Werner Stiller, East German Spy and Defector, Dies at 69

Posted April 3, 2017

External Article: The Washington Post

Kristie Macrakis, professor in the Ivan Allen College School of History and Sociology, was quoted in “Werner Stiller, East German Spy and Defector, Dies at 69” by The Washington Post.

Excerpt:

Mr. Stiller was for many years a model citizen of communist East Germany, where he had been a member of the Free German Youth as a teenager and joined the state Communist Party by 21. His loyalties began to shift by the mid-1970s, according to Kristie Macrakis, a Georgia Tech professor who studies espionage and chronicled Mr. Stiller’s story in the 2008 book “Seduced by Secrets: Inside the Stasi’s Spy-Tech World.”

She said that Mr. Stiller was disillusioned with the repressive politics of East Germany, but also frustrated with a career that had stagnated and with a strait-laced German society that abhorred his lavish, womanizing lifestyle.

For the full article, read here.