Vera Lengsfeld was an East German civil rights activist. In 1988 she was jailed for a protest against the regime and then expelled from the country. In 1991 she learned that her husband, the poet Knud Wollenberger, had informed on her to the Stasi under the code name Donald. He had been an informant since 1972, and he went on writing reports on her during their marriage. They divorced in 1992. In 2000, when he was gravely ill, she forgave him. She later told the broadcaster Al Jazeera: “You can only forgive somebody if they are repentant.” She also said: “It took my former husband 10 years but he was repentant.”