The Firm

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The Firm

The Inside Story of the Stasi

G A R Y B R U C E

1

2010

1

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bruce, Gary, 1969–

The fi rm : the inside story of the Stasi / Gary Bruce.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-19-539205-0

1. Germany (East). Ministerium für Staatssicherheit—History.

2. Intelligence service—Germany (East)—History.

3. Secret service—Germany (East)—History.

4. Germany (East)—Politics and government.

I. Title.

DD287.4.B78 2010

363.28'30943109045—dc22

2010012023

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on acid-free paper

For Gabriel

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Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Abbreviations xiii

INTRODUCTION 1

1

DISTRICTS GRANSEE AND PERLEBERG UNDER

THE NAZIS 20

2

I N T H E S E RV I C E O F T H E F I R M : The Full-time

Stasi Employees 31

3

T H E C A N D I D AT E : Stasi Informants 80

4

I N T H E L I N E O F S I G H T : Targeted by the Stasi 106

5

T H E S TA S I I N E V E R Y D AY L I F E 142

6

T H E D O W N FA L L 162

CONCLUSION 182

Notes 187

Bibliography 217

Index 227

Maps and photographs follow page 105

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Acknowledgments

IT IS SAID that baseball is a team sport played individually. The practice of

history is very similar.

The lead archivists on this project deserve my fi rst thanks. Frau

Hannelore Strehlow of the Stasi Archive’s Potsdam branch (which at the

end of 2008 was transferred to the central archive in Berlin), herself an

excellent historian, worked tirelessly to prepare the material for my view-

ing. Her profound knowledge of the archival holdings and of Stasi history

greatly enhanced this book. She even went so far as to delay her summer

holidays to accommodate my research visits, something that took a toll

on her leaky roof that required repair. Frau Kramer also made my stay in

Potsdam a pleasurable experience, with her healthy supply of both cook-

ies and stories of growing up in East Germany.

I am deeply indebted to Herr Detlef Niemann of the Schwerin branch

of the Stasi Archive, who not only guided me to the most relevant mate-

rial but championed the project. He put me in contact with a number of

individuals, from volunteer curators at village museums to the president

of associations for Stasi victims to the fi rst federal commissioner for the

Stasi fi les. His profound belief in the importance of the Stasi archive’s

work helped spur me on during the down times. I will also take away fond

memories of our times at Brinkama’s lamenting the fortunes of Hansa

Rostock. Herr Haiko Hoffmann provided outstanding support and very

pleasant conversation. Frau Marlies Lemcke and Frau Claudia Retemeyer

helped locate materials in the labyrinthine archives. Although she was

exceptionally busy, Frau Erika Schröder, the director of the Schwerin

branch, made time to come by the reading room and check on my prog-

ress, a most welcome act of kindness. Given the distance to the nearest

restaurant, I was grateful when I was invited to participate in the commu-

nal take-out order. Some of my best conversations about this project took

place over “Hawaii-Kebabs” in the canteen.

Jörg Stoye, director of the Magdeburg branch of the Stasi archive, kindly

guided me around Perleberg with individuals who had been involved in

the revolution of 1989.

x |

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

At the Brandenburgisches Landeshauptarchiv, Karin Braun went out of

her way to accommodate my requests for information, as did Dr. Klaus

Schwabe at the Landeshauptarchiv Schwerin. My last-minute plea for sta-

tistics on the districts was graciously answered by Annette Skorna of the

Landesbibliothek Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and by Brigitte Thein at the

Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg.

Stefan Wolle, one of the leading historians of East Germany, was kind

enough to suggest three of his seminar students to assist me with arrang-

ing interviews in Germany. I could not have asked for more professional

and enthusiastic colleagues. Jolanta Turowska not only helped plan inter-

views but assisted in developing interview strategies, offered insights on

the project more broadly and served as an important contact in Berlin.

Chapter 1 is based in large part on Antje Rickert’s meticulous research on

Districts Gransee and Perleberg during the Nazi period. Monika Starke

also played an important organizational role at the outset of the project.

I owe a special thanks to the many people, both Stasi employees and

“ordinary” Germans, who agreed to be interviewed for this book. They

accepted me into their homes and talked with me as long as I wished.

They were all gracious hosts. In keeping with their wishes, their names

appear here as pseudonyms, except for two publicly known regime oppo-

nents, Dr. Ulrich Woronowicz and Dr. Jürgen Schmidt-Pohl.

Sven Lauk and Matthias Putzke, friends since our days playing basket-

ball as students of Humboldt University in Berlin, make it diffi cult to leave

Berlin when the time comes. Hartmut Mehlitz, Barbara Mehlitz, and their

son, Joachim, all from Berlin, have been an important part of this project

since the beginning. They have provided shelter, food, and companion-

ship. Hartmut Mehlitz’s book on the Blindenvater August von Zeune has

been infl uential in my own approach to the writing of history. When I fi rst

conceived this project, I expected to write a scholarly history of the Stasi;

I could not know of the people I would meet with whom I always want to

stay a minute longer.

I have received tremendous feedback from my students, both under-

graduate and graduate, as we discussed East German history and the pur-

suit of history in general. Although many more deserve mention here,

I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge Mikkel Dack, Lindsay Dowling,

Aaron Ducker, David Gall, Jonathan Kitay, Andrew Kloiber, Michael

Murray, Amelia Howard, and Joshua Schultz. For his research assistance

and for his help preparing the manuscript, I would like to thank my cur-

rent PhD student Michael Pitblado, a fi ne historian in his own right.

Since my arrival in the department of History at the University of

Waterloo, I have never felt anything but at home. I am grateful to my col-

leagues here who have provided me with the supportive intellectual envi-

ronment in which to write this book. In particular Patrick Harrigan’s keen

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

| xi

eye for detail improved the book, and his sympathetic ear made it possible

for me to focus on writing rather than on the demise of the Montreal

Expos. Both Donna Lang and Nancy Birss provided much-needed admin-

istrative support, and Carl Bon Tempo’s advice was instrumental at the

prospectus stage.

To complete the research for this book, I undertook six trips to the

archives over the course of six years, totaling some ten months in Germany.

The substantial costs involved with this travel were offset by the gener-

ous funding of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of

Canada and the German Academic Exchange Service.

Nancy Toff at Oxford University Press is the consummate editor:

gracious, fair-minded, critical, and available by email. Her emphasis on

narrative vastly improved the book. Joellyn Ausanka and Sonia Tycko, who

guided the manuscript through the fi nal production stages, are masterful

at their craft. I am also very grateful to the press’s anonymous reviewers for

their recommendations.

Chapter 6 draws in large part on my article “In our District, the State

is Secure” in Contemporary European History 14.2 (May 2005). I thank

Cambridge University Press for permission to use the material here.

Antoinette Duplessis has helped in countless ways, from sandwiches

to sympathy. My parents have been supportive throughout my academic

career, especially when I switched my major from chemistry to history

those many years ago. My mum continues to be a great source of comfort.

My dad was always greatly interested in my work, and, although he did not

live past the early stages of this book, he is still very much a part of it.

Gabriel thinks that we already have enough books. For reminders like

this, and so much more, I dedicate this book to him.

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Abbreviations

AstA

Antragsteller auf ständige Ausreise. Applicant to emigrate from East

Germany

FDJ

Freie Deutsche Jugend. Free German Youth—the Communist youth

organization

GDR

German Democratic Republic (East Germany)

GHI

Geheimer Hauptinformator. Secret lead informant

GMS

Gesellschaftlichter Mitarbeiter für Sicherheit. Societal co-worker for

security—a low-level informant, generally not assigned to a monitor-

ing operation

HA

Hauptabteilung. Main directorate within the Stasi

HIM Hauptamtlicher

Inoffi

zieller Mitarbeiter. Full-time unoffi cial co-

worker—a designation used from 1979 for outstanding and long-

serving informants

JHS

Juristische Hochschule des MfS. College of Law—a college for Stasi

offi cers located in Potsdam-Eiche

KgU

Kampfgruppe gegen Unmenschlichkeit. Fighting Group Against

Inhumanity—an anti-Communist resistance group based in West

Berlin

KP

Kontaktperson. Contact person—informant not offi cially registered

with the Stasi

KPD

Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands. Communist Party of Germany—

fused with the Social Democratic Party in 1946 to become the Socialist

Unity Party of Germany

IM Inoffi zieller Mitarbeiter. Unoffi cial Co-worker—a generic abbreviation

for Stasi informant

MfS

Ministerium für Staatssicherheit. East Germany’s Ministry for State

Security, commonly known as the Stasi

xiv |

ABBREVIATIONS

NVA

Nationale Volksarmee. East German National People’s Army

OPK

Operative Personenkontrolle. Personal surveillance operation—one

of the two categories of operations the Stasi conducted to monitor

individuals

OTS

Operative-technische Sektor. Section for operational technology—

Stasi department responsible for providing crime labs for on-going

investigations, and technology to secure Stasi installations

OV

Operativer Vorgang. Operational case—a more in-depth Personal Sur-

veillance Operation

POZW Partner des operativen Zusammenwirkens. Collaborative operational

partner—a contact for the Stasi similar to a Contact Person (See

above)

SED

Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands. Socialist Unity Party of

Germany—East Germany’s Communist Party

Stasi See

MfS

The Firm

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I N T R O D U C T I O N

B O R N

I N

S C H W E R I N , the capital of the eastern German province of

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, in 1945, Jürgen Schmidt-Pohl apprenticed as

a professional bookseller before obtaining employment at a bookstore on

Friedrichstrasse in the town of his birth. At the age of twenty-three he was

arrested for speaking out publicly against the new East German constitution,

which had removed a catalogue of basic citizens’ rights, and sentenced to

twenty-four months in prison for what the regime deemed “rabble-rousing.”

Following his release, he returned to the bookstore for a short time before he

was dismissed and forbidden to practice his trade anywhere in East Germany.

For two years, he worked in a brewery as a manual laborer. Since he had come

to the attention of the authorities, the Stasi ( Staatssicherheit), East Germany’s secret police, had hired thirty-four informants to monitor him, three of whom,

he later found out, were his girlfriends. Schmidt-Pohl then foolishly, as he him-

self admitted, contacted an amateur group that smuggled people out of East

Germany. He was arrested in June 1974 for “preparing to fl ee the Republic” and

held for nine months in the Hohenschönhausen Stasi prison on the outskirts

of East Berlin, before being sentenced to fi ve years in prison and a further fi ve

years of removal of rights. He would have been banned from voting, the police

could have searched his apartment at any point without a warrant, and his travel

would have been restricted to a 12-mile (20-km) radius around the town where

he lived.

As it turned out, Schmidt-Pohl served only one year in prison before Amnesty

International brought attention to his case and West Germany bought his free-

dom. (Selling prisoners was an important source of hard currency for the GDR.

In 1988 alone, the practice accounted for more than DM 230 million.)1 His case was indeed a particularly grizzly one. During his time in prison in 1974, his retina

detached and the Stasi arranged for an operation. Schmidt-Pohl recalls today

that the surgeon insulted him before commencing the surgery. Following the

operation, he was returned to prison in Cottbus and beaten by prison guards.

His retina detached again, leaving him permanently blind in his right eye.2

In this story, the Stasi, like Odysseus, encounters the barbarian and

destroys his sight, not in the grotesque fashion of tricking the Cyclops and

then sending a smoking shaft into his eyeball, but through much more subtle

2 |

T H E F I R M

methods—mishandling, neglect, abuse, and an operation that was conducted,

to borrow a German phrase, stiefmütterlich, as a stepmother might do things. If Homer’s hero presents us with the classic encounter between civilization and

barbarism, and one with a nuanced question about how comfortable we are

that barbarism was defeated in this ghastly fashion, then the conduct of the Stasi

is even more diffi cult to judge. Although the Stasi did, on occasion, arrange for

the murder of regime opponents, 3 this was far more the exception than the rule.

Instead, the Stasi employed more refi ned methods of control—extensive behind-

the-scenes monitoring by a vast army of informants, psychological methods to

disrupt individual lives, prisoner neglect, blackmail, and coercion—methods,

no matter how distasteful, that do not equate with a shaft to the eye or, in real

terms, to the brutal torture methods of the Gestapo.

Because of the subtle nature of control in East Germany, the vast majority of

those involved with the repression apparatus were never brought to justice after

the fall of the Berlin Wall. Of the more than 91,000 full-time Stasi offi cers in

1989, thirty-three were sentenced by the year 2000. Twenty-eight of the sentences

were suspended, four were settled fi nancially. Only one of the full-time workers

of the largest secret police per capita in world history went to jail—an unassum-

ing watchman at a district offi ce in the countryside, who, after having had too

much vodka, drew his weapon and shot two people near the remote outpost.

That watchman, Werner Funk, was sentenced in 1990 to ten years in prison. 4 It is frustration at what appears to be an appalling miscarriage of justice that has

prompted Hubertus Knabe, the controversial director of the Stasi memorial site

at Hohenschönhausen in Berlin, to write of “the perpetrators being among us,”

a provocative reworking of The Murderers Are Among Us, the title of Wolfgang

Staudte’s fi lm about genocidaires walking free on the streets of postwar West

Germany.

Questions about the nature of the Stasi are intimately tied to the nature of

the German Democratic Republic. If the Stasi were merely an instrument of

control, albeit a harsh one, in the service of a redemptive, utopian, fundamen-

tally “civilized” regime that enjoyed a good measure of popular support, then

its actions are more easily justifi ed; its members were simply part of a “normal”

secret service, typical of any modern industrial state. If the Stasi were a brutal

instrument to forcibly push through a system to which East Germans did not

subscribe, then the organization and its members must be judged more harshly.

And, in the end, the question of responsibility for crimes—be it on the part of

the population or the regime—remains the single most important question of

twentieth-century German history.

I outline below the poisonous debates that swirl around the fi eld of East

German history, but it is worth mentioning at this stage that for all of the sophis-

tication of ideas about the nature of the East German regime—whether it was

a totalitarian state, welfare dictatorship, or hybrid bureaucratic-totalitarian wel-

fare state, whether East Germans led perfectly normal lives or lived in a constant

I N T R O D U C T I O N

| 3

state of fear and paralysis, whether the stability of the regime is to be explained

primarily by repression or by popular support and societal fragmentation—we

still do not have an empirical study of the regime’s most important tool for

societal control at a grassroots level.5

What follows is a history of the Stasi in two ordinary districts of East Germany,

District Gransee and District Perleberg, how they monitored the population,

their daily operations, the people who worked for the Stasi, and, ultimately, their

demise. Districts Gransee and Perleberg were but two fairly remote outposts of

the 217 Stasi district offi ces ( Kreisdienststellen) responsible for the lion’s share of societal surveillance in East Germany. The distinctly unglamorous district offi ces

of the Stasi employed only 13 percent of the overall staff of the Stasi (there were

roughly 7,000 Stasi employees at the district level), yet ran just over 50 percent

of all informants. 6 Erich Mielke, whose long tenure as minister responsible for the Stasi stretched from 1957 until its demise in 1989, was aware of the importance of these local offi ces in securing the country: “The district offi ces are the

decisive instrument for the security of our workers’ and farmers’ state. The stabil-

ity of our Republic . . . depends on the determined and self-sacrifi cing efforts of

the members of the district offi ces.” 7

Apart from the bucolic natural beauty and the genuine friendliness of their

people, there is nothing exceptional about Districts Gransee and Perleberg.

This fact makes them all the more intriguing for a historian interested in the

typical, day-to-day functioning of the Stasi rather than its atypical—albeit

spectacular—foreign espionage successes like the placement of the spy Gunter

Guillaume high up in Chancellor Willy Brandt’s government or its involve-

ment in the doping of East German athletes. Neither of the districts bordered

on West Germany or West Berlin, although District Perleberg was on a transit

road to West Germany. Neither had potential sites of unrest like universities

or particularly sensitive industry. District Gransee did have a number of Soviet

military installations that were a focus of Stasi work, but this was true of many

districts in East Germany.

What led me to study these two districts was both their ordinariness and their

advantageous archival situation. Given the attention in the press concerning

access to East German secret police documents, the freest access to secret police

fi les in human history, and to the mammoth holdings of the Stasi archives

(more than 111 miles [180 km] of documents), it might come as a surprise that

the amount of material collected by the Stasi in its nearly forty-year history

was much greater than what now remains. Throughout November 1989, after

the Wall had fallen but while East Germany was still in turmoil, Stasi offi cers

methodically walked fi les from their offi ces to shredders, to the coal furnaces

on site, to forests for burial, behind barns for burning, or to rivers where large

sacks of documents were sunk. At the beginning of December, incited by smoke

billowing from Stasi offi ces, local citizens stormed the offi ces and halted the

destruction of documents. In some cases, however, it was too late. Almost

4 |

T H E F I R M

nothing remains of Markus Wolf ’s famed foreign espionage branch, and many

district offi ces saw vast destruction of documents. 8

Such was not the case with District Perleberg, however, whose record group

contains 450 feet (137 m) of documents, the most in the region of Schwerin and

far eclipsing, for example, District Lübz where less than 23 feet (7 m) of docu-

ments survived the revolution. Although the holdings for District Gransee are

less extensive, at only 39 feet (11.9 m), key record groups survived the revolution

intact. In both cases, I examined the documents best suited to understand the

manner in which the Stasi operated, namely the operational fi les when the Stasi

launched a monitoring operation of an East German citizen (known as a Personal

Surveillance Operation (OPK, Operative Personenkontrolle) or the more involved Operational Case (OV, Operativer Vorgang), the cadre fi les that outlined the life background of each employee with the Stasi, their recruitment and their career

achievements, informant fi les that detailed the manner of recruitment and the

informant’s subsequent history with the Stasi, and Sachakten, the fi les that dealt with the day-to-day running of the branch, including directives from the center.

The fi les for Perleberg sit in a depository in a former barracks of the East German

National People’s Army in a farmer’s fi eld some 15 miles (25 km) away from Schwerin;

those for Gransee in a former medical complex on the outskirts of Potsdam. Both

are regional branches of the agency with the unwieldy name that administers this

very sensitive collection: The Federal Commission for the Documents of the State

Security Service of the former GDR. For as much as the commission has come under

fi re of late, it cannot be emphasized enough that the archivists and staff there offer superlative research assistance.9 As has been well established in the literature, the Stasi was not a state within a state but rather served at the behest of the ruling

Socialist Unity Party ( Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands—SED). 10 Accordingly, I also examined the party fi les for Districts Gransee and Perleberg held in the Länder archives for Brandenburg and Mecklenburg. Although these contained valuable

insights into the location of the Stasi in the information-gathering apparatus of the

party, there was little to illuminate the often contentious relationship between the

party and the Stasi at a district level.

The fi nal pillar on which this book is based is oral history. I conducted inter-

views with fourteen former employees of the Stasi who worked in Districts

Gransee and Perleberg (and one neighboring district)—some of them opera-

tional offi cers, some of them support staff—and twenty “ordinary” Germans

who lived in the districts during the era of Communist rule.

T H E C O N T E N T I O U S H I S T O R Y O F E A S T G E R M A N Y

For a small country that lasted briefl y on the map of Europe, the attention

accorded the German Democratic Republic is nothing short of astonishing. The

history of East Germany, however, holds particular poignancy for current resi-

dents of eastern Germany, where those complicit with the regime are neighbors

I N T R O D U C T I O N

| 5

of those who suffered under it. This fact of the GDR being very recent history is

indeed the rub, as Ulrich Plenzdorf observed: “That the GDR is dead is a myth.

The people who were the GDR are still alive.” 11

In recent years, the debate about East German history has garnered world-

wide attention through the enormously successful movies Goodbye Lenin! (and

the less successful abroad but very popular in Germany as Sonnenallee) and the Oscar-winning The Lives of Others. Since the tragic elements of Goodbye Lenin!

were more or less ignored (such as the painful scene in which the daughter dis-

covers the letters from her father, who was separated from the rest of the family

by the Berlin Wall) and the comedic moments around Spreewald pickles accen-

tuated, the movie’s reputation is that of a comedy, one that portrays life in the

GDR as a light-hearted affair. Even the exclamation mark in the title suggests a

note of frivolity. Like Jaroslav Hasek’s famous Good Soldier Švejk, East Germans appear as a group that bumbled along the path of life, oblivious to the repression around them or pretending to be naïve so as not to get caught up in the

system. The image of an East Germany where life was simply a connection of

happy events was reinforced in the early 2000s with several major German TV

stations running variety shows about the GDR. Katarina Witt, the East German

ice skater and star of the Sarajevo Olympics, appeared on RTL’s Die DDR-Show

wearing a shirt from the Communist youth group Young Pioneers, reminding her

viewers that “there were also some very nice times” in the GDR. When queried

about the negative aspects of the regime, her co-host answered: “It makes no

sense on an entertainment show to invite a border guard to the studio and ask

him about his orders to shoot.” 12 On SAT.1, the former boxer Axel Schulz co-hosted Die ultimative Ost-Show, the job description for which was apparently

to exclaim “Dat war der Hammer! ” (literally “That was the hammer!,” or “That

was awesome!”) whenever the topics of Trabants (East German fi berglass cars),

the East German rock groups City or Die Puhdys, or camping on the Baltic were

raised.

