“You'll never make a spy out of me!” declared Marianne S., a German Romanian woman whose private life became entangled in the Cold War. Hidden for decades in the vaults of Bucharest’s secret police archives, her dossier reveals a true story that reads like a thriller, blending an epistolary romance with espionage. At its heart is Marianne’s fifteen-year correspondence with her West German pen pal and future husband, Heinz H., which turned perilous when Romania’s communist secret police, the Securitate, intervened. Drawing on passionate love letters, surveillance reports, and intercepted mail, this book uncovers a world in which mailboxes became battlefields and exposes the human cost of surveillance. Forced onto a divided global stage with no script and no escape from watchful eyes, the lovers must decide whether to play their assigned roles or outsmart the state puppeteers pulling the strings.

Valentina Glajar is a professor of German studies at Texas State University. She is an archival researcher of Romanian Securitate files and the award-winning author of The Secret Police Dossier of Herta Müller. Currently, she is researching early Cold War Romanian spies in the service of American intelligence.

Never Make a Spy Out of Me weaves a gripping tale of Cold War espionage that is captivating from the first page. It reconstructs meticulously the true story of two teenage pen pals, one a West German, the other a Romanian, separated by the Iron Curtain. In her book Professor Glajar follows the ill-fated romance that blossoms between the pen pals through their letters and rare secret tristes in Romania. When the Securitate suspects the West German Heinz H. is a spy, the romance morphs into a gut-wrenching story of madcap surveillance and persecution. The Securitate’s efforts to coerce Marianne S. into collaborating expose the terrible human cost of Cold War divisions and the damage to lives wreaked by one of the most brutal secret service apparatuses in the Eastern Bloc. Utterly compelling!
Alison Lewis, The University of Melbourne

Valentina Glajar reconstructs with meticulous care the little-researched surveillance of postal services during the first two decades of the Cold War on both sides of the Iron Curtain. She does so in a deeply captivating manner, offering readers an incredible love story that epitomizes the destructive impact of authoritarian regimes on ordinary lives. Today, as Europe finds itself anew in a delicate political landscape, the story of Marianne S. and Heinz H. serves as a stark warning to those nostalgic for Eastern Europe’s undemocratic past.
Corina L. Petrescu, University of Mississippi

Real spy stories do not feature the “shaken, not stirred” master agent of James Bond legend or the deceptively underestimated George Smiley of John le Carré espionage stories. Valentina Glajar’s Never Make a Spy Out of Me documents true-life star-crossed lovers, who enthrall the reader due their all-too-human desires, weaknesses, and hopes. Marianne and Heinz meet at a vexed time and place– the eastern bloc of early Cold War Europe. The actual love letters between the yearning protagonists and the spy files fashioned to control these two young people prove more pulse-racing than any film or thriller could.
Susan Signe Morrison, Texas State University

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
PART I: May 1947–September 1954
PART II: February 1956–May 1957
PART III: May–December 1957
PART IV: January–September 1958
PART V: March 1959–January 1962
EPILOGUE
INDEX