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Inge Viett

* 1944 IN STEMWARDE (SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN)
Inge Viett’s passport photo from the MfS files. She feels comfortable in the GDR and enjoys her work in the Karl Liebknecht heavy machinery combine in Magdeburg. She is in charge of the “Children’s Holiday Exchange, Children’s Holiday Camp” department and has three staff members and a budget of one million East German marks.
Inge Viett’s passport photo from the MfS files. She feels comfortable in the GDR and enjoys her work in the Karl Liebknecht heavy machinery combine in Magdeburg. She is in charge of the “Children’s Holiday Exchange, Children’s Holiday Camp” department and has three staff members and a budget of one million East German marks.
BStU, MfS, HA XXII Nr. 19105, Bl. 58

A KEY FIGURE OF RAF-STASI COOPERATION

Inge Viett grows up under difficult conditions in a children’s home and then a foster family. She completes a vocational training course as a childcare worker and begins to study sports at university. In 1968 she moves to West Berlin, where she is part of the leftist scene and becomes radicalised. Viett becomes a member of the terrorist “2 June Movement” and participates, among other things, in the abduction of CDU politician Peter Lorenz in 1975. She is arrested the same year, but is able to escape prison in West Berlin in the summer of 1976 and go into hiding.

In possession of forged papers, Viett makes many trips to and from West Berlin via Schönefeld Airport in the GDR. The Stasi detains her there for a few hours in 1978, and she makes the acquaintance of MfS Colonel Harry Dahl, who ensures her unhindered transit through the GDR.

Revolutionary violence had – and justifiably so – a moral, liberating appeal.

Inge Viett is in Paris often, where she is in contact to RAF members. Following the dissolution of the “2 June Movement,” she joins the RAF in 1980. After a chase through Paris in August 1981, she shoots and critically wounds a French policeman. In 1982, she follows former RAF members to the GDR.

She lives in Dresden under the name “Eva Maria Sommer” and works as a reproduction photographer. In 1986 she is threatened with exposure. She obtains a new identity, and, as “Eva Maria Schnell,” moves first to East Berlin and then to Magdeburg.