The Lives of Others, on the other hand, deals far more squarely with the

repressive features of the regime. In Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s fi lm,

set in the mid to late 1980s, the Stasi captain Gerd Wiesler (played by Ulrich

Mühe) is the case offi cer assigned to monitor the oppositional playwright Georg

Dreyman. From his listening post in the attic, Wiesler comes to know the inti-

mate life of his subject, is moved by the music and poetry he is exposed to in

the course of surveillance, and ends up as a quasi-guardian angel for Dreyman

and his companion, for whom he has developed more than just a passing fond-

ness. Apart from a major historical inaccuracy that makes the entire premise fall

apart (a Stasi offi cer of that rank would never have been the one donning the

surveillance headphones), there was not one instance in the entire history of the

Stasi when an offi cer went over to the opposition in the manner suggested by

the fi lm. The fi lm is laced with ideas of redemption overcoming sin (an under-

standable central motif for any German movie about the German past), of the

6 |

T H E F I R M

fundamental humanity of the central character, and the fact that he becomes the

“good man” of the sonata that Dreyman plays while Wiesler secretly listens in.

Overlooked in this interpretation of the fi lm is Wiesler’s career both before and

after his association with Operation Laszlo.

When the movie opens, Wiesler is mercilessly interrogating a prisoner

for assisting in the escape of his friend over the border. After several nights

of interrupted sleep and Wiesler’s threats to the well-being of his family,

the prisoner suffers a breakdown and confesses to the “crime.” At the Stasi

college in Potsdam-Eiche, Wiesler uses this case to instruct the next genera-

tion of Stasi officers in how to extract confessions from prisoners. If it is

indeed the sins of that life that Wiesler wishes to redeem by protecting the

playwright and his companion, it is odd that following Operation Laszlo,

Wiesler opens personal mail for five years. This action would not have been a

benign, make-work project for a fallen secret police officer, but would have

had very real consequences for those whose mail was opened. As a case in

point, the 154 Stasi personnel who worked in Department M (mail moni-

toring) in Region Halle in the southern industrial area of East Germany

inspected 15,779,715 pieces of mail in the first quarter of 1989 alone, and

sent out 85,478 memos to appropriate Stasi departments regarding the con-

tent of the letters. 13 Does a “good man,” following his redemption, open other people’s mail for years on end? To see this film as a morality play in

which goodness overcomes the dictates of ideology is to miss a much more

complex picture about the institutional barriers that denied opportunities

for good to triumph in the East German dictatorship. 14 For Ulrich Mühe, the actor who played Wiesler, the film itself must have been a cathartic

exercise: unbeknownst to him until after the fall of the Wall, his wife was a

Stasi informant throughout their entire marriage. 15

To a certain extent, what has happened in the fi eld of popular culture, where

fi lms and television shows about daily life in East Germany far away from the

repression apparatus dominate, has been mirrored in the historiography of East

Germany. Initial scholarship following the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989

tended to highlight the dictatorial, repressive, and controlling aspects of the

SED ( Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands) regime. Recent works, however, have moved away from a top-down model of the GDR toward one that emphasizes the plurality of relationships between rulers and ruled, the myriad ways in

which East Germans participated in the dictatorship (albeit with varying degrees

of willingness), and the degree of “normalcy” that characterized the lives of

most East Germans. In many ways, 1993 represented a highpoint of a school of

thought that can be broadly characterized as “totalitarian,” with the publication

of two major works, Armin Mitter and Stefan Wolle’s hefty Untergang auf Raten

(Decline in Stages) and a seminal article in the infl uential Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte (Contemporary History Quarterly) by Klaus-Dietmar Henke titled

“On the Use and Evaluation of Stasi Files.”16

I N T R O D U C T I O N

| 7

Mitter and Wolle’s superbly written book, one of the fi rst to mine the new

archival material in any real depth, argues that the GDR was in a constant state of

war with its own citizens and enjoyed virtually no popular buy-in. Accordingly,

the regime developed sophisticated instruments, like the Stasi, to keep the

population in check. Henke’s vision of the GDR was not far off that of Mitter

and Wolle, as he contends that the Stasi at least from the 1970s was an instru-

ment of blanket surveillance ( fl ächendeckend) and served a vital role as an organ that could help mold society toward the ideals of the party. The following year

Clemens Vollnhals backed Henke’s description, suggesting that the Stasi was an

instrument of the exercise of totalitarian power.17 Among totalitarian historians, descriptions of the regime vary from “gentle totalitarianism,” 18 to a “subtle”

dictatorship, 19 to that which practiced a “soft” form of repression. 20

The totalitarian model soon fell on hard times. Some historians claimed that

East Germans did not see themselves in the stark hero-or-victim story of GDR

history as portrayed in works like Mitter and Wolle and in the mammoth reports

of the parliamentary commission tasked with writing the history of the GDR.

Academics became increasingly uneasy applying a concept that did not seem to

adequately capture the extent to which citizens themselves had agency in society

and the regime, rather than their portrayal as hapless victims of a regime run by

nebulous “others” who were somehow not part of society.21 Furthermore, the concept seemed to be a strain of post–Cold War triumphalism akin to Francis

Fukuyama’s arrogant declaration that history had ended in favor of Western

democracy. 22 Scholars were also concerned about applying the same term for East Germany that had been developed for Nazi Germany, a country that had,

unlike East Germany, plunged the world into war and undertaken systematic

extermination of Jews.

Klaus-Dietmar Henke, a supporter of the totalitarian concept for both the

GDR and Nazi Germany if appropriate qualifi ers are applied, rightly reminds

us that the two regimes can be compared but must not be equated with one

another.23 In place of totalitarianism, a fl ood of alternative terms poured into the scholarship, including “welfare dictatorship” ( Fürsorgediktatur) , “post-totalitarian bureaucratic dictatorship,” and a “thoroughly ruled society.” In promot-

ing his model of a “forced through society” ( vermachtete Gesellschaft), Klaus

Schroeder outlines obvious pitfalls with the alternatives: Since “thoroughly

ruled society” can apply to democracies as well, the central question remains

the degree of “thorough ruled-ness” in the different political systems. To sug-

gest that the GDR was a “welfare dictatorship” is to suggest that individual

well-being, rather than ideology or power, stood at the center of the GDR state,

and is therefore, he believes, to thoroughly confuse matters. 24 Most recently, Mary Fulbrook has proposed the term “participatory dictatorship” to capture

the seemingly large number of East Germans who were active participants in

the system, rather than simply hapless victims. In championing this approach

to GDR history, she writes: “A very small ruling elite, with a linked apparatus

8 |

T H E F I R M

of repression and injustice, was supported and sustained by a very much larger

number of people who played key roles in trying, under exceedingly diffi cult

circumstances, to build a better society . . . through engaging in such commu-

nal activities as attempting to beautify their village, construct a new swimming

pool, or organize a youth sports festival.”25

Instead of focusing on the areas that the regime controlled, some historians

turned their attention to the inability of total control, pointing instead to the boundaries of dictatorship, to those points at which society becomes impene-trable. 26 In many ways, this approach was a complete dismissal of Martin Malia’s plea: “Totalitarianism does not mean that such regimes in fact exercise total control over the population; it means rather that such control is their aspiration.” 27

The latest works by historians of the GDR have analyzed the multiplicity of

GDR society, the various ways that the regime met the wishes of the popula-

tion, and the general, mundane day-to-day experience of most GDR citizens

that suggests at least some level of co-existence.28 As one historian has written,

“Life in the GDR was ordinary for the majority of the population,”29 or, in the words of Mary Fulbrook, most East Germans led “perfectly normal lives.” 30 For these historians, the true experience of the vast majority of GDR citizens was

away from the political sphere, in a private life of making do, and, at times, of a

certain degree of loyalty.31 Rather than seeing East German history through the lens of top-down “blanket surveillance,” historians began to explore dominance

( Herrschaft) as a social practice. 32 Sense of one’s self ( Eigen-Sinn) often collided with the regime, causing both sides to compromise. 33 To be sure, East Germans knew both where the physical, international boundary of the GDR ran, as

well as the invisible domestic boundaries, a fact that has prompted Thomas

Lindenberger to invert Bessel’s “boundaries of dictatorship” description to “dic-

tatorship of boundaries.” 34 On occasion, the ruling SED, in the interest of stability, was required to reach out to the population, whether in the form of allowing

rock concerts for youth, more freedom in the cultural sphere for writers and

artists, or allowing renegade church leaders to continue initiatives that were not

in line with state policy.35

For the workers, arguably the most important social group from the SED’s

point of view, this translated into a certain degree of power vis-à-vis the regime

in terms of working conditions and wages. 36 This fact of accommodation by the regime helps to explain the relative stability of the GDR beyond the “repression” paradigm. 37 In short, many historians do not see in the SED a menacing, totalitarian party that aimed to control all aspects of society, but rather a fl exible albeit dictatorial ruler that was prepared to accommodate where need be and

that endeared a certain amount of loyalty.

By 2006, one of the leading historians of East Germany in the English-

speaking world would go so far as to state explicitly that her goal was to kill,

once and for all, the totalitarian model: “I want to use the diverse books gath-

ered here for review in part to critique what is (or should be) by now a fairly

I N T R O D U C T I O N

| 9

dead horse, the totalitarianism model, which nevertheless appears remarkably

resistant to terminal burial.”38 Nevertheless, the totalitarian concept lives on.

Supporters of the concept, such as Peter Graf Kielmansegg, argue that there

is no need to throw the baby out with the bath water; although the totali-

tarian concept has its limits, it is nonetheless a useful categorization for a

regime that, after all, enjoyed a monopoly of power and controlled all of the

armed services, including the Stasi. 39 Hannah Arendt’s totalitarian concept, for example, centers on the use of terror to control a population. Since in this

form the concept is ill-suited to capture the much less physically brutal Stasi,

Kielmansegg suggests that the overall concept be maintained, with an empha-

sis instead on the Stasi’s power to control life opportunities, rather than to

control through terror.40

In many ways, whether East Germans led “perfectly normal lives” is a red her-

ring, more refl ective of what East Germans recollect now rather than relevant to

a historical investigation of the system of government that existed in the GDR.

It is deeply rooted in humans to remember personal aspects of their life rather

than broader historical developments. Naturally, East Germans today remember

their vacations on the Baltic, their fi rst love, hikes in Thuringia, the view from

the TV Tower in East Berlin, meeting under the World Clock at Alexanderplatz,

school trips to the “green vault” of Dresden, birthdays, weddings, and funer-

als, rather than the order to shoot at the Berlin Wall. There is a self-defense

mechanism at play against what appears to East Germans to be a suggestion

that because the country in which they lived was the country of the Stasi and

the Wall, their triumphs, achievements, personal relationships, even their lives

were all for naught. Because one lived in a “bad” land, so the accusation seems

to be, one lived a “bad” life.41 That, however, is another story, one that begins rather than ends in 1989 and is closely tied to human memory and the nature

of oral history.

Because East Germans recall living a “normal life” does not mean that the

regime must therefore have been benign, ordinary, and normal,42 but rather suggests that the passage of time alters our memories of what once was, especially

in Germany where many unfulfi lled postunifi cation aspirations have certainly

affected views of the GDR. Surveys of East Germans conducted after the revo-

lution of 1989 suggest that there is indeed an increasingly positive view of the

GDR. In evaluating the statement “One felt spied upon. You couldn’t trust any-

one,” 43 percent of East Germans answered “True. That’s exactly how it was” in

1992, but only 25 percent gave the same response by 2004. Similarly, 72.6 percent

of East Germans claimed in 1990 that there was “complete surveillance” in the

GDR whereas only 42 percent would agree with that claim in 1995. Although

the term Ostalgie has been shunned of late, it is nonetheless plain that as time marches on East Germans increasingly believe East Germany to have been less

of a surveillance state—and, by extension, the Stasi to have been less harmful—

than they originally thought. 43

10 |

T H E F I R M

As important as the descriptor of the regime historians choose for the GDR,

is the perception of the regime by East German citizens. Even if East Germans

led ordinary lives and accommodated themselves to the regime, there was over-

whelming secret police pressure to do so, a fact of which East Germans were

fully aware. East Germans thought that they were being monitored by the regime.

The fact that millions of East Germans have applied to the Stasi Archives assum-

ing that the Stasi had information on them cannot be written off as macabre

fascination, but would better be seen as a broad belief in a pervasive secret police

presence. This subjective belief clearly had implications for how East Germans

would live their lives. Indeed, the fact that the Stasi was a “risk to be calculated

with” may well have prompted many East Germans to live as unnoticeable life

as possible.44

It is also clear from the course of the revolution of 1989, when regional Stasi

offi ces were stormed in December (and the headquarters in January 1990), that

East Germans thought that the Stasi had fi les worth protecting. Citizens did not

storm the archives of the Communist Party. East Germans wanted Stasi fi les

protected because they believed that there were personal fi les on themselves and

other East Germans, not because they worried about destruction of bureaucratic

directives or guidelines or (alas) to secure the records for future historians.

A word must also be said about the sheer size of the Stasi. Here, historians

should be grateful for our level of access to East German secret police documents

in contrast with other countries of Eastern Europe: the number of informants

and full-time workers in the Soviet Union, for example, remains a best guess,

whereas we know that in 1989 there were precisely 91,015 full-time Stasi employ-

ees and 173,000 informants. 45 Helmut Müller-Enbergs estimates that in the course

of GDR history, a quarter million East Germans were full-time Stasi workers and

nearly 600,000 were informers. 46 Some will take issue with these staggering

numbers and claim that Western democracies, too, have their security services,

including the American FBI and CIA, the West German Offi ce for Protection

of the Constitution, and the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service. One

example demonstrates the vast disparity between the two. On October 1, 1989,

the Stasi Regional Administration Halle employed 1,829 Stasi personnel, with a

further 1,539 in the district offi ces, while the Regional Administration Magdeburg

employed 2,685 with a further 895 in the district offi ces. In total, then, there were 6,948 Stasi employed for domestic surveillance in these two regions, leaving aside

the informants.

In contrast, the Department for the Protection of the Constitution (housed

within the Ministry of the Interior) for the German province of Saxony-Anhalt

today employs eighty people to monitor roughly the same territory. 47 Put dif-

ferently, the Stasi was nearly 9,000 percent larger than its equivalent in the

new united Germany. Canada’s relevant security apparatus, at 2,449 full-time

employees, was dwarfed by the Stasi’s 91,000 offi cers, although the Canadian

population was twice as large as that of East Germany’s.48 The result of this

I N T R O D U C T I O N

| 11

enormous apparatus was four million index cards on East Germans and two

million on West Germans, along with countless photos, sound recordings,

and scent rags (pieces of cloth containing the scents of suspects, which could

be used by tracking dogs if they went underground). It is diffi cult for those

who have not seen the mammoth holdings of the Stasi archive to imagine the

extent of material collected by East Germany’s secret police. If it takes roughly

two minutes to read one typewritten page, it would take one historian close to

seven thousand years to read all of the material—assuming that she read every

minute of every day.

What is also noteworthy is that the Stasi established an informant infra-

structure even in out-of-the-way places. In District Perleberg, there was one

informant per roughly seventy-six pre-retirement adult East Germans in 1988,

a period no more eventful than previous years. As a point of comparison, at

the height of the Great Terror the Soviet security apparatus, the NKVD, had one

informer for every fi ve or six families in the capital city of Moscow, understand-

ably a sensitive operational area. In one high school in the Donbass region in

the latter half of the 1930s, thirteen out of twenty staff members were secret

police informants.49 But in the Ukrainian regional district capital of Kharkov, the Soviet secret police had one informer for every 16,800 people. 50 What is

remarkable about the Stasi is its penetration of the most ordinary, ostensibly

nonthreatening, areas of East Germany. Even within Eastern Europe, the per-

vasive surveillance in the GDR was exceptional. The secret services of the USSR

(1:595), Czechoslovakia (1:867), or Poland (1:1,574) did not even come close to

the ratio in East Germany of one full-time secret police offi cer for every 180 East

German citizens.

The clear scholarly emphasis of late on daily life in East Germany and on the

aspects of the regime that were “not so evil” 51 has meant that works on the Stasi, repression, opposition, and resistance have been less in evidence. Even recent

important works on the Stasi itself have tended away from a top-down history of

the Stasi toward a model that investigates the mutual infl uence between society

and the regime’s instruments of control.52 How do historians square this circle, then, of East Germans leading “perfectly normal lives” in a country with the

Berlin Wall and the largest secret police per capita in world history? Respected,

thoroughly trained historians come to polar conclusions on this question, fre-

quently eschewing the nuanced answers to which the profession has become

accustomed. Thomas Lindenberger argues that East Germany was a society

where individuals were able to assert control of niches, their own free space

away from the state, whereas Stefan Wolle insists that there were no niches, no refuges, no free spaces.53 The debates have gotten to the point where one historian publicly cancelled his subscription to a journal for a negative review of a

work on the “everyday life” approach to East German history. 54

If we cast our view to other regimes as a point of reference, Sheila Fitzpatrick’s

analysis of everyday life in the Soviet Union under Stalin suggests a similar

12 |

T H E F I R M

conundrum with Soviet citizens attempting to live ordinary lives while continu-

ally running up against the state “in one of its multifarious aspects.” 55 Although comparisons with Nazi Germany must be made with the greatest of caution,

there is some aspect of Yehuda Bauer’s description of day-to-day life in the

Third Reich as “colored by the criminal regime” that has echoes for the German

Democratic Republic. 56

It is diffi cult to imagine that a dictatorship with the range of instruments that

the GDR had could not color, in very real terms, the ordinary lives of East Germans.

Of course, daily life in East Germany cannot be reduced to the Stasi, but daily life

in East Germany cannot be understood without taking it into account. In Hubertus

Knabe’s view, the Stasi’s effect on daily life was palpable: “Precisely the hidden,

but for every citizen tangible omni-presence of the Stasi, damaged the very basic

conditions for individual and societal creativity and development: Sense of one’s

self, Trust, Spontaneity.”57 Given the very real manner in which East Germans were conscious of the Stasi’s existence as they went about their lives, concepts such as

“boundaries” of dictatorship seem inadequate to capture the diffusion of the Stasi

in society. One can no more place a boundary around the Stasi than one can encir-

cle a scent in a room. To go even further and suggest that the “impact of the Stasi on East German society should not be overstated” and that the “Stasi hardly touched

the lives of most East Germans directly” is preposterous. 58

I do not wish to suggest, as Hubertus Knabe has done, that histories of daily

life are leading to a whitewashing of the regime.59 There is no question that societal systems can be understood only within the context of state-society interactions and that histories of daily life are vital in this equation. Given the level

to which society was politicized, however, and the fact that the state-society

relationship was not one between equals, histories of dominance and power

structures must form an integral part of the discourse. 60 The lessons of the histo-

rians’ debate of the late 1980s in this regard are crucial. Apart from the nonsen-

sical comparison of the suffering of the Wehrmacht with the suffering of Jews,

the assertion that the Holocaust did not really alter the day-to-day existence of

most Germans missed the manner by which German society was infused with

Nazi racial ideas.61 It is my hope to offer a sense of the integration of state into society, of the tendrils of the regime’s repression apparatus even in small-town

East Germany, the power that the Stasi was granted within governmental struc-

tures to carry out its mission, and the manner by which Germans internalized

the Stasi presence. 62

D E N U N C I AT I O N A S PA R T I C I PAT I O N ?

