Gerda Munsinger

Gerda Munsinger (born Gerda Hesler or Heseler or Hessler, also known as Olga Schmidt and Gerda Merkt; September 10, 1929 – November 24, 1998) was an East German prostitute and alleged Soviet spy (although these allegations were ultimately unproven). She immigrated to Canada in 1955. Munsinger was the central protagonist of the Munsinger Affair, the first national political sex scandal in Canada, and was dubbed "the Mata Hari of the Cold War" because of her involvement with several Canadian politicians. She returned to Germany in 1961, became the centre of press attention in 1966 when the scandal was publicly revealed, and was the subject of a feature film.

Munsinger was born in Königsberg, East Prussia (modern Kaliningrad, Russia), on or around September 10, 1929. Little is definitively known of her early life. Her father was reported to be a member of the Communist Party of Germany, and was killed in 1943. She was drafted as a labour worker in 1944, around the same time that her younger brother mysteriously disappeared; she also lost contact with her mother and sister. In an interview she stated that she was until 1948 a prisoner in a "Russian concentration camp"; she also reported being raped by the Soviet soldiers who invaded Germany at the end of the Second World War. The Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage notes that "there appeared to Western intelligence officers some indications" that Munsinger served as a Soviet spy during this period and that she at one time lived with a KGB officer. She crossed the border between East and West Germany on several occasions, and as a result was reportedly arrested for espionage by the American border police in 1949. Shortly thereafter, she began learning English and worked as a secretary in a hotel, where she provided secretarial services to American president Dwight Eisenhower and his wife.

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