Cambridgeshire author Peter Krüger’s spy novel, ‘Lotte’, links Stasi mind games to social media

Lotte, by South Cambridgeshire-based author Peter Krüger, is a spy novel set in that fascinating period of history known as the Cold War – something which the author experienced first-hand when travelling between East and West Germany 50 years ago.

A work of historical fiction, inspired by a chance encounter in East Germany during the 1970s and based on real events, the book tells the story of the titular character, Lotte – an East German psychologist working for the Stasi, East Germany’s notorious secret police force and intelligence agency which lasted from 1950 to 1990.

In the novel, one of the least memorable foreign visitors to East Germany Lotte spied on during the 1970s was the man now hoping to become Britain’s next prime minister.

But she had not forgotten Paul Anweiler and until he came looking for the Labour leader’s Stasi file assumed his body was still at the bottom of a lake where she watched him drown more than 40 years ago.

Since 1989, Lotte has been living quietly in a small village north of Berlin and trying not to dwell on her contribution to the Stasi’s Zersetzung programme.

“Lotte, in fictional terms, is a young psychologist in East Germany and she becomes involved in this Zersetzung programme,” explains Peter, speaking to the Cambridge Independent from his home in Orwell.

“It was introduced because West Germany refused to give East Germany any more money to keep it alive, because it was beating up dissidents and imprisoning them and torturing them.

“But then they decided to use psychological torture on people instead.

“What they did they used to play pranks on people, so if you were a dissident, you would suddenly find your brand of coffee changed, or your furniture moved – someone would break into your house.

“It seemed a bit like a joke at first, but then what happened is when there were meetings, someone would phone you up and say it’s been changed at the last minute so you were always late and things like that.

“And it actually did work; people just lost confidence and some people actually had nervous breakdowns.

“They put an enormous amount of resources into this, and Lotte’s job was to monitor the effectiveness of it.”

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Lotte goes back to “what she should have been doing – offering therapy”.

Linking the story to the modern age, it appears that Paul Anweiler has links with a social media company that employs the same psychological warfare techniques once used to disrupt dissident groups in the former DDR (German Democratic Republic) – except this time, Lotte is the target.

“It’s almost as if she’s becoming a victim of this Zersetzung programme herself,” notes Peter, “someone is obviously playing with her mind as well because a lot of strange things start to happen to her and her husband…”

Peter says that he used to go to East Germany “quite a lot” in the 1970s, “usually just visiting family, but sometimes sightseeing as well”, and remembers having to be wary of certain things.

“When you were talking to a group of people, you were usually careful what you said,” he recalls, “but sometimes it was quite informal and you were talking about politics and you were talking about communism and capitalism…

“Then once on one occasion, someone turned up that no-one really knew. Somebody said, ‘Who’s this person?’ – ‘Oh, it’s a friend of this guy.’

“So we spent the whole evening talking about cigarettes and holidays and things like that because we just didn’t trust this person.

“I thought about her afterwards and then all of a sudden it dawned on me that she was there because I was there from the West.

“She was listening to everything I said to everyone else, so I based it [the novel] on her.”

As well as being an author, Peter has a degree from Imperial College London and was founder and CEO of a pioneering high-tech company.

The company developed AI and image processing technology, including the first hardware and software which displayed live video in Microsoft Windows.

He holds dual British-German nationality (his father was German).

Lotte, published by Peter’s own publishing house, Steinkrug Publications, is available now. Visit steinkrugpublications.co.uk.