For many scholars, the barometer for participation in a regime is the willingness

of citizens to denounce fellow citizens. As is to be expected, historians differ as

to what constitutes denunciation. Whereas Katrin Dördelmann defi nes it as the

“voluntary passing-on, anonymously or not, of information about politically

I N T R O D U C T I O N

| 13

unwelcome talk and actions of other people,”63 Sheila Fitzpatrick and Robert Gellately defi ne it as “spontaneous communications from individual citizens to

the state (or to another authority such as the church) containing accusations of

wrongdoing by other citizens or offi cials and implicitly or explicitly calling for

punishment.”64 Moreover, “denunciation” has an inherently negative connotation but may also be conceived of in purely neutral terms such as reporting a

crime to the police, a phenomenon that is by no means restricted to dictator-

ships and has, to a large degree, a positive connotation. Denunciation need not

always have a formal element to it; gossip and reporting to friends can serve as

a “horizontal” form of control within society. 65

Karl-Heinz Reuband’s caution on the issue of denunciation as a demonstra-

tion of regime support is worth noting, though. Denunciation in Nazi Germany

was never a mass phenomenon (or, phrased another way, the vast majority of

people in Nazi Germany did not denounce anyone), so the extent to which

we can conclude that denunciation indicates regime support is questionable.

Nevertheless, in the sweeping change that has occurred in the literature on Nazi

Germany, historians have turned their attention from the model of a totalitar-

ian state that forces its agenda on an unwilling population, to that of the active

participation of ordinary citizens in sustaining a dictatorship.66 It has become commonplace to compare the Nazi regime with East Germany to demonstrate

that there was greater frequency of spontaneous denunciation—and therefore

support—in Nazi Germany than in East Germany.

Whereas the Stasi had 91,000 full-time offi cers at its collapse, the Gestapo

employed a mere 7,000 in the prewar period even though the population of

Nazi Germany (60 million) was over triple that of East Germany (17 million). 67

With the help of its informal network of denouncers, the smaller Gestapo was

able to keep tabs on a much larger population. Robert Gellately was the fi rst to

explode the myth of a Gestapo agent that lurked at every corner68 and to turn much of the responsibility for the Nazi terror system over to ordinary Germans

who assisted the secret police, a form of collaboration for which women and

men were equally guilty. 69 Although Eric Johnson believes that the Gestapo was not as dependent on unpaid informants as Gellately suggests, particularly in

the repression of opponents among Roman Catholics and Jehovah’s Witnesses,

and that too much of the blame for Nazi crimes has shifted away from leading

bureaucrats, the premise that ordinary Germans voluntarily partook to a large

extent in the repression apparatus now seems entrenched in the literature. 70

The Stasi at fi rst glance seems fundamentally different from the Gestapo.

Whereas the Gestapo appears as an arms-length participant in an essentially

self-policing society, 71 the Stasi established and constantly refi ned a network of amateur informants and almost never responded to tips from the few East

Germans who came to the Stasi. It would be a mistake, however, to think that

the Stasi did not rely at all on assistance from the population, a point that

underlies this book. On a regular basis, the Stasi requested cooperation from

14 |

T H E F I R M

East Germans on certain operations, dropped in on factory bosses to monitor

employees, and heard from school principals about potentially oppositional

students. To be sure, many of these individuals were approached by the Stasi,

which was generally a much more proactive secret police than the Gestapo, but

just as recent research has shown the Gestapo to have been more proactive than

originally thought, so too was the Stasi more reactive than many accounts sug-

gest. It frequently followed up on tips not from its well-groomed informants but

from its casual contacts who were not signed-up informants, including school

principals, landlords, police offi cers, even neighborhood acquaintances of Stasi

offi cers themselves. If there was little institutional pressure in Nazi Germany to

become a “self-policing” society, that was not the case in East Germany, where

the Stasi was a sprawling institution that frequently coerced participation from

its informants.

As research on Nazi Germany has demonstrated, motivation to denounce was

often—if not primarily—personal, relating to landlord-tenant struggles or other

instances whereby the “weaker” in the party denounced the “stronger” in order

that the state take over the personal vendetta. In Essen, for example, wives often

denounced abusive husbands ostensibly for listening to foreign radio.72 Although there is considerable research on the motivations of East Germans who became

Stasi informants, there is still much to be done on this other category of indi-

vidual who worked for the Stasi on a casual basis, who, often in their role as con-

tacts who had been cultivated by the Stasi, did in fact spontaneously denounce.

For the most part, these were individuals who had privileged positions in society

and some ongoing contact with the Stasi, not ordinary individuals off the street.

Although denouncing was a form of involving oneself with the state, it is an

awkward fi t with the concept of “participatory dictatorship.” Some informants

worked for the Stasi out of conviction, some for personal or material gain, some

used the Stasi for personal vendettas, and many were coerced (a more appropri-

ate descriptor than “persuaded”).73 It is diffi cult to judge the degree of willingness to become an informant, especially given the genuine concerns that many East

Germans would have had about refusing a recruiting offi cer. As the fi rst overseer

of the Stasi fi les has said, to refuse the Stasi required a strong “I.” 74 Moreover, the regime built broad popular involvement into its own extensive surveillance

goals; it was the state infrastructure that permitted this negative form of partici-

pation. In fact, the apparatus for denunciation in East Germany calls to mind

Gerhard Paul’s description of the Gestapo in Schleswig-Hollstein as a “democra-

tization of terror,” or the establishment of structures that allowed for the active

participation of ordinary segments of society in the repression process. 75 With reference to the surveillance apparatus in particular, with its myriad ways to

involve ordinary individuals in repression, whether occasionally or regularly,

and which, when necessary, crossed any “boundary” to carry out its surveillance

duties, East Germany was not so much a participatory dictatorship as it was a

regime that could dictate participation.

I N T R O D U C T I O N

| 15

T H E S E T T I N G : D I S T R I C T S P E R L E B E R G A N D G R A N S E E

Districts Perleberg and Gransee are both situated in the north German plain, a fl at,

windswept landscape north of Berlin that is today dominated by power-generating

windmills. These quiet areas of Germany contrast with Berlin, the nearest big city,

with its construction-crane-fi lled skyline, ubiquitous graffi ti, and clamor of buses and trams. Unlike in major cities of the former German Democratic Republic like

Leipzig and Dresden, it would be an oddity to see a North American backpacker

walking the streets of Wittenberge, the largest town in either district.

District Perleberg was located northwest of Berlin, on the important train

line between Hamburg and Berlin that accounted in large part for what industry

there was in the area. During the Cold War, of course, there was considerably

less traffi c on this route, but direct rail access to East Berlin was nevertheless

an advantage. District Perleberg is located in an area of Germany known as the

Prignitz, a tranquil region of reeds and lakes, of thousands of storks with their

large nests teetering on hydro poles, and an area punctuated by the historic

Elbe River, which widens here as it begins its graceful descent to its estuary in

Hamburg harbor. Cyclists today bike along the tops of dikes laid down to keep

the Elbe fl oodwaters at bay; they enjoy the striking views of the river that looks

as if it has no depth, as if it has been gently unrolled along the plain. The fl at

terrain, quiet roads, quaint villages, and well-developed trail system have made

this region a mecca for cyclists and hikers from around Europe. Wittenberge

in particular is banking on cyclists in its economic development platform. In

many ways, this region, with its thin population, agricultural economy, and fl at

landscape contrasts sharply with the “other” end of East Germany, the indus-

trial heartland far to the south and the craggy “Ore Mountains” along the bor-

der with Czechoslovakia. If that area is the Rockies, then Districts Gransee and

Perleberg are the prairies.

Although the population of District Perleberg declined from a high of 90,761

after World War II to 73,229 in 1989 (most of the population loss occurred in

the mass exodus of East Germans prior to the construction of the Berlin Wall in

1961), it was still the second most populous district in Region Schwerin at the

time of the regime’s collapse. 76 The employed population in District Perleberg was primarily working class. Of the 36,990 employed in the district in 1989, the

largest groups by far were factory workers (nearly 30 percent) and agricultural

workers (22 percent). District Perleberg represented the epitome of the “workers’

and farmers’ state.” 77

Most people in District Perleberg lived in one of the three cities: Perleberg,

the administrative center of the district with a population today of 14,000;

Wittenberge, at 22,000 inhabitants the largest city and main industrial area;

and Bad Wilsnack, an elegant city dominated by the Late Gothic St. Nicholas

Church. Perleberg and Wittenberge are archrivals, their hostility often spilling

over in the soccer games, which are epic battles between the two cities. Today,

16 |

T H E F I R M

residents of both cities will immediately inform you that the other city is

receiving preferential treatment when it comes to the government’s placement

of offi ces or other services. Perlebergers were furious when a high school was

moved to Wittenberge in the 1980s and a public swimming pool opened there

instead of in Perleberg; Wittenbergers are today irate that the hospital in town

has been downsized and a new one opened in Perleberg. For the most part, the

rivalry stems from the social makeup of the two cities.

Wittenberge, with its three major factories and repair center for German rail lines,

has traditionally been a blue-collar town, voting heavily for the Social Democrats

and, during the 1920s and 1930s, proving a diffi cult town for the Nazis to penetrate.

Even today, Wittenberge has streets named after socialists like Clara Zetkin and

Salvador Allende, which survived the fl urry of postunifi cation name changes. (The

small, rundown tavern boasting live soccer that occupies the corner of Marx and

Engels Streets somehow does not live up to the billing that such an intersection

would suggest.) Perleberg, on the other hand, is an administrative center and white-

collar town, the houses a little better cared for, the air more pleasant than the stench from the rayon factory that sat over Wittenberge for years.

Because of Wittenberge’s location on the banks of the Elbe River and the

Hamburg-Berlin rail line, several industries settled in the town: The märkische

Ölwerk (oilseed processing plant of the Mark Brandenburg), which produced

margarine and similar synthetic-fat products; the gargantuan Zellstoff- und

Zellwollewerk Wittenberge (ZZWW), which produced rayon and cellulose; the

railway outfi tting works; and the calling card of the city, the Nähmaschinenwerk

Wittenberge, a sewing machine factory established by Singer in 1903 but taken

over by the Communists after the war and continued to produce high-quality

sewing machines. As the airship Graf Zeppelin fl ew over Wittenberge in 1928

on its maiden voyage across Germany, the passengers on board would have

seen at the Singer plant below the second-tallest clock tower in Europe, still a

symbol of the city. On any given day, in a scene reminiscent of contemporary

China, the entrance to the plant was crowded with thousands of bicycles, many

of them rusting from the salty spray of the rayon factory just up the road. No

matter where one lived in East Germany, a sewing machine from Wittenberge

(produced under the name Veritas) in one’s home elicited looks of admiration

(with perhaps a splash of suspicion) since their high quality meant that the vast

majority were exported to the Soviet Union or to the West. One factory worker

recalled the odd image of large Mercedes trucks backing up to the loading bay

to take East German sewing machines over to West Germany.

Following German unifi cation in 1990, the sewing machine factory, which

had been producing 1,250 sewing machines a day, lurched along in the new

economy but quickly fell behind, shutting its doors on New Year’s Eve 1991 after

eighty-eight years in business. The people of Wittenberge are deeply saddened

by the loss of the factory, not only because of the economic benefi t it brought

but because it was a source of pride. All that remains of the once bustling factory

I N T R O D U C T I O N

| 17

is the clock tower and the word “VERITAS” in very large capital letters on a

building at the factory’s old site. The other major industries in Wittenberge soon

followed suit. The Ölwerk closed in 1991 after 168 years in business, and in 1995

the last of the chimneys of the rayon factory demolished. On the site of the

industrial park where the three industries resided now sits a restaurant and a

man-made beach along the Elbe River that hosts a bar called the Elbe Beach

Club that invites youth in the area, in somewhat awkward English, to “drink,

lunch, music and chill.”

The center of Perleberg, the second largest city in the district, is located on

a small island in the Perleberg stream. Unlike modern cities such as Seattle or

Calgary, Perleberg’s layout resembles nothing of a chessboard but is character-

ized by streets with bends, public squares accessible only from one direction,

and other twists and turns, a result of both its long history and the confi nes

of the oval island on which it sits. The middle of the city is dominated by an

open square tightly packed in by merchants’ houses from the seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries. The imposing St. Jacob’s church and town hall sit back to

back on the square, under the ever-watchful eye of the sword-wielding statue

of Roland, a warrior of Charlemagne’s court, at the other end of the square.

Roland statues were erected throughout primarily northern and central Europe

as symbols of the free status of the city. Perleberg’s wonderful example dates

back to 1498 and is one of only twenty-fi ve original Roland statues remaining

in Germany today. Throughout Perleberg, like most cities in eastern Germany,

the Cyrillic alphabet and red stars remind that Russians fought and died here.

A red star adorns an obelisk at the main war cemetery in Perleberg and just off

the main street is a plaque to a Red Army tank driver who was killed well after

the end of the war. Although the plaque in Russian suggests that the soldier was

a martyr, the truth, known to most inhabitants in town, was that the soldier was

killed by locals practicing vigilante justice because of the soldier’s aggressions

against German women.

Bad Wilsnack, the third and smallest city in District Perleberg with just over

seven thousand inhabitants, has long been a pilgrimage site. In 1383, after the

knight Heinrich von Bülow burned the town and church to the ground, a local

priest sifting through the ashes of the church noticed something out of the

ordinary. On the altar were three hosts that appeared to have drops of blood

on them. The “bleeding hosts” received sanction from the local bishop as a

miracle, launching several centuries of pilgrimages that fi nally petered out after

Martin Luther declared the Wilsnack hosts to be a false miracle and had them

destroyed. The massive, stark, cold church interior still has signs of those pil-

grimages in the form of odd, wondrous objects like large mammal bones that

pilgrims brought with them. The people of the Middle Ages who traveled to Bad

Wilsnack looked for those things typically sought after by pilgrims: solace, cures

for their ailments, guidance for a heavy heart. Today’s visitors are little different, as they descend from the train and walk the short distance to the spa to take the

18 |

T H E F I R M

thermal waters that permit the town to use “Bad” (bath, spa) in its name and to

fi nd respite from their travails on the many walking paths that wind through the

forests surrounding the resort.

Some 56 miles (90 km) to the east of District Perleberg is District Gransee, a

region of fi elds, lakes, and blowing grasses in the Neu Ruppiner plain that has

been immortalized in Theodore Fontane’s classic novel Effi Briest. For Effi , the region represented her refuge, her calm in a life of turmoil, literally her Eden;

when she receives news from her parents that because of her conduct she is no

longer allowed to return to her home in Hohen-Cremmen, she—as well as the

reader—is heartbroken. Effi faces the same fate as her biblical namesake and is

banished from paradise.

With only fi ve thousand inhabitants, Gransee was one of the smallest admin-

istrative centers in East Germany. Today the almost completely intact medieval

city wall circles the city, allowing passage in and out through the Ruppiner Gate.

Beside the brick St. Mary’s Church in the center of town sits the pride of Gransee,

a monument designed by the eminent Karl Friedrich Schinkel to commemorate

an overnight stop in Gransee made by the funeral procession of Queen Luise

of Prussia in 1810 from her place of death in Hohenzieritz to the royal burial

grounds in Berlin.

Gransee was roughly the same size as nearby Fürstenberg (5,241 inhabit-

ants), but both were considerably smaller than Zehdenick (11,635), the other

city in the district and the only industrial center.78 Zehdenick, the gateway to the Mecklenburg lake district, was home to a large brick factory that was central to

the construction industry of the GDR as well as a microelectronics factory that

supplied the East German cargo fl eet. Until 1938, the area around Fürstenberg

was a destination for well-to-do Berliners who docked their yachts on the nearby

lakes and enjoyed the coffee shops along with patrons who arrived in town on

one of the Nazi-owned Strength Through Joy steamers.79

During the GDR, the military dominated District Gransee. In this relatively

small district were located eighteen Soviet military bases (including that of the

general staff for Army Group North) and fi ve bases of the East German military.

In Fürstenberg in particular, with more than fi fteen thousand Soviet troops and

only fi ve thousand residents, the Soviet presence would have been a part of

daily life and, it must be said, not always a pleasant one. Complaints about the

Soviets ranged from the unbearable clatter of their tanks as they accelerated to

ascend the hill on the edge of town, to their fi shing with hand grenades, to their

preferential treatment on harder-to-access goods, and theft. The local police

were frequently called to bars where brawls between Soviets and residents had

exploded. The image of the Soviet forces did not necessarily improve after the

fall of the Wall, when the retreating soldiers ransacked their residences and took

with them appliances and plumbing fi xtures, leaving the German authorities

little choice but to tear down the residences and build anew.

I N T R O D U C T I O N

| 19

Fürstenberg’s main point of interest today is the Ravensbrück concentration

camp, which the Nazis established primarily for female inmates and which

employed female SS guards whose ruthless conduct was on a par with that of

their male colleagues. Most Fürstenbergers would immediately recognize the

name of Dorothea Binz, a young local woman who was sentenced to death after

the war for her vicious conduct as a camp guard. 80

District Gransee had roughly half the population of District Perleberg, but like

its counterpart it was primarily a workers’ and farmers’ district. Just over half of

all working people in the district were connected with industry or agriculture. 81

If it were not for the village of Neuglobsow, located between Gransee and

Fürstenberg, it is likely that Hitler would never have visited the district. In 1936,

a year in which Hitler was enjoying unprecedented popular support at home,

Karl Litzmann, a World War I hero and victor of the Battle of Lodz, died and was

buried in his home town of Neuglobsow. As word spread throughout the region

that Hitler and his top ministers Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Göring would

be passing through Gransee on the way to the funeral, locals began to fi le out

to the streets. Initially disappointed because Hitler did not stop on the outward

journey, the crowd waited patiently, hopeful that the Führer would get out of

the car on the return journey. Hitler’s impromptu stop in Gransee following

the funeral was for many in the area one of the highlights of the period. Today,

Werner Krause remembers vividly that June day in 1936 when Hitler descended

from his car into the throngs that lined the streets and into his element—shak-

ing hands vigorously and chatting at ease with his people and they with him.

At one point in his short visit, a young girl emerged from the crowd and offered

Hitler a drink of Gransee’s famous apple cider. Believing that it was an alcoholic

beverage, he knelt down and kindly explained to her that he did not drink alco-

hol. When she said that there was no alcohol in it, he took the glass, raised it,

and drank it. The crowd erupted, and Hitler made his way back to Berlin.

1 DISTRICTS GRANSEE

A N D P E R L E B E R G

U N D E R T H E N A Z I S

w h a t w o u l d b e c o m e the east German districts of Gransee and Perleberg

after 1945 were in the province of Mark Brandenburg during the Nazi era.

Gransee itself was located in Landkreis (administrative district) Ruppin, whereas

Perleberg and Wittenberge were located in the Landkreis Westprignitz. Even

today, people in this area refer to themselves as being from the Prignitz. Due

to its geographic proximity to the capital of the Third Reich, Mark Brandenburg

was closely entwined with the development of Nazi Germany—both in military

and political terms. 1

Recounting the history of Mark Brandenburg during the Nazi era presents

its own set of challenges. The last days of World War II witnessed a frenzied

destruction of documents by nervous Nazis as well as collateral losses of archival

material during the Allied invasion of Germany. To make matters more diffi cult,

much material was captured by Soviet troops and brought to Moscow, where

it remained under lock and key until 1992. The small portion of material that

was returned to East Germany in the 1950s remained inaccessible to historians

until after German unifi cation and now resides in both the federal and Länder

(state) archives. 2 By way of illustration, the Nazi administration region of Mark Brandenburg in 1933 was comprised of 46 district offi ces and 903 Ortsgruppen or local groups. Of these, there exists today material on only 9 district offi ces and 27

local groups, and virtually none of the material relates to districts in the west of

the province where District Perleberg was located.3 As a result, compared to other German provinces, especially those in former West Germany, the study of Mark

Brandenburg during the Nazi era has just begun. 4 Credit should nevertheless be given to the work of amateur historians, museum personnel, and enthusiasts

in the area who have kept the stories of the past alive in local newspapers and

publications like the Wittenberger Chroniken. The affable Werner Krause, a teacher in Gransee, has worked tirelessly to publish stories of Gransee’s Nazi past in the

local newspaper Gransee Zeitung, stories, it should be said, that do not always paint the area in the best light, making his dedication all the more impressive.

