Borvendég Zsuzsanna: Fabulous Spy Games. How international trade networks with the West developed after 1945 - A Magyarságkutató Intézet Kiadványai 24. (Budapest, 2021)
ATTACK ON THE OMFB - Storm clouds
FABULOUS SPY GAMES Nyerges. Robert Geist, a former employee at the Frankfurt office, smoothed the affairs of the OMFB from the office he held after returning from West Germany. Robert Geist was born in 1925 in Vienna, when his father fled to Austria after the fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919.429 The family returned home after Austria was annexed in 1938. Robert Geist attended secondary school in Budapest, studying at a school for mechanical engineering. During the war, he served on the front as a forced labourer, before fleeing to join the Soviet troops. After the war, he was first a member of the SZDP (Social Democratic Party) and a member of the MKP (Hungarian Communist Party) from 1946 onwards. He studied at the National College of Economics in Moscow between 1950 and 1955, graduating with merit. He also stayed in Moscow during the revolution, returning home only in mid-November to immediately volunteer as an interpreter at the Soviet command centre in Budapest. He stayed at the occupants’ headquarters until 1 January 1957, when he was transferred to the political department of the Budapest Police Headquarters as a detective.430 In the summer of 1957, he left the force and moved to Technoimpex. From this point on, he was engaged in foreign trade as his main area of work. In 1958, state security did not have a recruited man at Technoimpex, so they were able to gather only very little information on the western trader and sales representatives who visited the company. With this in mind, they chose Geist to be their agent in the future. This boosted his career, so he was already in the Hague working as the secretary of the local trade office by 1960, before being transferred to Frankfurt in 1961. The four years he spent there were decisive for his career and success, and he became one of the key figures of the office apparatus supporting the foreign trade lobby. On his return home, Endre Simon was able to cover the dubious transactions of the OMFB at the Ministry of Foreign Trade with Geists help: Geist continuously provided Sebestyén and Simon with information they could use against certain leaders at the Ministry of Foreign Trade.431 429 ÁBTL 3.2.1 Bt-751/1, p. 12 Recruitment proposal, 4 December 1958 430 Ibid. 431 ÁBTL 3.1.5 0-15829/4, p. 146 Report, 27 November 1970 156
