Im Sommer 2013, mitten im Bundestagswahlkampf, berichtet die „WELT am Sonntag“: der DDR-Schauspieler Lutz Riemann arbeitete als IM für die HV A der Stasi. Unter dem Decknamen „Richard König“ habe er in den 70er Jahren Peer Steinbrück bespitzelt und Künstlerkollegen in Thüringen ausspioniert. Lutz Riemann, bekannt als „Oberleutnant Zimmermann“ aus der Reihe „Polizeiruf 110“, gibt seine Stasi-Tätigkeit unumwunden zu. Petra Riemann ist schockiert. Sie kann nicht glauben, dass ihr Vater ein linientreuer IM war. Im Gegenteil: Sie kennt ihn als liberalen Familienvater, der seine Kinder zum freien Denken und zum Widerspruch in der Diktatur ermunterte. Wie passt das zusammen? Wer verbirgt sich hinter „Richard König“? Petra Riemann muss versuchen, diese Fragen zu beantworten, zum einen, um Klarheit zu gewinnen über ihre eigene Vergangenheit in der DDR; zum anderen, um endgültig ihren Platz im „neuen“ Deutschland zu finden.

Lesung am 15. September  2023 im Baumbachhaus in Kranichfeld

Ein Kapitel DDR-Geschichte in Kranichfeld | Weimar | Thüringische Landeszeitung (tlz.de)

Aktuelles Programm | Baumbachhaus Kranichfeld (baumbachhaus-kranichfeld.de)

The New York Times

Piecing Together the History of Stasi Spying
Researchers undertake the massive task of recreating millions of torn-up records that the East German secret police hoped to destroy.
By Annalisa Quinn, in: New York Times, 10 August, 2021

From the article:
“Petra Riemann first heard about her father’s double life through a newspaper report. Lutz Riemann was an East German actor known for playing a TV policeman. But, according to files seen by the Welt am Sonntag newspaper in 2013, he had also been an informant, keeping tabs on family and friends. Ms. Riemann had known he sometimes worked with the foreign intelligence arm of the Stasi, but imagined him as a kind of James Bond figure, she said in an interview — not someone using intimate dinners and birthday parties to gather intelligence on close ones. ‘He used our family to obtain the trust of his victims,’ she said.
Still, questions remain unanswered. When she found out later he had a secret second family, she didn’t know if they were the result of a simple affair, or if, as he claimed, a part of his Stasi work. She said that she and her parents no longer speak.
Ms. Riemann, who wrote a book about the experience with her husband, the journalist Torsten Sasse, said that the knowledge gained from the files was worth the pain. ‘You could read something in these files that will disturb you forever,’ she said, ‘but the question of course is: Could you live with a lie?’
Mr. Riemann could not be reached for comment. But in 2013, he acknowledged to the Welt am Sonntag that he had worked as an informant and said that, as a committed communist, he had done so out of ideological conviction.”