D I S T R I C T S G R A N S E E A N D P E R L E B E R G U N D E R T H E N A Z I S

| 21

On June 1, 1933, there were roughly 2.7 million people living in the province

of Brandenburg, divided almost evenly between the regions of Frankfurt (Oder)

and Potsdam. As is to be expected from northern Germany, more than 90 per-

cent of the population was Protestant, 5 percent Roman Catholic, and there

was a smattering of Jews and atheists. Pockets of industry cropped up in this

largely agricultural area, where nearly 40 percent of the working population was

employed in agriculture, animal husbandry, fi shing, and forestry. Industry and

manual labor made up the next largest segment of the economy, followed by

trade and the public sector. This was by no means an area dominated by white-

collar public servants ( Beamtenregion), although there was naturally a certain amount of this type of employment in local government cities like Perleberg

and Gransee. Women made up 35.6 percent of all employed, a fairly high num-

ber explained by the fact that the textile industry, traditionally dominated by

women, was one of the major industries in the region.5 The Gransee area was generally on the cusp of the industrial development taking place in the ring

around Berlin, which included aluminum production in Lauta, a burgeoning

aviation industry near Oranienburg (an abandoned airstrip off of the B94 high-

way is still visible) and Brandenburg, truck plants in Brandenburg and Berlin,

and a robust television and movie industry in Babelsberg, just outside Berlin, the

“Hollywood” of Germany and a major tourist attraction today. 6 Although these

industries had a ripple effect into the regions around Gransee and Perleberg,

these areas were still just outside the reach of Berlin and ended up develop-

ing industries that would service the forestry and agricultural sector. By the end

of the World War II, many of the industries in Gransee and surrounding area

(including Berlin) had become vital to the war effort, including the Hennigsdorf

steel production facility (during the 1953 uprising the workers from this plant

marched an astonishing 15 miles (25 km) into Berlin to take part in demonstra-

tions),7 the Heinkel airplane and airplane engine factories in Oranienburg and I. G. Farben’s poison gas facility located in Falkenhagen. 8

One notable exception to the predominantly agricultural economy of the

West Prignitz was the highly industrialized Wittenberge. In 1934 Wittenberge was

a city of 26,000 inhabitants, 95 percent of whom were Protestant, 4.9 percent

Catholic, and 0.1 percent Jewish. Nearly 1,500 Wittenbergers were employed

at the outfi tting works of the German national railway, the sprawling yards of

which still dominate the eastern part of the city, while many others worked in

one of the nearly eight hundred small businesses that catered to the surround-

ing agricultural industry.

In the early 1930s, as the Weimar Republic teetered toward the brink, many

of the six million unemployed fanned out across the country looking for food,

shelter, and work, more often than not meeting with a frosty reception at one

town before being sent on to the next. In Gransee, more than 1,600 unemployed

came to town in 1932, some of whom were put up temporarily in the youth

hostel or offered shelter for the night in the cells in the basement of the city

22 |

T H E F I R M

hall. 9 Whether Hitler was directly responsible for the turn of the tide, he could easily claim credit for the vastly improved unemployment rate a year after he

had come to power. In Wittenberge, the number of unemployed dropped from

599 in 1933 to 360 the following year, and those dependent on social assistance

fell dramatically. 10

N A Z I S E I Z U R E O F P O W E R

Although the Nazis originally had diffi culties penetrating working-class-heavy

Wittenberge, they eventually succeeded in becoming the most popular party in

the city. 11 At the communal elections of 1929, only one Nazi was elected while the Social Democrats (SPD) won 12 seats. In the 1930 electoral breakthrough,

when Nazi seats in the Reichstag jumped from 12 to 107, the Nazi fortunes in

Wittenberge also improved. Although the SPD was still the most popular party,

with 5,845 votes, the Nazis were now second at 4,195.12 Perhaps aided by Joseph Goebbels’s appearance at an election rally at Wittenberge’s main stadium in 1932,

the Nazis were the most successful party at the election later that year, receiv-

ing 6,565 votes to the SPD’s 4,927. Almost immediately after the frail President

Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as Reich Chancellor on January 30, 1933,

Hitler began to solidify his position, for Hitler was fully aware that his hold on

the chancellorship was tenuous. He proceeded swiftly against his political oppo-

nents, the Communists and the Social Democrats, and within weeks of seizing

power had opened Dachau concentration camp to accept political inmates.

Communists in Gransee were outraged by the conduct of the Nazis. In February

1933 the communists held a major rally in the Gransee 10,000-seat sportpalast that featured Wilhelm Pieck, future president of East Germany, as a speaker. As was

typical of the general lawlessness settling over Germany, police columns moved

in to break up the rally in brutal fashion.13 On the other side of the province, Wittenberge also witnessed the wave of violence brought on by the Nazi seizure

of power in the form of assaults on two SPD deputies, Snudat and Deutschendorf,

and storm trooper ( Sturmabteiling—SA) attacks on ordinary citizens. 14

The dome on top of the Reichstag in Berlin, the most popular tourist attrac-

tion in the German capital, was erected in 1999 to replace the one that had

burned on the night of February 27/28, 1933. To this day, the circumstances

around the Reichstag fi re have not been fully clarifi ed. Martin van der Lubbe, a

Dutch Communist, almost certainly set fi re to the German parliament, but it is

highly unlikely that his actions were part of a Communist plot, as Hitler claimed.

Regardless of what happened, Hitler identifi ed an opportunity and seized it. On

February 28 the German president issued an emergency decree that set aside

many of the rights guaranteed in the Weimar constitution. In Wittenberge, the

Nazis established a one-hundred-man protection squad ( Schutzstaffel—SS)

unit in order to “assist” the police while SA ransacked the homes of suspected

Communists and Social Democrats. 15

D I S T R I C T S G R A N S E E A N D P E R L E B E R G U N D E R T H E N A Z I S

| 23

In the elections of March 5, 1933, the Nazi party gained 44 percent of the

German vote. Although this was the best result it had ever achieved, the results

were nonetheless somewhat disappointing for the Nazis, who theoretically still

needed their coalition partner, the Deutsche Nationale Volkspartei, to control the

Reichstag even though the Nazis had done their level best through intimidation

and wanton arrests to control the electoral outcome. In Gransee and Wittenberge,

the Nazis performed considerably better than the national average, obtaining

(with the coalition partner) 71.2 percent and 57 percent respectively. Not surpris-

ingly in this Protestant area, the Catholic Center party performed poorly. Two

days after the election, a member of the SA ran the swastika fl ag up the fl agpole

at the Wittenberge high school ( Gymnasium) against the wishes of the princi-

pal. 16 Werner Krause, a retired history teacher in Gransee who was seven years old in 1933, recalls the windows in his school decorated with swastikas and the SA

marching through the streets to celebrate the Nazi electoral victory.17

The Brandenburg provincial election followed quickly on the national elec-

tion and produced a clear majority for the Nazis and their coalition partner,

the DNVP. A few weeks later, the new session of the Reichstag was opened at

the Garrison church in Potsdam (rather than at the Reichstag, which was still

badly damaged from the fi re). There, by the grave of Frederick the Great, the

eighty-six-year-old Hindenburg handed power to the forty-four-year-old Hitler,

the generational change not lost on most observers. The town of Wittenberge

marked the occasion with a massive torch-lit parade.18

Through draconian laws, intimidation, and outright violence, the Nazis

had eliminated the democratic remnants of the Weimar Republic in a mat-

ter of weeks, so much so that by the November 12 elections to the Reichstag

there was only one party left—the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. In

Wittenberge, 93 percent of the electorate turned up for the mock election, 16,542

voting for the Nazi party and 1,256 abstaining.19

R E P R E S S I O N A N D T E R R O R

The more than 37,000 members of the SPD in Brandenburg region had good

reason to fear the Nazi takeover. Almost immediately, the Gestapo terrorized

SPD members into emigration, into underground activity, and ultimately into

prison, including in the city of Wittenberge, where the Gestapo confi scated

party property and arrested twenty-two people (most of them SPD members)

in May 1933.20 Wiethold Schubert from Wittenberge, for example, campaigned against the Nazis, was arrested in February 1933, and eventually murdered in

a gas chamber at one of the Nazi euthanasia centers.21 Once the SPD was offi -

cially declared illegal in June 1933, SA troops swept through Gransee arresting

members of both the SPD and KPD (Communist Party of Germany) and throw-

ing them in the basement of the brewery in Neuruppin. Although many were

released a few days later, August Fischer, a member of the KPD, died as a result

24 |

T H E F I R M

of the interrogations. 22 By mid-1933, nearly 5,000 people had been arrested in the province of Brandenburg. 23

The fi rst concentration camps in the region originated in the era of the “wild

camps,” a time when zealous SA and SS hastily transformed various local build-

ings into makeshift holding pens. By 1934 the former brewery in Oranienburg,

just north of Berlin, had become a camp for more than 5,000 prisoners, primar-

ily Communists and Socialists. 24 This early violence toward Communists was not, however, a radical departure from the previous era. Police in the Weimar

Republic tended to sympathize with the Nazis and to come down hard on

the Communists. The middle classes in Germany, too, genuinely feared the

Communists and their revolutionary fervor.25 In 1936 a much larger, much better organized camp was established in Oranienburg, which would go on to

become one of the most notorious of the camps. Sachsenhausen opened its

doors on June 12, 1936, with a capacity for 8,000 prisoners. A second camp in

Brandenburg, and for many historians one of the most intriguing, given that

it had both female inmates and female SS guards, accepted its fi rst transport

(860 German women and 7 Austrian women) in May 1939.26 By the end of the

war Ravensbrück camp, which had been built for 3,000 female prisoners, held

70,000.27

As was the case with all of the concentration camps, Ravensbrück and Sach-

senhausen built up a sprawling network of subcamps that fed into Germany’s

wartime demands. Near Gransee, more than 1,000 prisoners from Sachsenhausen

worked in Dynamit AG in late 1944 while another subcamp of Sachsenhausen

was established in Wittenberge, with nearly 1,200 female prisoners to support

the Arado aircraft factory.28 Wittenberge was also the site of a subcamp of the concentration camp at Neuengamme that held almost 500 prisoners. The emaciated prisoners of Wittenberge died at a rate of roughly one every second day

due to the harsh conditions. One of the prisoners recalled:

On January 8th, 1943, I was transferred from the concentration camp

Neuengamme to Wittenberge . . . . We worked on a construction site, under

the most diffi cult conditions. We had to work from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. with a

one-hour lunch break, when we got one liter of turnip soup. Each morning

we got 240 grams [8.5 oz] of bread for the whole day . . . . The barracks were

unheated. After the signal to go to bed, the Kapos (prisoner- supervisors)

would get violent . . . . They woke us up at night, forced us into the wash-

rooms and hosed us down with cold water . . . . In 1944, a new head of the

camp came, and the camp regulations were loosened a bit. We also got a

new block chief. I often worked with civilian engineers. They were nice

and sympathetic toward us. Sometimes they even brought us bread.29

Students of German history are often astounded to learn that there were

hardly any Jews living in Germany when Hitler came to power. In 1933 there

were 499,682 Jews in Germany, not even 1 percent of the population, and the

D I S T R I C T S G R A N S E E A N D P E R L E B E R G U N D E R T H E N A Z I S

| 25

vast majority of these (80 percent) were German citizens. The province of Mark

Brandenburg had only 7,616 Jews, or about 0.28 percent of the population, a low

number that is not entirely surprising: most Jews lived in cities and Brandenburg

was primarily rural. 30 The very fi rst anti-Semitic measure undertaken by the Nazis was a boycott of Jewish businesses, launched by Goebbels on April 1,

1933, in front of a large crowd in Berlin, where he claimed that it was a necessary

measure to counter Jewish demands abroad for a boycott of German goods. 31

The images of SA men standing in front of Jewish shops with signs reading

“Germans, protect yourselves. Don’t buy from Jews” have become some of the

most powerful of the Holocaust. This was, after all, the fi rst anti-Semitic step on

the long path to Auschwitz. Considering that the boycott was generally a failure

since most Germans still desired the products that Jews sold, the events in the

small town of Gransee around the boycott are that much more noteworthy. 32

During the night of April 1, almost all the windows of the seven Jewish-owned

shops in Gransee were smashed by unidentifi ed culprits, resulting in damages of

nearly 13,000 RM. 33 The Nazis were careful not to encourage boycotts of larger department stores such as Karstadt because many non-Jewish Germans worked

there, but once the boycott was underway it took on a life of its own. Several SA

men assumed threatening poses outside the Karstadt store on Berliner Strasse in

Gransee, prompting the company to complain: “Today, on this Saturday after-

noon, six or seven SA men stood beside the sign [in front of the store promot-

ing the boycott] causing us fi nancial losses since many of our customers would

not dare to enter the store.”34 Goebbels ended the boycott shortly after it began because of popular disapproval, claiming, however, that he had done so because

Jews had stopped their anti-German propaganda abroad. 35 Other anti-Semitic measures took place throughout 1933 at a grassroots level. All teachers at the

Wittenberge high school, for example, were required to prove that their par-

ents were of Aryan descent while their students were made to learn ethnogeny

(the study of race). 36 For years, a banner hung along one of Wittenberge’s main streets, Adolf-Hitler-Strasse, stating matter-of-factly “Wittenberge does not want

any Jews.”

These were but the fi rst of a range of measures against Jews. In the course

of the next few years, laws would require Jews to register their property, pre-

vent them from marrying non-Jews, require them to use the “typical” Jewish

names of Sara and Israel along with their given names, and wear a yellow star

on their sleeves. More than 1,970 laws and regulations would be passed against

Jews from 1933 to 1945 that would confi scate their property, exclude them from

professions and public places and, ultimately, murder them. 37 Anti-Semitism

was plainly visible in Gransee in 1936 when the editor of the local newspaper

proudly proclaimed: “I, too, have in the past accepted classifi ed announcements

and advertising from Jews. I would like to announce today, however, to citizens

and businesses alike, that in future, no adverts or classifi ed announcements will

be accepted from Jews.” 38

26 |

T H E F I R M

For fi ve years, Hitler kept his hatred of Jews somewhat in check. Although he

harassed them through his laws and denigrated them to second-class citizens,

he stopped short of physical violence against them. That changed on November

9, 1938, the Night of Broken Glass ( Kristallnacht), when Nazis went on a rampage against Jewish shops and places of worship, in the process carting thousands

of Jews to what were by then well-established concentration camps at Dachau

and Sachsenhausen, and killing many dozens of others. 39 Making matters worse, the Nazis made Jews pay for the damaged cityscape. As they did elsewhere in

Germany, the SA and SS in Gransee eagerly participated in Kristallnacht, attacking the textile salesman Raphael Michaelis, his wife, and his mother, smashing his

store windows, and plundering his store. His possessions were thrown out of his

second-story apartment and his valuable books and papers burned on Schinkel

Square in the heart of town. In the words of a local historian and eyewitness:

“After everything had been reduced to ashes in front of the eyes of the curi-

ous Granseers and the citizens had stood by helplessly and watched—including

me, at the time twelve years old—we simply went silently back home.” 40 The

Michaelis family eked out a living as best they could until they were transported

from Gransee in the spring of 1943 in a sweep of Brandenburg Jews. The family

perished at the Theresienstadt concentration camp. 41 Other groups, such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who refused to give the Hitler salute and enter military

service, were deported. Some ten thousand of them were sent to concentration

camps.42

The war fundamentally changed the ethnic makeup of this out-of-the-way

area of Germany. For the vast majority of people from Gransee and Wittenberge,

the war years were the fi rst time that they had direct contact with people from

eastern Europe. As the war dragged on, thousands of Poles, Russians, and other

east Europeans were shipped into Germany as slave labor. Granseers soon

became accustomed to seeing Poles—identifi able by the P on their clothing—

undertake the backbreaking agricultural work in the fi elds around their town.

Local residents recall the line of foreign workers, some of them in wooden shoes,

being marched by SS men with dogs from their barracks to various factories in

town. 43 Similarly, more than 14,000 foreign workers came to the small town of Wittenberge during the war, roughly 4,000 of whom were from the east. 44 For the most part, the foreign workers were put up in specially constructed barracks

in the region, which soon became infamous for disease and malnutrition. 45

By far the most important factory in the regions under study was the Phrix-

Werk, established in 1938/39 in Wittenberge to produce rayon from straw with

the help of cutting-edge technology. Wittenberge was chosen for its location on

the Elbe River, which provided the vast quantity of water required to process

straw, and its access to the Hamburg-Berlin train line. Production of rayon began

in 1939 and by 1940 the plant employed 1,530 people, 400 of whom were for-

eigners including Czechs, Slovaks, Russians, Ukrainians, and French prisoners

of war. The local employment offi ce informed the plant that the Russians were

D I S T R I C T S G R A N S E E A N D P E R L E B E R G U N D E R T H E N A Z I S

| 27

to be kept behind barbed wire to guard against sabotage. 46 Of the 300 Polish Jews who worked at the factory in 1940, 160 had been sent back to Poland and

certain death two years later. Although the fate of the remaining Jews is unclear,

the historian Hermann Kaienburg believes that they were deported to Poland in

the fi rst months of 1943 as the Reich strove to become “free of Jews.”47 Foreign workers at the plant were responsible for the most diffi cult and dangerous tasks,

including loading and unloading the heavy hay bales and, later in the war, for

cleaning up bomb damage and detonating unexploded bombs.48

On March 6 and April 18, 1944, the Phrix-Werk was badly damaged by Allied

bombing. In an unusual occurrence, the plant directors awarded money and

a note of thanks to the prisoners who had helped put out fi res and tend to

the injured. 49 By October, however, because of war damage and the rapidly approaching Red Army, the plant ceased operations and sent the remaining

prisoners back to the concentration camp at Neuengamme. After the war the

plant was taken over by Communist authorities and renamed The People’s Own

Cellulose and Rayon Works.

