made a mistake. "I'd do it again," he said after his dismissal.

Hellenbroich was replaced by Hans-Georg Wieck, 57, an experienced diplomat who has served since 1980 as West German ambassador to NATO. Wieck is highly respected in Western capitals, and his appointment was seen as an attempt by the Kohl government to regain the confidence of its Atlantic allies. Investigators have not yet determined whether Tiedge, who joined the OPC in 1966, had been working for the East Germans all along or had gone over to the other side only recently. Whatever the case, the damage was considerable. Tiedge was in a position to know the identities of East Germans and possibly others in the East bloc working for West Germany. Indeed, the repercussions were already being felt. Apparently fearing exposure by Tiedge, an East German diplomat, Martin Winkler, 44, who had been posted in Buenos Aires and was probably working as a double agent, defected to West Germany last week.

The day after Tiedge turned up in East Germany, West German authorities arrested Margarete Hoke, 50, a secretary for the past 21 years in the office of the Federal President, on suspicion of spying for East Germany. Officials said that Hoke had first met an East German agent named Franz Becker in 1968 and had recently been spotted making contact with him in Copenhagen. A few days after Hoke was picked up, Swiss authorities in Lucerne arrested an East German couple, Johann and Ingeborg Hubner, who were believed to be linked to Hoke.

Another installment in the continuing drama came when Reinhard Liebetanz, 48, an associate of Tiedge's who heads the counterespionage unit against right- wing radicals, was detained on suspicion of supplying information to a friend who was identified as an East German agent. Officials said that Liebetanz had become friendly with a man named Eberhard Severin, 50, whom he first met in 1974. While vacationing last month at Austria's Neusiedler Lake, Liebetanz said, Severin tried to recruit him as a spy for East Germany. Fearing he might be kidnaped, Liebetanz went to Austrian police, who held him until West German intelligence officials could escort him back home. Liebetanz was later released without charge.

Meanwhile, in perhaps the most intriguing development so far, a woman placed an obituary in the Aug. 24 edition of the London Times. The notice: "Von Hessen. On August 21st at Penzance, Cornwall. Timothy, Mark and James. Dearly beloved sons of Margarita Countess Von Hessen and the late Count Richardt. Funeral service to be held in Germany. Donation to the NSPCC (the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children)." Suspicious of the ad, the Times checked and found that no such deaths had been reported in Penzance and that Princess Margaret of Hesse, 72, who happened to be visiting Queen Elizabeth at Balmoral, was actually childless. Scotland Yard traced the ad to Rita Coleman, a local magistrate, who said a mysterious "Countess Maggie," whom she had never met, had contacted her at a charity she worked with and asked her to place the death notice of her three children.

British officials investigating the obituary now believe it may have been a coded message to East German spies operating in Britain to go for deep cover. The day before the item appeared, Scotland Yard arrested two East Germans, Reinhard Schulze, 32, an interior designer, and his wife Sonja, 35, a translator, and charged them with various offenses under Britain's Official Secrets Act.

Though the spies were falling thick and fast, both the Kohl government and the West German opposition were eager to prevent the disclosures from undermining efforts by the two Germanys to improve relations. With Kohl's blessing, Franz Josef Strauss, the Bavarian conservative leader, planned to visit East Germany this week for the annual Leipzig trade fair and a meeting with East German Party Boss Erich Honecker. In addition, former Chancellor Willy Brandt intends to see Honecker in East Berlin later in the month. In that sense, though the spies may have been real, officials in both countries seemed at least partly willing to treat them as fiction.

With reporting by Robert Ball/Bonn and Frank Melville/London