Lea Niako

Maria Kruse (1908–?), better known by her stage name Lea Niako, was a German exotic dancer and actress. Niako was renowned across Europe for her dance performances in the late interwar period, from 1926 to 1933. She often performed with little to no clothes; nude dancing, or Nackttanz, was at the time popular and was seen as an artistic expression of modernity and emancipation. For her unusual and exotic performances, she garnered great attention in the international press. She also broke through into the film industry, appearing in the Portuguese film Fátima Milagrosa (1928) and the Spanish film La Carta (1931).

Niako is most famous for her involvement in the German arrest of the Polish spy Jerzy Sosnowski in 1934. She met and fell in love with Sosnowski in Budapest in 1933, not knowing that he was a spy. After Sosnowski told her in Berlin of his espionage activities and she learnt of his numerous affairs with other women she panicked and confided with an acquaintance, who unbeknownst to her passed the information on to the SS. The Abwehr were also already pursuing an investigation into Sosnowski at the time. Niako later withdrew her testimony and might have alerted Sosnowski to his impending arrest but they were both apprehended in early 1934. Upon finding out that Niako's information had reached the SS, Sosnowski accused her of being his accomplice, determined to drag her down with him.

Niako was spared from punishment through the intervention of Walter Schellenberg of the SS, who transferred her to his office for unspecified activities, with the threat that the prosecution against her could be resumed at any time she chose not to co-operate with him. Niako had a strained relationship with the Nazi authorities. Her career suffered owing to the Sosnowski affair and she was rarely allowed to perform. In early 1938 she was arrested for treason but shortly thereafter pardoned. She made some further film appearances; her last known acting role was a dancer in the German propaganda film Carl Peters (1941). Niako survived the end of World War II and held dance performances in Berlin as late as 1950. The eventual date of her death is unknown.