The fi rst bombs fell on Wittenberge in the early morning hours of October

26, 1940, when fi ve bombs were dropped, likely unintentionally, causing mini-

mal damage and no loss of life.50 A few weeks later Wittenbergers encountered the horrors of twentieth-century air warfare for the fi rst time. Beginning

at 8.30 p.m. on November 13 and continuing for the next six hours, Wittenberge

was pounded by sixty incendiary bombs.51 From that point on the population

lived in constant dread of the Anglo-American raids. Werner Krause recalls:

“Beginning in November 1940 nights were continuously interrupted by air

attacks. During the day, everything looked so romantic, with the long evapo-

rated trails. When night fell, residents sought out air-raid shelters, basements

of various buildings that had been determined to be the most secure. After a

number of sleepless nights in the shelters, my father said to me one day: ‘What

is this nonsense anyway? If a bomb falls on this building , it’s going to end up

in the basement and we’ll all be dead anyway.’ Somehow I didn’t fi nd that very

comforting.”52

Following the release in January 1943 of the “Regulation regarding the war-

time assistance of German youth with the Luftwaffe,” all school children born

in the years 1926 or 1927 were required to serve in the fl ak (anti-aircraft) defenses of the Reich. Wittenberge teens reported for fl ak duty the following month. 53

The fl ak defenses of Wittenberge scored a major victory in March 1945 when

they brought down a U.S. bomber that crashed near Perleberg, its massive car-

cass an object of intense interest for young boys in the region. 54 In March and

April 1944, deaths from air attacks were becoming commonplace throughout

the area. In the course of those two months, 47 people in Wittenberge lost their

lives, 360 in Oranienburg, 35 in Rathenow, and 28 in Brandenburg.55 By 1944, the major industries in Wittenberge were being hit hard by Allied bombing. Local

Nazis trying to bolster the morale of the population held a rally on Horst Wessel

28 |

T H E F I R M

Square in Wittenberge with banners reading: “In spite of the terror, we will fi ght

to the end.”56

As horrifi c as they were, the attacks on Brandenburg were much fewer than

those on the capital of Berlin; since Brandenburg was nearby, many Berliners left

the city for the less dangerous surrounding countryside. The Gransee chronicle

reported: “The evacuated brought with them from Berlin furniture and furnish-

ings, valuables and clothes. Even those who have to remain in Berlin bring their

valuables out here to save them from certain destruction. Within no time in

Gransee there was no barn, no attic, and no restaurant that did not have some-

one living there.”57

T H E E N D G A M E

As the Russians slowly and ruthlessly pressed on to Berlin, German refugees

from the east began fl ooding into the province of Brandenburg. The most

famous incident related to Germans fl eeing from the advancing Russians

involved the ill-fated ship Wilhelm Gustloff, which, in January 1945, was torpe-doed by a Russian submarine on orders of the slightly intoxicated captain. More

than 8,000 refugees perished in the frigid waters of the Baltic, the second worst

maritime disaster in history and one that took fi ve times as many lives as the

Titanic tragedy. Günter Grass’s novel Crab Walk masterfully recounts how the Gustloff has become the cause célèbre of the Far Right, since historians in their unwillingness to address German suffering have neglected the topic. Gransee

was fl ooded with refugees, many of them in need of serious medical attention,

having made the long trek from East Prussia. The fi rst fl oor of the local school

was converted into a children’s hospital, staffed primarily with doctor and nurse

refugees from the children’s clinic in Posen. 58

In February 1945, emaciated refugees from East Prussia dragging fragile

wooden carts piled high with all of their belongings poured into Perleberg,

where they found refuge in the girls’ school in Wilsnacker Street. Teachers halted

instruction and tended to the refugees, spreading straw for them to sleep on and

occasionally assisting in delivering babies. The parking lot outside the school,

overfl owing with refugees’ wagons and horses, resembled scenes from the old

Wild West. 59 One observer commented on the number of wounded who struggled into town from the medical facility in nearby Kyritz: “Amputees, toiling on

one leg and feverish, drag themselves down Berliner Street toward the city, col-

lapse, and resign themselves to lying in the street.” 60

On January 26, 1945, the Second Soviet tank division of the First Belorussian

Front fi nally crossed the former German-Polish border and brought the land

war to Brandenburg. Simultaneously, the province around Berlin was hit by

British bombers. On February 22, 1945, over the course of only eleven min-

utes, seventy-two B-17 bombers dropped nearly 865,000 pounds of bombs

on Wittenberge’s rail junctions and train-repair yards, killing eleven people

D I S T R I C T S G R A N S E E A N D P E R L E B E R G U N D E R T H E N A Z I S

| 29

in the process. 61 Almost every night from then until the end of the war, air raid alarms sounded in Wittenberge to announce incoming bombers. 62 The last bombing run against Wittenberge took place on April 10, when more

than a hundred bombers dropped phosphorous bombs on the city center,

destroying much of the once handsome city and leaving in its wake smol-

dering bodies. The following day, in direct contradiction to Hitler’s orders to

defend against the Russians to the last man, several leading Wittenberge citi-

zens declared Wittenberge an “open city,” one that the Russians or Americans

could enter freely. This state lasted a matter of hours before Himmler and

Bormann declared that any city freely handed over to the enemy would have

its decision-makers executed. 63 Wittenberge reversed its decision, but this did little to alter the course of events. Once within range, the Red Army general

Victor Kalyuzhny delivered an ultimatum to the mayor of Wittenberge, which

demanded that “the mayor of Wittenberge present himself at Gross Breese

where he will receive the conditions for the handing over of the city to Soviet

troops.” Failure to comply was to lead to the bombing of Wittenberge.64 On May 3 Soviet troops entering the surrendered city were greeted with white fl ags

hanging from the houses.65

This part of Germany found itself squeezed between the advancing Russian

and American armies, so much so that on any given day it could be bombed

by both U.S. aircraft and Russian artillery. Knowing full well that Germany had

infl icted nowhere near the suffering on the Americans as it had on the Russians,

many Perlebergers hoped for liberation by the American side. The anti-tank

ditches that had been dug through the center of town and out into the aspara-

gus fi elds by teenagers and older men of Hitler’s Volksturm went for naught as the “Cossacks,” as local residents referred to Soviet soldiers, entered the city on

May 2, 1945.

In contrast to his counterpart in Wittenberge, the dentist-mayor of Perleberg

walked along Pritzwalker Street and handed the city over to the advancing

Russians without hesitation. The only shots to be heard were those of SS soldiers

running through town fi ring at balconies where the white fl ag had been hung

out, yelling: “You call yourselves Germans? You’re traitors! Pigs!” As had been

typical of the SS during the war, its members preferred to fi re on defenseless

civilians rather than on the far more dangerous Red Army. The peaceful surren-

der did not prevent the Russians from looting, drinking, and sadly, raping. Ever

since the Red Army crossed into German territory, Russian soldiers had engaged

in acts of rape that were so much part of the advance on Berlin that Norman

Naimark has called it a “systematic expression of power and revenge over the

enemy.” 66 Albert Hoppe, a teacher from Perleberg who meticulously recorded the happenings in his area in his diary, attributes the hundreds of suicides by

young women in the region after war’s end to the conduct of the Red Army. 67

Locals claim that in 1945 the lake in the center of Fürstenberg was crowded with

the bodies of young women who had drowned themselves.

30 |

T H E F I R M

In Gransee, a group of teens took a white fl ag stitched together by several

women in town and hung it from the church tower, helping to ensure that the city

would be handed over to the Russians without a fi ght. Remembering that event,

a local historian has written that “children were the heroes of Gransee.” 68

The fl at province surrounding Berlin that lay between the Oder and Neisse

rivers was one of the hardest hit of the war. It was here that the endgame of the

Third Reich played out. In the fi nal eight months of the war, the number of

deaths by bombing in the region was twice as much as in the previous six years

of war. 69 Most of the damage occurred in Potsdam, Küstrin, Frankfurt/Oder, Schwedt, and Forst, while Gransee and some cities south of Berlin remained

largely intact. The Berlin-Hamburg Chaussee, a vital artery that had been the

target of numerous strafi ngs and which passed close to both Wittenberge and

Perleberg, was littered with burning cars and rotting horses. The offi cial number

of war dead in Gransee was 189, although a local historian puts the number at

slightly above 200. 70 Wittenberge reported 776 deaths at the front, 216 bombing deaths, and 256 dead among the slave laborers. 71

On May 18 the people of Perleberg gathered on the main square of their city,

underneath the hulking statue of Roland with his gaze affi xed on the city hall

before him, and listened to mundane announcements by the local Soviet com-

mander. They participated unenthusiastically in three cheers to Comrade Stalin

and then cleared the square for a prearranged party. And so, for a brief time on

that spring evening, Perlebergers forgot about the destruction around them and

their uncertain future at the hands of the Russians, and danced under the wide

Mecklenburg sky.

2 IN THE SERVICE

O F T H E F I R M

The Full-Time Stasi Employees

w H I L E e A S T g E R M A N Y E X I S T E D , many East Germans had diffi culty forming an impression of the individuals who worked full time for the Stasi.

Germans did not even have a particularly vivid term for Stasi workers when

referring to them privately among friends, employing mostly the generic “those

ones” ( die da). In smaller communities like Perleberg and Gransee, many towns-

people would have known who was a full-time Stasi worker (though knowing

the identity of an informant would have been considerably more diffi cult) and

would have assiduously avoided coming into contact with them. As a point of

comparison, the Stasi did not have a reputation of benign or ineffectual exercise

of power like that of Italy’s state police, the Carabineri, which is still the butt of popular scorn. In East Germany, citizens genuinely feared the Stasi, although it

would be an exaggeration to say that they were terrorized by it. 1 After 1989, opinions on Stasi personnel ranged from the fl attering—the “intelligentsia” of the

Socialist world—to the disparaging—“ignorant,” “uncultured,” and even “pos-

sessing a distinct odor—like a mix of oil, fl oor polish, and sweat.” 2 Part of the reason that the Stasi personnel remain mysterious is their general unwillingness

to be interviewed. Of the plethora of works on the East German Stasi, very few

authors interviewed Stasi offi cers, 3 a situation not altogether surprising given the fact that Stasi offi cers found themselves after German unifi cation facing a

public that at a minimum considered their line of work distasteful, and at the

other end of the spectrum brought up questions of illegal conduct and possible

prison sentences.

Apart from interviews, personnel fi les offer one of the richest sources of infor-

mation on Stasi employees. Each Stasi offi cial had such a fi le, which contained

considerable detail on every aspect of their career with the Stasi—bonuses, nota-

ble successes, family relations, disciplinary measures, background, health, and

so on. Section 5 of the personnel fi le, which contains the results of the thorough

background check on the candidate, demonstrates how wide the Stasi cast its

net in vetting a candidate. The investigation encompassed the candidate and

32 |

T H E F I R M

his wife, the candidate’s children and their wives, the parents and in-laws, sib-

lings of the candidate, siblings of the candidate’s wife and the spouses of those

siblings, and close friends of the candidate. Because of the enormous task that

this presented, the Stasi increasingly looked to the children of their own work-

ers for the next generation of offi cers since the majority of the screening would

have already taken place. Personnel fi les are entirely accessible to researchers

except where the personal lives of the offi cers and their relatives is concerned.

Ironically, historians are permitted to view the personnel fi le of Stasi offi cers,

but the offi cers themselves are not.

In my talks with Stasi offi cers, I was frequently asked what their fi le con-

tained, what the Stasi “really” thought of them, and if the Stasi was aware of

their occasional breaches of security. Historians are permitted to know all work-

related aspects of the employee’s time with the Stasi, but the Stasi Files Law,

which regulates access to the documents, protects the offi cers from prying into

their personal lives. One important exception is that the researcher is permitted

to know the names of the Stasi offi cers, whereas those who were spied upon

( Betroffene—literally “the affected ones”) by the Stasi are to remain anonymous to researchers.

Thus, historians interested in locating former Stasi employees can obtain

their names from the fi les located at the Stasi archive. The Stasi archive has

proved, however, to be one of two sources for names of Stasi offi cers. A Web site

(www.cryptome.org) dedicated to exposing various murky government activities on a global scale, from Mexico’s “dirty war” to dubious actions of the U.S.

Department of Homeland Security, published a list of all Stasi workers at the

time of dissolution of the Stasi, a list that was rapidly downloaded and printed

throughout the country—including by Stasi offi cers themselves. The greatest

shortcoming of this otherwise reliable list is of it being a “snapshot” of the ros-

ter in December 1989, and thus does not contain the names of individuals who

retired even a few days prior. One Stasi offi cer mentioned how delighted he was

that he had retired a few days before the list was published and therefore does

not appear on it. Armed with the names of the Stasi offi cers, the task of tracking

them down then presents itself—a task made much easier by the online German

telephone directory. As is the case in many countries, Germans have to pay not

to have their phone numbers listed and so, out of lethargy or cost, they let their

names stand.

In the end, District Perleberg offi cers proved easier to locate than those of

District Gransee. Ten District Perleberg employees (out of fi fty-three) agreed to

be interviewed (a secretary, a chauffeur, and a custodian; all the others were

operational offi cers). Out of the entire complement of fi fty-three workers, eleven

were building security (and were not contacted for interview), two were clean-

ing staff, and three secretaries. Some could not be contacted for other reasons—

one of the offi cers had moved to a new life in Sweden since 1989, and one, a

new recruit at the end of the 1980s, got on the wrong side of drugs and the mafi a

I N T H E S E R V I C E O F T H E F I R M

| 33

and was murdered in Hamburg. In total, I interviewed six (out of twenty-four)

operational offi cers in District Perleberg. Efforts to track down the last leader

of the district offi ce, Werner Ryll, in Hamburg and Berlin, locations that local

residents suggested, proved futile. Werner Ryll’s predecessor, Herbert Tilse, still

lives in the area, and I was able to contact him by telephone. I spoke with him

long enough for him to explain in between labored breaths that he had just had

four teeth removed and that his health was rapidly fading. He was willing to talk

to me but felt he was physically unable. Unlike some of the others I contacted,

Herr Tilse was unfailingly courteous.

District Gransee’s offi ce was a much smaller offi ce than District Perleberg’s,

employing only thirty-six full-time workers in 1989. Of the seventeen offi cers in

operational duty in the last year of the regime, two had fl ed West after 1989 and

settled near the border of Switzerland, and one had died. Three of the remaining

fourteen operational offi cers agreed to be interviewed. Unfortunately, the last

two directors of the District Gransee offi ce, Siegmund Tamme and Hans-Jürgen

Töpfer, proved impossible to locate.

The organization of former Stasi offi cers known as the Insider-Komitee,

whose self-styled objective is to restore “balance” to the current literature on

the Stasi by writing “objective” history of the Ministry for State Security, assisted

me in locating an important Stasi offi cer for interview. Although the Insider-

Komitee was not able to provide me with any additional names of those in the

districts who were willing to be interviewed, they did fi nd a leader of a neigh-

boring district offi ce who was willing to talk. Since that district was very similar

to District Perleberg, I deemed it appropriate to include his interview.

D I S T R I C T G R A N S E E

The small Stasi offi ce in District Gransee, with its responsibility to protect sensi-

tive military installations in the area, was not a desirable posting. Stasi offi cers

in District Gransee, constantly reprimanded for their sub-par performance, were

the butt of jokes for other districts in the region. In 1954, the district offi ce had only seven offi cers in operational duty, one leader, and one deputy leader. It was

the second smallest of the fi fteen districts in Region Potsdam and was dwarfed

by districts like Brandenburg, which had twenty-fi ve full-time employees. Even

in the early 1950s when the Stasi was in its infancy, Gransee was about half the

size of an average district offi ce. 4 Following the restructuring of the East German states ( Länder) into regions ( Bezirke) in 1952, the Stasi itself was organized into 217 districts. This process of restructuring took some time, but by late 1953 the

territorial organizational structure of the Stasi was in place.5

The overall structure of the Stasi was mirrored at the district level. Whereas the

headquarters had main departments for key areas like counterespionage (Main

Directorate ( Hauptabteilung–HA) (HA II), the economy (HA XVIII), opposition

(HA XX), and foreign intelligence (HVA), the next level down, the regions, had

34 |

T H E F I R M

corresponding departments.6 The district offi ces did not have departments as such, but assigned individuals to work along the departmental lines. Both districts Gransee and Perleberg had four sections, each employing roughly fi ve to

seven offi cers: (1) evaluation, the nerve center of the offi ce, which analyzed the

myriad reports from Stasi offi cers for a suitable course of action, (2) counteres-

pionage, (3) opposition, and (4) the economy, these last three corresponding

to departments II, XX, and XVIII. Although not a distinct section, the people

around the district leader, including his secretary, his deputy, the radio and wire-

less operator, chauffeur, and head of building security, made up a sizable com-

ponent of the overall complement.7 In sum, the district offi ces can be safely considered representative of the broader Stasi, albeit in their territorially confi ned jurisdiction.

Although the fi les are far from complete, it has been possible for the most

part to trace the leadership of the Stasi offi ce in Gransee. The thirty-two-year-

old Heinz Brosk started his career with the Stasi as leader of District Gransee,

having spent time with the embryonic political police division (K-5) that was

housed within the People’s Police ( Volkspolizei). 8 It was not at all unusual in those days for such a young man to take on a leadership position in the apparatus, given the fact that the entire Stasi apparatus (including its 217 district

offi ces) had to be staffed very quickly by individuals who had no associa-

tion with the repression instruments of the Nazi era. 9 Unlike the Nazis, who reached into the Weimar-era police for recruits to the repression apparatus,

the Stasi was willing to sacrifi ce know-how for a clean break with the past. 10

Although the Communist “old guard” from the street battles of the Weimar

era occupied the most senior leadership positions in the Stasi, youth were

required in order to staff the apparatus. In 1952, about half of all Stasi employ-

ees were under the age of thirty.11 Compared to what it would become, the Stasi was small in the early years, but it is worth remembering that by 1952,

with 8,800 employees, it had already outgrown the prewar size of the Gestapo

(7,700 in 1937). 12

It is not clear who led the district between the time Heinz Brosk left in 1957

(to a lower position as an operational offi cer in District Rathenow) and the

arrival of Dieter Melkers in 1966, but a document from 1963 lists a certain Verch

as leader of the district in that year. 13 Melkers had been with the Stasi fi fteen years by the time he was appointed district leader, and had arrived from District

Oranienburg where he had been deputy leader. After Melkers moved on to the

regional offi ce in Potsdam as head of the assessment and evaluation group in

1971, Siegmund Tamme assumed the leadership of the Gransee Stasi offi ce. The

thirty-six-year-old Tamme had worked in counterespionage in the regional offi ce

in Potsdam, and this made him ideally suited for District Gransee and its many

military sites. Clearly, one did not have to be a graduate of the euphemistically

named Stasi University, the Potsdam College of Law, in order to be a district

leader, as Tamme did not graduate from the JHS until after he became head of

I N T H E S E R V I C E O F T H E F I R M

| 35

the district offi ce. Tamme left the offi ce in disgrace in 1985, severely reprimanded by his superiors for overseeing the weakest district offi ce in Potsdam region.

Hans-Jürgen Töpfer, an electrician by training, took over from Tamme in 1985

and would go on to oversee the demise of the Stasi in Gransee four years later.

Töpfer’s father had served in the Wehrmacht and died on April 25, 1945, less than

two weeks before the end of the war, when his son was one year old. Almost

from the outset, Töpfer had shown himself to be a reliable Communist, heading

up the Free German Youth group at his high school for two years. During the

vetting of his relatives prior to his recruitment, the Stasi determined that Töpfer’s

fi ancée had visited her grandparents in Munich twelve years previously, when

she was nine. The fi ancée agreed to end all postal contact with her grandparents

in order to remove this obstacle to her future husband’s work for the Stasi. 14

Since Töpfer’s recruitment by the Stasi in 1967, he had worked exclusively

in the Rathenow district offi ce in Region Potsdam, where he held progressively

responsible positions: case offi cer (1969), working group leader (1972), opera-

tional group leader (1974), deputy district leader (1983), and fi nally leader of

District Gransee in 1985. By 1976 he was already being groomed for a senior lead-

ership position in the district, his superiors singing his praises. In an appraisal

of his work, the leader of District Rathenow said that Töpfer had successfully

concluded one Operational Case ( Operativer Vorgang, OV) the highest level of

operation the Stasi conducted, usually involving a number of secret informants

and a complex array of other monitoring such as mail and telephone, and had

already opened another OV. Furthermore, he had improved the reputation of

the Stasi in the area: “Töpfer, in his role as operational group leader, has made

a signifi cant contribution to raising the profi le of the MfS [Ministry for State

Security] in the eyes of cadres in leading positions in industry and the party

secretaries in the major factories. Due to his knowledge and comportment they

acknowledge him as someone worth talking to and follow his advice.” 15 A constant thorn in Töpfer’s side had been the fact that his parents visited relatives

in West Germany, an activity that was hurting his career. In 1980, Töpfer asked

the Stasi to prevent further trips West by his parents, and it cannot be a coinci-

dence that Töpfer was fi nally made district leader a few months after his wife’s

grandmother—a constant traveler to the West—died.16

In a sampling of twenty-three personnel fi les from District Gransee from the

1980s (in any given year there were about thirty-fi ve people employed in the

offi ce), the varied backgrounds, human qualities, weaknesses, and workplace

rivalries emerge, often in vivid color. The Stasi knew intimate details about its

workers—what they were like as high school students, whether they engaged in

marital infi delity, whether the individual was in fi nancial diffi culty, and how

often they consumed alcohol. Often, the reports on the full-time employees

sound like personal classifi eds: “He likes to play soccer, paint landscapes, read

history books, and go to the movies,”17 “He spends his free time fi xing up his house, and could do with losing a little weight,”18 “She likes to dance,” “She

36 |

T H E F I R M

originally wanted to be a hairdresser, but her doctors advised against it because

of a car accident that broke her leg,” 19 “He likes to hunt.” 20

The old Jesuit missive “Give me the boy until seven, and I will show you

the man” rings true for how the Stasi approached its potential recruits. Family

background, upbringing, and conduct in elementary school all factored into

the decision to approach a potential recruit for Stasi duty. A report on Volker

Ehmig, an offi cer who joined the Stasi in 1987 as a second lieutenant, stated

approvingly: “He was brought up in his parents’ house in a positive way, believ-

ing in our state.” 21 In checking the background of a future secretary with the District Gransee offi ce, the Stasi approached her eighth-grade teacher. Because

of a car injury, the student never fi nished the grade, but the teacher judged that

she would have been able to fi nish with a mark of “good.”22 Ideally, the Stasi desired a straight Communist trajectory from youth to adulthood—a working-class family with parents supportive of the regime, involvement and preferably

leadership position in youth groups like the Free German Youth or the Society

for Sport and Technology, the learning of a trade, and time spent as a worker.

The oddity in this life-path is the number of individuals who were hired by the

Stasi even though they were not members of the Communist, or Socialist Unity,

Party (SED), Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands). In 17 percent of the fi les for District Gransee (and this number could be higher because the fi le did not

always specify), the offi cer joined the Stasi without having been a member of the

SED. Although the norm was to become an SED candidate fairly quickly, in one

case the offi cer worked for the Stasi for three years before joining the SED.23

The Stasi looked favorably upon marriage, given the stability that this would

provide to its offi cers in what was, ultimately, a very stressful line of work.

A family man with a wife supportive of his work was the ideal Stasi offi cer. Most

of the offi cers who joined the Stasi were already married upon recruitment, a

refl ection in part of the Stasi’s concern about homosexuality. In its consider-

ation of the recruitment of Carsten Hoeltke in May 1989, one of the very last

recruitments in the District, the leader of the branch expressed thinly veiled

concern that Hoeltke did not currently have a girlfriend: “His relations with the

female sex are normal. The candidate had over a long period of time a loose

relationship with a girlfriend.”24 In another case, the Stasi was very concerned about a bachelor recruit who was a pig breeder and seemed to be spending too

much time on the farm.25

Of the thirty-six full-time employees at the District Gransee offi ce in 1989,

only three were women and none of these were in operational areas, occupying

instead the positions of secretaries and cleaning staff. The district-level offi ce

was an even more male-dominated world than the rest of the Stasi, where about

15.7 percent of all Stasi employees throughout the 1980s were women, owing

in large part to the fact that the district-level offi ces did not monitor mail, the

staff for which was generally two-thirds female. 26 In the vast majority of cases (79 percent), the female Stasi worker was married to a male Stasi offi cer. 27

I N T H E S E R V I C E O F T H E F I R M

| 37

In keeping with the larger trend in the Stasi, very few of the workers in District

Gransee had graduated from high school. By 1988 only 20.9 percent of all full-

time Stasi employees had the Abitur, university entrance qualifi cation as distinct from the trade qualifi cation, 61.6 percent had obtained grade 10, and 15.7 percent had passed grade 8. As a point of comparison, the proportion of the offi cer

class in the National People’s Army who had Abitur was at 72 percent during

the same period. 28 Of the twenty-three workers examined here, only one had Abitur and two others had completed grade 12. The most common educational

path to the Stasi in District Gransee was to complete grade 10 (48 percent of

offi cers surveyed) and then to apprentice a trade. Qualifi cations to be a member

of the building security or support staff, who were also full-time workers that

made up the total complement, were often as low as grade 8 with some practical

training.

Although most Stasi employees had had a career in a trade before joining

the ranks of the secret police, the range of District Gransee employees’ previous

occupations ran the gamut—electrician, machinist, telegraphist, teacher, tractor

repair, lathe operator, carpenter, metal worker, and, curiously, zoo keeper. Only

three came from a white-collar job with the local city council to join the Stasi. East Germany’s motto as the “workers’ and peasants’ state” captured the essence of the

Stasi, a secret police of and for the working class, one that looked on previous intellectual achievements with disdain. What was important was whether a candidate

for the Stasi had experienced a worker’s life fi rsthand. To be sure, however, the Stasi in the later years tended to draw from the more highly trained workers, those with

an expert qualifi cation, rather than less-educated manual laborers as had been the

case in the 1950s. 29 This is not to say that the Stasi disparaged all forms of education, but specifi cally only those that fell beyond its capacity to control.

The Stasi went to great lengths to use not only its own staff and training

manuals to bring a new employee along but its own academies like the Stasi

college in Gransee that offered courses in Marxism-Leninism. 30 (Apart from its

main college in Potsdam and the smaller one in Gransee geared to new recruits,

the Stasi maintained educational centers in Eberswalde, Teterow, Belzig (foreign

intelligence center), Ahrensfelde, and a language school in Dammsmühle). 31

Several years later, if the employee were moving up through the ranks at an

appropriate pace, they would be sent to the main training center for Stasi offi cers,

the Potsdam College of Law (JHS), for four years. Here a typical slate of courses

would include Marxism-Leninism, Political Economy, Scientifi c Communism,

Problems of Imperialism, History of the German workers’ movement, Psychology,

Legal Theory, International Relations, Criminal Law, Criminality, the History of

the Imperialist Secret Services, Imperialist Media, Border Controls, special train-

ing in operational methods, and Russian Language. 32 The terminal degree from the JHS was the Diplomjurist, or academically trained legal theorist, a degree that was also offered by distance education for offi cers who could not be resident in

Potsdam for four years.

38 |

T H E F I R M

Stasi recruits were always sought out. They did not volunteer for service with

the Ministry for State Security, and if an individual did approach the Stasi, he

was likely to be rejected on suspicion of being a mole. There was a certain elitism

to the Stasi in this regard, a snobbishness in particular toward the other armed

organizations like the police and the army who accepted almost anybody. Secret

police offi cers styled themselves as Chekists (members of the Russian secret

police) with a historic mission to protect the advances of the Communist move-

ment, not unlike the way the protectors of the Grail might have seen themselves.

Given that Stasi recruits were sought out, the fi rst and most obvious question for

the organization was to determine whether an individual was at all inclined to,

or suitable for, Stasi work.

The most common recruiting ground for the Stasi was the Feliks Dzerzhinski

Guard regiment, by 1989 an 11,526-strong regiment that was primarily respon-

sible for guarding Stasi installations in Berlin. In 1988 nearly 40 percent of Stasi

personnel were recruited from the guard regiment, 21 percent from the National

People’s Army, and about 3 percent from the regular police. 33 District Gransee

bucks a trend among Stasi recruits with only six full-time workers selected from

the most obvious pool of potential candidates—the offspring of current offi -

cers—whereas in 1989 16 percent of all full-time employees had a parent with the

Stasi. 34 Between 1968 and 1982, a full 47 percent of Stasi personnel had a relative in the secret police.35 Especially beginning in the 1970s, the Stasi increasingly targeted the children of Stasi offi cers as a source for the next generation of secret police, but the guard regiment still made up the primary pool of applicants.

When army recruits went to their sign-up locale, the recruit would be made

aware of the possibility of carrying out their compulsory military service with the

guard regiment instead of the regular army. Agreement by the candidate would

be an indication of a favorable predisposition to the Stasi, given the nature of the

guard regiment’s duties. Candidates were not simply transferred to the Stasi at

the end of their time in the guard regiment, however, owing to the Stasi’s desire

that their cadres experience life as a worker before entering into service for their

defense. There was almost always a time lag of a few years between the end of

guard duty and the formal entry into the Stasi. Once the Stasi had approved of a

new recruit, and he had agreed, the Stasi simply informed the present employer

of the fact that his employee would be leaving shortly, demonstrating some of

the power that the Stasi wielded in its societal interactions. In one instance, a

teacher was removed in order to join the Stasi shortly before the beginning of

a new term: “Although the Candidate is in the education sector, it is still pos-

sible to remove him on short notice before the beginning of the school year.” 36

Although the new recruit would sometimes be placed in an area of responsibil-

ity that would be familiar to them from their working career—a former teacher

worked on the education line, a former member of an agricultural production

collective was placed in the appropriate department, (economy)—a close match

did not always occur.37 Somewhat surprisingly, a close family relative living in

I N T H E S E R V I C E O F T H E F I R M

| 39

the West was not a hindrance to becoming a Stasi offi cer—provided that there

was no telephone or postal contact.

In District Gransee, 39 percent of employees in the personnel fi les examined

had been in the guard regiment before joining the Stasi, 17 percent had served in

the National People’s Army border troops (one of whom distinguished himself

by arresting three East Germans trying to cross the border to West Germany), 0.9

percent had been with the People’s Police ( Volkspolizei), and 26 percent had been informants prior to joining the Stasi as full-time offi cers. (Some of these categories overlapped; one could have been at the border and also an informant.)

According to a former Stasi captain in District Gransee, the 1980s increasingly

saw the Stasi recruit informants with an eye to eventually hiring them into full-

time positions, a marked departure from previous practice where informants

rarely made the transition from informant to full-time offi cer. 38 Fourteen out of the twenty-three Stasi personnel surveyed had their fi rst posting with District

Gransee and remained there their entire career. All others were either transferred

from other districts, or had served briefl y at the regional level in guard duty or in postal control. In sum, there was very little movement at the district level, with

most offi cers spending their entire career in the small, thirty-odd-strong offi ce,

or, occasionally, moving from one district offi ce to another.

As a rule, district level Stasi offi cers did not have experience at any other levels

of the Stasi—whether at the regional level or at the sprawling headquarters in

Berlin. Their entire experience of the Stasi was limited to the smallest territorial

unit of the organization, the district. In District Gransee, there was one notable

exception—an offi cer joined the organization, moved to Egypt where he was

with the foreign espionage branch of the Stasi for four years, and then returned

to District Gransee, despite his best efforts not to be transferred back to the

small outpost.39

Movement through the ranks was generally contingent on operational activ-

ity, how well the offi cer was running informants, how often they met (seem-

ingly regardless of the quality of those meetings), and what role the offi cer had

played in operations to monitor citizens. In annual evaluations, the frequency

of offi cer contact with informants played a major role in whether the offi cer

received a positive review. Lothar Schrader, at the time with District Neuruppin,

was praised for how often he met his informants: “In spite of his large network

of informants, he consistently maintains a high average number of meetings per

informant. Here he is the best in the district.”40 In general, offi cers could move quickly from their starting rank of Feldwebel (sergeant), through Oberfeldwebel (sergeant major), to Unterleutnant (second lieutenant ), often in the space of three years, by which time they would be making more than twice their already-generous starting salary. The next levels, Leutnant (lieutenant), Oberleutnant (fi rst lieutenant), Hauptmann (captain), and major, were somewhat more diffi cult

to obtain and could take much longer—as much as ten years for captain. The

highest position at the district level followed major—that of lieutenant colonel

40 |

T H E F I R M

( Oberstleutnant). The military structure of the Stasi carried over to cleaning and clerical staff who also had military ranks, and whose annual evaluations were

laced with Cold War overtones, such as that their orderly scrubbing of the fl oors

helped sustain the Stasi’s fi ght for world peace. Every member of the district

offi ce, including support staff and cleaning staff, were issued camoufl age fatigues

in case of an emergency situation.41

It would be an exaggeration to say that there were serious discipline prob-

lems among the District Gransee staff, but the personnel fi les do reveal a num-

ber of reprimands, ranging from one offi cer who drove a visiting Iraqi student

to the train station and was informed that he had endangered national secu-

rity, 42 to another who was sent to jail for ten days for losing his handgun while drunk and later losing his briefcase with keys to the internal fi ling cabinets. 43

Although the latter are quite serious breaches of security, they did not hinder his

scheduled promotion to captain. It was also not unheard of for problem offi cers

to be transferred, as was the case of Lothar Strempel, who consistently bick-

ered with his colleagues. The following year he was demoted and transferred

to Gransee, and earned a sharp rebuke from his superior: “Given his character

fl aws, Comrade Major Strempel is no longer able to undertake the duties of a

deputy district leader.”44 In general, only under rare circumstances were Stasi personnel released for reasons other than age or health-related issues once they

had passed their probationary month, a period which saw a number of Stasi

personnel released because of “unsatisfactory standing.” In 1989, more than

1,745 Stasi personnel were released, about 90 percent of these due to retirement,

health, or unsatisfactory performance during the initial probationary month.45

The age breakdown of the District Gransee offi ce matches almost exactly the

broader trends in the Stasi, with an average age of 35.8 in 1989 compared to

35.7 for the Stasi overall. 46 The Stasi had aged over the years from its average age of twenty-eight in 1950. Still, the District Gransee offi ce was a remarkably

young organization, with only two offi cers in their fi fties, and three under the

age of twenty-two. Hans-Jürgen Töpfer, the leader of the District, was only forty-

fi ve years old when the regime collapsed—certainly young enough for another

career.

D I S T R I C T P E R L E B E R G

From its inception, the District Perleberg Stasi offi ce was larger than the District

Gransee offi ce and would go on to sizably outdistance its sister offi ce. From a

modest complement of twelve full-time employees in 1953, the offi ce tripled in

size by 1972 and then grew slowly until it topped out at fi fty-three employees at

the time of the regime’s collapse.

One of the most explosive eras of growth of the Stasi took place in the 1960s, 47

as it began to take on a range of duties atypical of a secret police and transformed

into a bureaucracy of repression. 48 From 1957 to 1971 the Stasi ballooned from

I N T H E S E R V I C E O F T H E F I R M

| 41

17,400 full-time employees to 45,500 and then to a staggering 81,500 in 1983,

with the most rapid expansion taking place between 1968 and 1982 during which

time the Stasi doubled in size.49 Unfortunately, statistics on District Perleberg for the 1960s are not available. Nevertheless, it is striking that the offi ce tripled in

size in the twenty years between 1953 and 1972 just as the overall Stasi did. In the

following decade, however, District Perleberg ran counter to the increase in the

overall Stasi complement.

This state of affairs had come about because of a relaxation of tensions

between the two Germanies following the signing of the 1973 Basic Treaty that

regularized German-German relations and increased human traffi c between the

Cold War adversaries. Ironically, the Stasi increased in size most rapidly dur-

ing the period of détente and increased international recognition of the GDR. 50

District Perleberg’s complement throughout the 1970s remained consistent,

however, even decreasing slightly. The small dip in the number of employees

between 1983 and 1985 corresponds to larger developments as the budgetary

crunch emanating from the oil crisis of the early 1970s fi nally caught up with the

Stasi. The days of ever-increasing Stasi personnel, regardless of costs, came to

an end in 1983—if only temporarily—at a time when Stasi duties were increas-

ing due to a burgeoning opposition movement and an exponential increase in

the number of East Germans applying to emigrate. As a result, the Stasi came

to integrate quasi-employees into their system of surveillance, including senior

informants who were in charge of other informants. The division of labor paid

substantial dividends for a typical Stasi offi cer who, in running two or three

senior informants, ultimately oversaw fi fteen to twenty informants without

the taxing frequency of meetings. By 1989, District Perleberg, with its fi fty-three

employees, was the second largest Stasi offi ce in the Region of Schwerin, second

only to District Hagenow, which had one more full-time employee, and much

larger than District Bützow. which had only twenty-three full-time employees. 51

In 1985, the universally despised Werner Ryll took over for the retiring Tilse

and led the offi ce until dissolution in 1989.52 Stasi offi cers resented the heavy-handed Werner Ryll, his high, billowy, thick hair reminiscent of Slobodan

Milosevic, and his lack of compassion, a situation that did not improve with

his excessive drinking. His chauffeur remembered that “anytime there was a

function where alcohol was served, he was there.” 53 Former employees did not mince words in their descriptions of him, denouncing him as a “pig,” 54 “a total

shit,” and “something less than a human being.”55 Frequently he would not say “Guten Tag” to his colleagues, something that was particularly grating in

Germany where politeness and form of address are considered hallmarks of civi-

lized society. Ryll cared little for the personal lives of his employees. Frau Paupst, one of the cleaning staff, asked to be relieved of her obligation to help cook at

the Leipzig fair because her daughter was about to give birth. Ryll responded

curtly: “What does your daughter’s baby have to do with us?” and insisted that

she cook at the fair.56 Many Stasi offi cers longed for the days of Herbert Tilse,

42 |

T H E F I R M

the former leader, who was fi rm but fair, even attending the wedding of his

secretary and putting his chauffeur and car at her disposal—an act of generosity

one can scarcely imagine of Werner Ryll.57 On a lesser scale, Stasi personnel were also put off by the fact that Ryll wore the same suit to work every day. In 1988,

several employees launched an offi cial complaint about the manner in which he

demeaned his colleagues, a complaint that Ryll brushed off by saying that the

district needed more discipline.

Ryll’s personality raises a larger question of the extent to which an individual

was able to infl uence the nature of the secret police at a local level. There is

no doubt that the last years of the District Perleberg offi ce were the worst in

terms of surveillance—an overburdened offi cer corps, low morale, increasing

pressure to fi nd informants, more meetings with them to launch operations,

and the constant berating to be more aware of what was going on in the dis-

trict. In District Perleberg, an unfortunate set of circumstances came together

to intensify Stasi activities in the area—namely, a relatively large offi ce with the

necessary infrastructure for societal monitoring already well established, and a

zealous, angry leader who was a dedicated Chekist willing to exploit to the full

the apparatus at his disposal.

Werner Ryll came from a working-class family and dedicated himself to the

regime and to Communism at an early age, voluntarily joining the German-

Soviet Friendship Society and later the SED. 58 In the background checks on him,

there is no indication that Ryll would later prove to be a problematic employee.

One informant, who was assigned the task of monitoring Ryll, summed up his

personality: “To end off, I’d like to say that Comrade Ryll is a young man with

potential, one who believes strongly in our party and in our socialist system.” 59

In this instance, the Stasi misjudged his home situation, claiming that his fam-

ily life was harmonious—shortly before he divorced. In 1968 when Ryll was

twenty-eight he joined the Stasi as an “Offi cer on Special Assignment.” Seven

years later he moved on to the Schwerin regional offi ce where he worked in

Department XVIII responsible for agriculture, which suited his trade training.

After a two-year stint at the Potsdam College of Law, he became deputy leader

of Department XVIII where he served for two years before becoming director of

District Perleberg in 1985. Ten days later he was promoted to lieutenant colonel,

the highest district-level position.

Similar to District Gransee, the Perleberg Stasi, in its search for the next

generation of offi cers, closely inspected the upbringing of the candidates and

their home environments, noting with approval when the candidate had been

brought up in a working-class family. Also like District Gransee, the majority

of offi cers had practiced a trade like machinist or lathe worker for some time

before joining the Stasi. There are, however, some important differences between

the two districts. First of all, the general educational level in District Perleberg

was higher, with 18 percent of the twenty-two fi les sampled having completed

Abitur (compared to 0.4 percent in Gransee). Second, the full-time employees

I N T H E S E R V I C E O F T H E F I R M

| 43

of District Perleberg tended to have more relatives in the Stasi than those of

Gransee. Whereas few Gransee offi cers had relatives in the Stasi, and then usu-

ally only one, the Perleberg Stasi was a real family affair. Sixty-one percent of

employees surveyed had relatives in the Stasi, and of those 26 percent had more

than one relative in the organization. One offi cer had a son with the Stasi in

Schwerin, another son with the Stasi in a neighboring district offi ce, a niece and

her husband who worked for the Stasi in the Berlin HQ, and his mother and his

father-in-law also worked for the Stasi. 60 A female secretary had three brothers

with the Stasi in the Berlin headquarters, a sister with the Stasi’s postal surveil-

lance branch in Berlin, and her father worked for the secret police in the regional

offi ce in Schwerin. 61 Although it was not uncommon for husbands and wives to work in the same Stasi offi ce, there are no cases in the fi les examined here where

a son or daughter worked in the same unit as the parent. Third, in roughly 10

percent of the cases examined here, the Stasi was alerted to a potential recruit

by an informant, an approach that did not occur in District Gransee. As was the

case with Gransee, the Feliks Dzerzhinski guard regiment provided the largest

single pool of Stasi recruits, but it is noteworthy that three of the twenty-three

full-time employees had been informants prior to joining the Stasi.

In other respects, too, Districts Gransee and Perleberg were similar. It was

the rare exception when a full-time employee was transferred from one district

to another, or to other branches of the Stasi. For the most part, the district level

Stasi offi ces knew very little turn-over.

The fi rst few days on the job for a new Stasi offi cer were in many ways similar

to typical American offi ce jobs, namely reading and familiarizing oneself with

general offi ce procedures. Following a meeting with the leader of the district and

the party secretary, the recruit would be introduced to his colleagues and then

set to work on reading the mundane directives related to his position—vacation

policies, disciplinary issues, and so on. The offi cer would then move on to read

up on overarching principles of the Stasi (“On the importance of maintaining

secrecy in the ministry for state security”) and on specifi c operations that were

instructive. Once these were completed, the recruit could attend the school in

Gransee for further training in Marxism-Leninism. 62

Women made up sizably more of the Stasi corps in District Perleberg (17 per-

cent) than in District Gransee but still worked almost exclusively in a support-

ing role. The notable exception was Anne Lowe (later Anne Klenk), a secretary

who started with the District Perleberg unit in 1960 when she was nineteen years

old. By 1961 she had been elected to the party organization in the District Offi ce

and a few years later won the National People’s Army service medal in bronze.

Four years following her attendance of the Stasi school for Marxism-Leninism

in 1971, Frau Klenk did something that was quite remarkable for a female Stasi

employee—she left the secretarial ranks and began to work as an operational

offi cer, eventually rising to the relatively high position of lieutenant. Although

she did not engage in serious undercover work like some of her colleagues,

44 |

T H E F I R M

her position in the evaluation branch of the district offi ce was nonetheless an

important one. She vetted all individuals in the district who had applied to visit

West Germany, or whose work required them to travel there (based on countless

informants’ reports and on reports from offi cial sources like the police and city

council).

Her colleagues remember her scurrying along the hallways groaning under

large stacks of fi les. She met regularly with the district leader to discuss individual cases, and more often than not her recommendation to grant or decline travel

permission was accepted by the leader. Her diligence at work was rewarded in

1987 with the National People’s Army service medal in gold.63 Today, Frau Klenk lives with her husband, a former Stasi offi cer in the district, in a comfortable

apartment in Wittenberge. She remembers fondly the good qualities that she

took away from her time with the Stasi: discipline, order, and hard work. 64 As a

whole, however, the Stasi did not seek to promote women into higher positions

in the organization, with barely a handful in operational duty in the entire secret

police. Antje Müller, the leader’s secretary, worked at District Perleberg from 1973

to 1989, never rising above the position of secretary, although she had repeatedly

requested more challenging duties, including learning foreign languages. 65

In the late 1970s, the Stasi found itself dealing with a human resources issue

that would soon become pressing—grooming the next generation of leadership

candidates. Many of those who joined the Stasi in its early revolutionary days,

and who now held leader, deputy leader, and section leader positions, would

soon be lost to retirement and their positions fi lled from the massive infl ux

of younger workers that had begun in earnest in the late 1960s. This fact was

brought home in 1982 when Bruno Beater, a deputy director in the central Stasi

offi ce in Berlin, died, leaving only Erich Mielke left as the last of the founding

fathers.66 In order to ease the transition, the Stasi sought out candidates to be

brought along for higher positions. Rudolf Schulze, who ended his career as a

section head and major in 1989, was targeted for a leadership position in 1978,

when the leader of District Perleberg outlined the rationale behind grooming

the next generation: “In order to deal with the political-operational duties in

District Perleberg in the next few years, we need to rejuvenate and improve the

qualifi cations in those mid-level positions. Accordingly, we have to seek out and

empower suitable Comrades for these duties.” 67 Thus, Schulze was given the opportunity to work closely with the deputy section head.

The Department of Personnel and Training played an important role through-

out the career of a full-time Stasi employee. Its power was visible in a number of

ways, for example, its ability to secure housing for new employees in a country

that had a chronic housing shortage, its role in fi nding work for spouses in the

district, and how it arranged with employers so that the recruit could indeed

join the Stasi. Moreover, the department closely monitored the private lives of

its offi cers, mindful of wayward behavior or, equally troubling, marital diffi cul-

ties. This was, after all, small-town East Germany where most citizens would

I N T H E S E R V I C E O F T H E F I R M

| 45

know who was a member of the secret police, and the Stasi was well aware of

the negative repercussions that “immoral” conduct would have on an organiza-

tion that was already loathed. In one case, Werner Ryll, the leader of the district,

berated one of his offi cers for having an affair and wanting to end his marriage.

Amid threats that the result would be his dismissal from the Stasi and the loss

of his apartment, Ryll also reduced the offi cer to tears by saying that he not only

betrayed his wife but also his fellow members of the collective. In this case, the

offi cer broke off the affair.

In many cases, however, the Stasi could not save the marriage as evidenced

by the fact that the divorce rate among Stasi personnel was on a par with the rest

of society. 68 Leading a “clean” life was considered part of being a professional Chekist, as the organization made clear in an order from 1964, which reminded

Stasi employees of one of SED General Secretary Walter Ulbricht’s command-

ments: “Thou shalt live a clean and decent life and respect your family.”69 Given that the previous year, the primary reason that Stasi personnel were dismissed

was “immoral conduct with the opposite sex,” the Stasi may well have been

concerned about wayward behavior. 70

District Perleberg Stasi employees were, with an average age of thirty-nine

in 1989, slightly older than those of District Gransee. In District Perleberg the

average age of operational offi cers was forty-two, matching a larger overall

trend in the Stasi. The abrasive leader of the district was relatively young at

forty-nine.

T H E I N T E R V I E W S

For all of the sound scholarly treatment of the Stasi, one disappointment in

the accounts has been the absence of a human portrait of a Stasi employee. 71

Readers often come away without a clear mental image of who, exactly, worked

for the Stasi, their names, dreams, weaknesses, hobbies, passions, and vices

lost amid a sea of statistics. Apart from offering a fl esh-and-blood portrait of

Stasi personnel, including the important issue of motive, the following inter-

views also shed light on the vexing question of totalitarianism in the GDR.

Historians continue to debate vigorously whether the regime aimed to con-

trol all aspects of life in East Germany, or whether there were indeed private

“niches” to which one could retreat with more or less regime acquiescence; yet

the most gaping hole in this discussion is what those involved in the repres-

sion apparatus thought about the nature of their work.

In the following pages, many of the individuals responsible for repression

in the East German hinterland refl ect on the issue of “totalitarian” control, a

term that, because it derives from the academic world of political science, was

never really in common parlance in the offi ces of the secret police. Rather, Stasi

offi cials discuss the degree to which societal surveillance was fl ächendeckend or

“blanket,” but this term must be considered synonymous with totalitarianism.

46 |

T H E F I R M

Moreover, in the course of the interviews, the Stasi personnel provided key

insights into the structures of the Stasi and crucial bureaucratic practices like

running informants that, regardless of the case offi cer, lent totalitarian quali-

ties to the work by virtue of the institutional culture that had developed in the

Stasi.

One of the greatest challenges for any historian is to determine the verac-

ity of the source on which their narrative is based, a challenge magnified

when the source is a secret police officer who worked behind the scenes in

a now defunct dictatorship. Even in Herodotus’s The Histories, one of the

earliest attempts at scientific history, written nearly twenty-four centuries

ago, the author is aware that much of what he is being told could be fab-

ricated. He distances himself from the source by using phrases such as “I

say only that which the Libyans themselves recount” or “Anyone who finds

such things credible can make of these Egyptian stories what he wishes.

My job . . . is simply to record whatever I am told by each of my sources.”

Herodotus’s confession of imperfect knowledge and his lack of accountabil-

ity for his sources is a luxury of a bygone era. In one of the clearest recent

examples of the explosive nature of handling historical testimony, Daniel

Goldhagen opted to ignore all self-exculpatory testimony of Holocaust per-

petrators in 1960s trials in West Germany. On the other hand, Christopher

Browning believed that such evidence, when weighed against the rest of the

testimony, could be considered truthful. 72 Some of what the Stasi personnel relate below is not worthy of belief and brings into question their entire

testimony. Others, however, alternately divulged information that painted

them in a poor light or expressed profound remorse; their testimony is far

more believable.

I have respected the interviewees’ request for anonymity. All names are

pseudonyms.

D I S T R I C T G R A N S E E

Florian Tenbrock—The Intellectual73

Florian Tenbrock lives in the quiet hamlet of Häsen about 50 miles (80 km)

northwest of Berlin and a few minutes down the road from Gransee. The road

heading toward Häsen is scenic, although in the late summer the sunfl owers

were just past bloom and looked like they had suddenly died of fright as they

stood stiffl y in the autumn breeze. As I approached the house for our fi rst inter-

view in 2003 on a hardpack dirt road, Tenbrock was standing outside chatting

with a neighbor. He indicated where I should park my rented Alpha Romeo.

(I have had the bad luck of getting upgraded from my economy-size car on

almost every occasion that I have interviewed Stasi personnel. Arriving in an

Alpha Romeo does little to dispel the image of an overly affl uent West.)

I N T H E S E R V I C E O F T H E F I R M

| 47

Herr Tenbrock is a reasonable man. He is worldly, having spent fi ve years

with the East German embassy in Egypt, clearly concerned about his children

(he wrote his memoirs to help explain to them why he worked for the Stasi),

and intelligent. He was the only offi cer in District Gransee who possessed Abitur, the high school certifi cate. Although the interview lasted several hours, he broke

into a smile on only two or three occasions. His earnest demeanor refl ected his

cold professionalism in the workplace. As he sat in a fi rm armchair in a pose

like Lincoln in his monument, he answered questions calmly, often pausing

for long periods before speaking. When referring to an incident in June 1987

when two teenage brothers were shot dead while running away from a Soviet

military base, Tenbrock justifi ed this atrocious act by saying that the teenagers

were not exactly “pure as the driven snow.” The living room where the interview

took place was prim and proper, furnished with cheap but functional cabinets,

sofas, and rugs. At one point, he took me upstairs to his bedroom, where he

showed me, proudly displayed on his wall, a ceremonial dagger that the Stasi

had awarded him.

At forty-eight, the youthful Herr Tenbrock is just starting to show signs of

aging. Gray has crept into his full beard, and his physique is no longer that of

the high school sports star whose athletic career was cut short by injury. His

home today would be the envy of most North Americans—a large A-frame on

an idyllic plot of land surrounded by leafy old-growth trees. Tenbrock always

referred to the Stasi as Die Firma, the Firm. I interviewed Herr Tenbrock twice, three years apart, and on the second occasion he took me for a drive around the

district in his Volvo, a Barbra Streisand CD somehow providing a comforting

background. When I asked him if Gransee looked as it did during the GDR, he

responded: “It looks the same. It’s just more colorful now.”

We had lunch at a villa just outside of the town of Menz where West German

embassy representatives vacationed during the GDR era. “Of course, we had

this whole place bugged,” Tenbrock says while gesturing at the cluster of cot-

tages hugging the lake. After a pleasant outdoor lunch of schnitzel and sundaes,

I prepared to pay, but my gracious host would hear nothing of it. The main topic

of conversation over lunch was travel, one of his favorite hobbies. Herr Tenbrock

was enthusiastic about an upcoming cruise to Norway, a land that, like Canada,

holds for him a Nordic mystique. He spends countless hours on the Internet

tracking down bargains and seeking out exotic locales. Although he does not

admit to it, perhaps Tenbrock realizes that nearly three decades of travel restric-

tions in the GDR has infused in him a desire to see the world on the other side

of the Wall.

Driving back to his home, we pass a small lake, which reminds Tenbrock of

an incident in the late 1980s. A Swiss historian/sleuth believed he had fi nally

cracked the mystery of the Amber Room, the stunningly beautiful room that

showcased the golden substance fi rst in the city palace in Berlin until 1716, and

then in St. Petersburg as the Prussian king presented it as a gift to Peter the Great

48 |

T H E F I R M

in return for support in war against Sweden. The splendorous Amber Room

remained in St. Petersburg for more than two hundred years until the Nazi inva-

sion, at which point it was dismantled and shipped in dozens of crates back into

Germany. Sometime in the spring of 1945 as the Soviets pushed toward Berlin

and the Nazis evacuated their looted treasures to the interior of the country,

the crates containing the Amber Room disappeared for good. The Swiss his-

torian, believing that they had been deposited in a lake in District Gransee by

the retreating Nazis, organized a dive mission to investigate. Stasi offi cers in the

district monitored the expedition carefully and were no doubt relieved when no

crates were found.

Tenbrock vividly recalls the day that he found out he would be working for

the Stasi. The local district leader, Siegmund Tamme, had talked to Tenbrock

several times at the District Council Offi ce where he worked and eventually

recruited him for the Stasi. One day while Tenbrock was sitting at his desk, a

hulking man came through the door and said “Are you Tenbrock? You start

with us at 8 a.m. on Monday morning. We’ve taken care of everything.” Indeed,

the Stasi had the tools at its disposal to take almost anyone it liked from a

workplace and arrange for their transfer to the secret police. Tenbrock went to

the regional headquarters in Potsdam with all the new recruits to swear his oath

of allegiance in a hall awash in a sea of East German fl ags; several of the new

recruits were selected to touch the fl ags on behalf of the entire incoming class

while swearing the oath.

Like many junior offi cers, Tenbrock began his career with the Stasi as an inves-

tigator who performed background checks on candidates for jobs that might lead

them into contact with the West, like sailors, truck drivers, and border guards. It

was, in fact, this mundane background check on a would-be border guard that

led the Stasi to the notorious war criminal Heinz Barth—the most spectacular

success in District Gransee’s history.74 Tenbrock worked for the District Gransee offi ce for ten years before joining Markus Wolf’s foreign espionage branch in

the East German embassy in Egypt; the details of his posting were kept hidden

from even his closest co-workers. Five years later, and to his dismay, Tenbrock

returned to rural, small District Gransee, which he thought he had left behind

for good. Markus Wolf made a lasting impression on Tenbrock, who considers a

book that Wolf signed for him one of his prized possessions and who, following

Wolf’s death on November 9, 2006, lamented the loss of a great man.

Tenbrock became lieutenant seven years after joining the Stasi; he would end

his career as a captain. He attributes his swift rise through the Stasi ranks in part

to a stellar informant whom he recruited, “Josef Nöcker,” a doctor who was not

averse to soliciting information from his patients on behalf of the Stasi. Nöcker’s

frequent trips to West Berlin for treatment of his lethal wasp allergy afforded

Tenbrock rare insights into life on the other side of the Wall. The Stasi returned

the favor by showering Nöcker and his family with special treatment, not the

least of which was arranging for his daughter to be admitted to medical school.

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A recurrent theme in interviews with Stasi offi cers is the utter disdain offi -

cers held for their party superiors. 75 Tenbrock was exasperated with local party offi cials who constantly badgered him about the reliability of his star recruit.

In order to satisfy them, and unbeknownst to the informant, Tenbrock once

recorded Nöcker by means of a highly sensitive microphone hidden in a wall

and sent it off to a Berlin lab, which confi rmed that the informant was indeed

telling the truth. But, in his diatribe against the party, Tenbrock recounted an

aspect of Stasi work that will no doubt surprise readers: the Stasi had offi ce

hours. Twice a week, citizens could enter the local Stasi offi ce (a plaque on the

building read “Ministry for State Security—Gransee District Offi ce”) and discuss

with the offi cer on duty any issues of concern.

Many of the complaints centered around the lack of decent housing. In one

instance, however, a trembling health inspector explained that the local abat-

toir was in violation of every major health code . . . and had been for years. The

inspector could no longer, in good conscience, perform his duties if the state

was not going to take action to ensure the safety of the public. Tenbrock, the

offi cer on duty, reported the situation to his party superiors, but the abattoir

continued to operate as it always had. Although this one incident revealed to

Tenbrock the paralysis of the party, of far greater consequence for him was

the party’s constant urge to recruit more and more informants, equating a

high number of informants with greater national security. It was this pressure

from above that caused the Stasi to keep informants employed well past the

initial reason for recruitment in order to report in a mundane capacity on the

general “mood” of the population.

Some Stasi offi cers refused to regularly meet with these informants—what

Tenbrock calls “card corpses” ( Karteileichen)—and were severely reprimanded.

Stasi offi cers became burdened with informants, upwards of thirty of them in

the district and which was logistically unmanageable, according to Tenbrock,

given the fact that offi cers had to meet their informants after 5:00 p.m. since

informants held full-time jobs. Here, however, historians must be cautious of

accepting this recollection at face value, considering the sheer volume of reports

and meetings with informants. In the 1980s District Perleberg offi cers had a total

of 2,500 meetings a year with informants, and those informants (or the con-

trolling offi cer, as the case may be) authored roughly 5,000 reports in District

Perleberg alone in that same time frame. There were certainly ineffi ciencies and

differing levels of aptitude among informants, but given their high level of activ-

ity it would be an exaggeration to characterize the majority of informants as

“card corpses.”

Tenbrock has few regrets about his line of work. He likes citing his efforts to

prevent medical professionals from “fl eeing the republic” to demonstrate the

importance of the Stasi. “Regardless of what you think of Socialism,” he says,

“if a dentist leaves our district for the West, then thousands of people go with-

out dental care.” 76 Tenbrock presents this evidence not as a man desperate to

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T H E F I R M

convince or to justify, but matter-of-factly, preferring those facts to speak for

themselves. Tenbrock also points to the Nazi-hunting function of the Stasi. He is

outraged that the new united Germany (which he refers to as a “banana repub-

lic,” playing on the East German desire for bananas expressed during the 1989

revolution) allows swastikas painted on buildings to remain for weeks on end

before being removed, and are often not investigated further. He recalled with

thinly disguised pride a time during the GDR when the Stasi arranged for every

student in the district (even the ones who were out sick) to write an essay in

order to obtain a sample of their handwriting; this in an effort to apprehend the

individual who had painted swastikas on a wall in Gransee. Although the Stasi

never did fi nd the culprit, Tenbrock nevertheless holds up this example as the

bar that the new Federal Republic should meet.

On the issue of whether the GDR was totalitarian, whether the Stasi engaged

in blanket surveillance, Tenbrock is blasé. Some things, he claims, were of no

interest to the Stasi. A sixty-year-old parish priest in traditional robe preaching to twenty-fi ve “omas” (grannies) did not concern him, whereas a twenty-fi ve-year-old preaching in jeans did. Tenbrock was dismayed by developments within the

Stasi in the 1980s, especially the make-work projects that the party continually

foisted on the secret police. For years on end, Tenbrock provided summaries to

his superiors on the general mood of the population; for this effort he received

no feedback, never hearing what happened to his reports and having no indica-

tion that the party had responded to them in any meaningful way. On a regular

basis, the district party chief stepped into his Volga car and drove to the Stasi

Offi ce in Gransee where he demanded the District Stasi director to look into a

variety of issues that had suddenly taken his fancy.

As time passed, the Stasi increasingly took on duties that had been the respon-

sibility of other jurisdictions. Investigation of those who left the GDR illegally,

or who had applied to emigrate, were technically the purview of the police or

the department of the interior in the district council, but over time these duties

fell to the Stasi. The result of these extra duties was, according to Tenbrock,

increased disciplinary measures against overwhelmed Stasi offi cers who had no

choice but to neglect some of their duties.

Almost immediately following the unplanned and disorderly opening of

the Berlin Wall in November 1989, Tenbrock and others in the offi ce began

the systematic destruction of documents held in the district offi ce. Although

an outside observer might think that East Germany, and the Stasi, could still

continue to exist after the fall of the Wall—the government still oversaw the

National People’s Army, a well-armed police force, and a loyal secret police—it

was by no means clear in the fall of 1989 that the end of the Berlin Wall would

translate into the unifi cation of Germany. Tenbrock recognized that the cause

to which he had dedicated his life was on the brink of extinction. As he said:

“Certain dreamers in intellectual circles thought that some sort of reformed

GDR would continue. I was not one of those dreamers.” Tenbrock helped

I N T H E S E R V I C E O F T H E F I R M

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pile the documents into trucks headed to a site outside of Potsdam where the

documents were burned. This destruction of material, a terrible historical loss,

which is often overlooked given the mammoth collection that has remained,

continued into the fi rst week of December when a citizens’ committee occu-

pied the local offi ce. Unlike many other Stasi personnel, Tenbrock was not

concerned about citizen retaliation against him or his family, stating with a

cavalier disregard for the anger in the streets: “What was there to be afraid of?

The Firm was a legitimate organ of the state. It’s not like we were some wild

underground enterprise.”

As outlined in the Stasi Files Law of 1991, Tenbrock’s membership in the Stasi

prohibited him from the civil service, a very broad category in Germany encom-

passing railways, the teaching profession, the police, and other major employ-

ers. Almost immediately after the fall of East Germany, Tenbrock took courses in

the area of adult education and works to this day in that fi eld. His employer is a

private fi rm that offers courses to youth and unemployed adults who are trying

to get into the workforce. He is quite satisfi ed with his line of work and keenly

interested in the broader issues surrounding the fi eld of education, which leads

him to the conclusion that the current German education system is disastrous.

He is relieved that his children were already out of school when the Wall fell.

Over the past decade and a half, the intelligent, articulate Tenbrock has assisted

those on the fringes of society to a better life. He has for the most part left his service in the Stasi behind him and accommodated himself to the new reality. Still,

from time to time, he grows frustrated with the united Germany and considers

the possibility of emigrating. It is indeed ironic that the very one who prevented

so many people from leaving East Germany now considers the new environment

so stifl ing that he wants to leave, and thinks it is the most normal thing in the

world to want to leave a country in which one is no longer comfortable.

Markus Schram–The Enamored One77

Markus Schram is one of a handful of Stasi offi cers interviewed who did not

move after 1989, preferring the confi nes of his top-fl oor apartment in a typical

East German prefabricated apartment building in Zehdenick. Crossword books

are piled neatly on the coffee table. He is a friendly sort who smiles often, not at

all self-conscious about his two shiny gold incisor teeth, which had been made

by one of Tenbrock’s informants. When I mentioned toward the end of our

interview that we had been talking for nearly four hours, the fi fty-six-year-old

former law student78 shrugged, smiled and said without a hint of insincerity:

“I hardly noticed the time passing.”

Joining the Stasi was an easy decision for Herr Schram. He signed on as infor-

mant “Ralf Hoppe,” a name he took because he was a fan of the German actor

by that name, and made it clear to his controlling offi cer Tenbrock that his long-

term wish was to become a full-time Stasi offi cer. He had, in fact, been in the

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T H E F I R M

bodyguard division of the Stasi from 1968 to 1970 but was dismissed because

he had committed theft at the workplace. Both his father and grandfather had

been Communist Party members, and his wife was still in the party through

1989 and beyond, so involvement in the Communist Party had been a fam-

ily trait for generations. Thus, ideology played a major role in Schram’s desire

to join the Stasi, but, as he candidly admitted, so too did money. His salary

nearly doubled from 680 marks a month when he worked in the district govern-

ment to his starting salary of 1,150 marks a month with the Stasi. He originally

worked in the Department responsible for the economy where he focused on

VEB Mikroelektronik, an important factory that outfi tted the East German navy

with electronics and employed some 1,600 people. In 1987, he played a crucial

role in making sure that the father of the two boys shot in the back by a Soviet

soldier while running away from a Soviet military base did not fi nd out the

details of his children’s deaths.

One of Schram’s fondest memories was the camaraderie around the Stasi

offi ce. Each morning, following a short bus ride from Zehdenick, Schram arrived

at the offi ce at 8 a.m. He and the other fi ve offi cers in his section would chat over coffee before going over documents for a few hours and then picking up a “reasonably priced and tasty” lunch from the nearby city administration building.

The Christmas offi ce party at a rented hall was an annual highlight, and all staff

were able to attend because a neighboring district offi ce took care of guarding

the Gransee Offi ce. Schram truly relished his time in the Stasi, and at no time

did he feel that the population loathed him. As a case in point, he brought up

how pleasant his wife’s co-workers were to him at her offi ce parties because

he was a “decent human being ( Mensch).” Schram made a point of adding a

touch of coziness to his offi ce in the form of fresh fl owers in a vase. Otherwise,

the offi ce that he shared with one other offi cer was fairly standard—two desks,

a black telephone, and fi ling cabinets containing informant fi les and “a few

bottles.” Unlike other Stasi offi cers who adorned their walls with portraits of

notable Communists like Wilhelm Pieck, Walter Ulbricht, and the founder of

the Soviet secret police, Felix Dzerzhinski, Schram and his partner preferred to

keep their walls blank.

In his eagerness to explain how Tamme, the leader of the district until 1985,

was much more humane than the one who followed him, Schram claimed that

all of those individuals who had been secretly investigated in personal surveil-

lance operations and who the Stasi had determined to be innocent, were then

informed by a Stasi offi cer that the investigation was over and that nothing more

would come of it. It is, of course, absurd to believe that the Stasi would inform

someone that they had secretly investigated them and all of their relatives and

acquaintances for years, that they had tapped their phone and opened their mail

and monitored their house. Why Schram would tell it in this way is puzzling, but

perhaps his love of the Stasi caused him to want to portray the Stasi in the best

possible light. Other aspects of his account also lacked sincerity. In response to

I N T H E S E R V I C E O F T H E F I R M

| 53

a question about the use of informants in pubs (and there were thirty-fi ve pubs

in Zehdenick alone) for general surveillance duties, he answered: “We never

thought about placing informants in pubs—but what a good idea!” and smiled

broadly.

It is also unlikely that Schram refused his superior’s request to write a report

on everybody who lived in his apartment building. Schram claims that he

refused on the grounds that “these were my neighbors,” but it would be highly

unusual for an offi cer to refuse a task handed down by a superior. The very

fact that Schram’s superior requested this is an interesting revelation about the

extent of Stasi surveillance: the building was clearly not a sensitive economic or

military site, nor was it common practice to investigate everyone in the neigh-

borhood where a Stasi offi cer lived. This incident appears to be a case of a senior

Stasi offi cer simply taking advantage of an opportunity to gather more informa-

tion on ordinary people in the district.

Although there is no question that Schram was dedicated to the cause, he

was also aware of some of the limitations of the Stasi. For one, the Stasi in his

opinion had become too unwieldy. His economic branch grew from three offi -

cers in 1978 to six in 1989. He felt enormous pressure to recruit informants, a task

that became more diffi cult as the 1980s wore on and the population increas-

ingly turned its back on the regime. Schram was not the only offi cer to point

out that the Stasi itself sensed the waning fortunes of the GDR in its diffi culty

in convincing individuals to become informants. Schram claimed to be under

constant pressure from the director Töpfer to produce a “spectacular” victory in

the economics fi eld, such as the arrest of an out-and-out saboteur, but nothing

in his eleven years of Stasi work came close to such a victory.

On December 18, 1989, Herr Schram handed in his Stasi identifi cation card

to the police offi cer guarding the district offi ce. He now no longer worked for

the Stasi, and the Communist cause in Germany for which generations in his

family had fought was about to be swept aside with breathtaking speed. His

life work, the countless hours of meetings with informants, the endless reports

on the population, the professional upgrading, the day-in, day-out administra-

tion of his fi les was all for naught. When prompted on how an individual deals

with the magnitude of an event such as the collapse of East Germany, Schram

answered simply: “I came home and did a crossword puzzle.” Perhaps it is very

human to seek solace in the mundane when the revolution outside is too awful

to ponder.

On New Year’s Day 1990, Schram, the former secret police agent, became a

regular worker in a factory in Zehdenick. After being let go in September as many

former East German industries rationalized, he obtained work with low-level

security fi rms responsible for guarding furniture warehouses at night. An inher-

ent danger in this line of work was less that of catching criminals in the act than

the nighttime driving on the dimly lit roads of the district. He was badly injured

one night in a collision with a boar and afterwards worked only sporadically

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T H E F I R M

until the late 1990s. At that time he joined a company tasked with converting

the former Soviet military base at Vogelsang into housing and entertainment

facilities. Schram now collects unemployment insurance and anxiously awaits

the age of sixty-fi ve when he will receive a state pension.

Werner Beuster—The Earnest One79

Unlike Tenbrock and Schram whose surroundings are comfortable, Werner

Beuster’s modest brick farmhouse has seen better days. Judging from the state of

disrepair, the grimy carpets, and food left out on the counter, Werner Beuster has

fallen on hard times. The spindly forty-eight-year-old Beuster gazes intensely in

front of him as he talks. The only instance during the interview when he became

animated was when a young girl, possibly his granddaughter, interrupted our

conversation by throwing open the living room door and yelling “Caught ya!”

Beuster sprang from his chair and chased the girl out.

Siegmund Tamme, the director of the District Gransee Stasi offi ce, played

an active role in recruiting Beuster for the Stasi, just as he had in recruiting

Tenbrock, by personally convincing him that East Germany’s socialist society

was worthy of protection. Unlike Schram, neither Beuster nor Tenbrock origi-

nally conceived of a career in the secret police. Following his studies in agricul-

ture, Beuster worked in the countryside around Cottbus before moving back to

District Gransee, where he was to work on an agricultural collective but opted

instead for the Stasi. Seeing as he would have made more money as the chair

of an agricultural collective, fi nancial incentive did not play a role in Beuster’s

decision to join the Stasi, but rather ideology was at the heart of his decision.

Although neither of Beuster’s parents were in the Communist Party, he was

a devoted Communist who believed that there were enemies trying to subvert

the system from within. Even before joining, Beuster had heard stories of sabo-

tage in the countryside, such as farm workers who improperly milked cows in

order to render them incapable of giving milk. Beuster, eager to neutralize these

enemies in the agricultural sector, was sorely disappointed after four years of

monitoring the countryside that he had come across many cases of incompe-

tence and laziness, but not one case of an individual who had knowingly tried

to disrupt the regime. Beuster phrased it in a way that almost seemed as if he

had been misled during his recruitment: “Sloppiness, procrastination—there

was plenty of that. But not one person in agriculture was a conscious opponent

of the regime.” His shift to the monitoring of factories produced a similar reac-

tion. Beuster frankly admitted that the young worker who had been secretly

pouring water on the equipment in the micro-electronic plant in Zehdenick so

that the production process would be brought to a halt was simply lazy—not

anti-Communist.

Although Beuster grew disillusioned with the constant search for phantom

regime opponents, he nevertheless justifi ed Stasi work on the basis of its hunt

I N T H E S E R V I C E O F T H E F I R M

| 55

for former leading Nazis and war criminals. After describing the Stasi’s suc-

cessful apprehension of the war criminal Heinz Barth who had been living in

Gransee from the end of the war (and who still lives there), Beuster rested his

case: “Our work was important. On the basis of this example [Barth] I can make

it crystal clear to anyone, to an-y-one, why the Stasi was necessary.” For emphasis, he added: “And you know what? He was still using Nazi newspapers as lining in

his sock drawer when we arrested him.”

Beuster experienced fi rsthand the pressure from above to produce reams of

reports based on meetings with informants. He was dedicated to his job and

therefore did not feel it a hardship to recruit more and more informants to fulfi ll

quotas; he felt the need to recruit them in order to do his job properly. But the

district director himself became frustrated with Beuster as his reports from infor-

mants’ meetings contained little information of value; the director even threat-

ened that he might have to start meeting with the informants himself. Beuster

shot back that he was welcome to do so, as he would see that the problem lay

with the informant, not the controlling offi cer.

In certain aspects, Beuster’s accounts dovetailed with those of Tenbrock. Both

were frustrated with the endless situation reports that they were required to

forward to the party, and today, like Tenbrock, Beuster doubts that the party

offi cials so much as glanced at them. 80 As much as Stasi offi cers like to blame the party, however, to a certain extent the Stasi was also responsible for the reams

of information being produced. In return for permission to travel, for example,

a businessman would be required to write a report about what occurred on his

trip. Out of fear that a fellow-traveler might be similarly tasked, the business-

man wrote extremely lengthy, detailed reports, lest he miss something reported

by a colleague and be denied future travel privileges. In other aspects, however,

Beuster sees a much more pervasive organization than did Tenbrock. Beuster

had no informants who were card corpses, believing that every informant on

his roster could provide valuable information even if they were not presently

offering information of consequence. He also addressed the issue of “secondary

individuals” who appeared in monitoring operations, calling them “products of

chance” ( Zufallsprodukte) and emphasizing that every single name, regardless of how it was discovered, was of interest to the Stasi. Beuster summed up the Stasi

approach to societal surveillance: “There was nothing that we weren’t interested

in.” The Stasi’s index card system of cataloguing East Germans, the backbone

of its surveillance apparatus, involved writing notes on each card whenever a

person came to the attention of the Stasi, even if the instances were years apart.

A one-off brush with the Stasi might be dismissed, but if an individual’s card

had a number of entries, they would be looked into more closely. Beuster’s

metaphor for the Stasi index card system is poignant: “Out of the mosaic of

information on the card, we were able to form a picture of the individual.”

For example, if an individual had said something against the regime once, and

twenty years later his son wanted to join the army offi cer corps, he might be

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T H E F I R M

allowed to do so. If, however, the father had several entries on his card, if there

had been a pattern of suspicious behavior, the son could very well be denied

entry to the offi cer school.

Beuster, a former avid soccer player—so much of one that the Stasi requested

he cut back because of frequent injuries—is still physically active, yet he appears

frail, exhausted. Like other Stasi offi cers, he emphasized that the life of a secret

police offi cer involved punishing hours: “I ran between twenty and thirty infor-

mants. I couldn’t meet with them during the day because they had full-time

jobs, so I began my meetings with them around 7 p.m. By the time I met with a

few informants, it was the middle of the night and I had to be back in the offi ce

for 8 a.m.” There was no question that, at a certain point, a law of diminishing

returns came into play as whatever the most effi cient ratio of informants to

offi cers was, was surely passed once this number ran into the thirties. In the case

of a high informant/offi cer ratio and the extreme hours required to run them,

historians are provided with a telling case of the practical limitations on a state’s

desire for broad control. There simply were not enough hours in the day to meet

with informants—in 1987 the Perleberg district offi ce had an average of 7.6 meet-

ings a day with informants, assuming meetings took place every single day of

the year 81—yet every year the district raised its target for informant recruitment.

Totalitarianism, as Martin Malia has suggested, manifests itself much more in

the desire for total control, rather than in its actual implementation, which—for

reasons like the above, or the unpredictability of societal reaction—will always

be less than the ideal.82

Siegmund Beuster was lying in a hospital in November 1989 following a rou-

tine operation when he found out that the Berlin Wall had fallen. In spite of

the unrest throughout the land in that summer and fall, he was genuinely sur-

prised when he heard the news. Released a few days later, he went to the district

offi ce to fi nd the People’s Police securing the building against attempts by Stasi

personnel to destroy documents or access weapons. Beuster was disgusted that

the same police offi cers who worked hand-in-hand with the Stasi had changed

allegiances so quickly, many of them going on to uninterrupted police careers in

the new united Germany. Clearly angry, Beuster said: “The fact that so many of

our police offi cers willingly worked for the new system leaves a bitter aftertaste.

I have to tell you.”

After a brief stint as a locksmith, Beuster retrained as an entry-level tax spe-

cialist but did not continue in that line of work. He now collects unemploy-

ment, like his former colleague Schram. Although Beuster grew disenchanted

with the Stasi, he expresses no remorse nor does he believe that the Stasi was

the sinister organization that is sometimes portrayed. Especially because of his

belief in the “rightness” of the Stasi’s hunt for former Nazis, Beuster did not

keep a low profi le after unifi cation nor did he change his phone number or

address as many did. One even gets the sense that Beuster would have enjoyed

the opportunity to engage fellow East Germans in discussion of his Stasi past:

I N T H E S E R V I C E O F T H E F I R M

| 57

“There was not a single day, not even immediately after the fall of the Wall, that

I feared going in to my favorite pub in town.”

D I S T R I C T P E R L E B E R G

Reinhard Kuhlow—The Repentant One83

The soft-spoken Reinhard Kuhlow sits in the examining room of his physiother-

apy practice, colored posters of sinewy knee ligaments and muscles adorning

the walls. He has worked hard to reestablish himself after the fall of the Wall,

shedding his Stasi past and embarking on a three-year physiotherapy course.

Some of his former informants come to him for treatment at his successful prac-

tice on the main square.

After briefl y considering taking up studies at Humboldt University in

Berlin in order to become a German teacher, Kuhlow, like Werner Beuster in

the Gransee Offi ce, joined the Stasi in part to counter what he thought were

the efforts of opponents in the countryside to scuttle food production in the

GDR. After reviewing Kuhlow’s report cards from junior high school and the

report by an informant who had been a childhood friend of Kuhlow, offi cer

Alfred Pielach asked Kuhlow to join the Stasi. The Department of Personnel

and Training made Kuhlow’s transfer from the agricultural collective to the

Stasi easy for him by securing him an apartment and arranging his transfer

with the chairman of the agricultural collective. Almost immediately, how-

ever, Kuhlow became disenchanted with the Stasi. He found the ninety-plus

minutes to copy out his pledge to work for the Stasi a sign of things to come,

that he was joining an organization that was more interested in fueling its

own bureaucracy than in undertaking concrete tasks to safeguard the GDR

against legitimate threats. He never worked in the agricultural sector but

instead had to cover the major factories in Wittenberge, the rayon mill and

the sewing machine factory, the importance of which caused the Stasi to open

a small substation of the Perleberg offi ce in Wittenberge. In 1989, Kuhlow

was promoted to captain and director of the Wittenberge substation and its

complement of fi ve offi cers.

Kuhlow today speaks in harsh terms about the manner in which the Stasi

operated: “There was something sick about monitoring every small local fes-

tival. That’s not what I signed up for, for useless reporting and these endless

reports on the mood of the population.” He talked of the many operations that

went on for years, Stasi offi cers observing and writing up reports on a suspect

long after it had become clear that the individual was not engaged in any oppo-

sitional activities. Kuhlow is still in disbelief that he “never met an actual enemy

of the state” and kept returning to the phrase “paper tiger” to describe the Stasi,

an organization obsessed with reports on the population and on potential

opponents, an organization that equated bursting fi ling cabinets with increased

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T H E F I R M

national security. On the key issue of whether there was blanket surveillance in

the GDR, Kuhlow replied simply: “The desire was there” and singled out the

earlier district director, Tilse in particular, for “seeing enemies everywhere.” The

only real success of the Stasi, according to Kuhlow, was pointing out laziness

and sloppiness in key factories, a task that need not have fallen to a secret police.

All others were simply trumped-up victories.

Unlike most offi cers in the Perleberg offi ce, Kuhlow welcomed the change of

leadership in 1985 from Tamme to the domineering Ryll, in part because he had had

several run-ins with Tamme. One in particular included an embarrassing incident

when Tamme emptied Kuhlow’s garbage can in front of his co-workers to “prove”

that Kuhlow was sloppy with the Stasi’s sensitive documents. Kuhlow liked the fresh

approach that Ryll brought; he recalled how Ryll had saved him from a party sanc-

tion in 1989 (at a meeting of the Stasi collective) for speaking out that his father was over seventy and no longer seemed able to fi nd imaginative solutions to problems,

and that he suspected it was the same for those in power in East Germany.

For Kuhlow, the true nature of the organization that he worked for came to

light in the fi nal days of 1989 when he, as leader of the Wittenberge substation,

locked up the small Stasi branch offi ce for the last time. To his astonishment, he

was not able to do so easily because the locks on the outside of the building had

been sealed. The doors could be locked only from the inside. In other words, the

Stasi did not lock others out; they locked themselves in their own building.

As the regime collapsed, Kuhlow joined other Stasi offi cers in feeding docu-

ments to the district offi ce’s coal fi replace. On the outside, Kuhlow worried for

his family, believing that the crowds (which Kuhlow refers to as the “mob”)

would harm his wife or teenage children, fears that were not allayed by a teacher

who verbally humiliated his son because of his father’s association with the

Stasi and generally made life unpleasant for him.

Kuhlow’s story has elements of tragedy—the well-intentioned, slightly naïve

youth who joins an organization to fi ght for the greater good, quickly becomes

disillusioned, and is unable to leave because, as he candidly admitted, he needed

the money in order to support his young family. His personnel fi le confi rms

what he says about his disenchantment. In 1984, his salary was reduced from

700 to 650 marks a month because of his “inability, or lack of desire, to follow

through on operational procedures.” Kuhlow is the only one of the Stasi from

this district to enter into a profession after the collapse of East Germany and is,

by far, the most remorseful of the Stasi personnel interviewed. As the conversa-

tion came to a close, Kuhlow’s anguish about his past was palpable: “It is strange

for me to talk about this,” he said as he shook hands and averted eye contact.

Anne Klenk—The Ambivalent One84

Frau Klenk was a rarity for the Stasi: a woman in operational duty. Klenk decided

to leave her job as a secretary with the railroad outfi tting works in Wittenberge

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to join the Stasi for a variety of reasons, including money and other privileges

such as more food stamps, more vacation days, and more attractive vacation

resorts than other employers in the GDR. She does not discount the role that

ideology played, as she was predisposed to the GDR’s message that it was the

“peaceful” Germany. Recruiters for the Stasi, whether they were dealing with

full-time workers or with informants, often turned to this refrain about East

Germany in order to recruit, spinning their recruitment pitch in terms of an

invitation to help maintain world peace in light of an aggressive West bent on

nuclear annihilation.

Like the other offi cers we have met, Frau Klenk was initially pleased with

her work. She enjoyed her colleagues, found the secretarial work challenging,

and believed in the importance of protecting industry from saboteurs. Around

1980 she was approached to work in the powerful evaluation branch in the

District Perleberg offi ce, a branch that was the nerve center of the Stasi. It was

here that case offi cers sent their reports from informants and other sources

to be evaluated for a future course of action. Those fi ve or six offi cers in the

evaluation branch had a comprehensive view of all activities undertaken by

the Stasi, and recommended to the district director an approach based on

this information. Frau Klenk worked in the travel section of the analysis and

evaluation branch, responsible for background checks on anyone in the dis-

trict who wanted to travel to the West whether for a special family occasion, a

conference, or as part of their job. She was one of very few district employees

permitted to see the sensitive card catalogue that contained personal informa-

tion on district residents, a privilege that was not accorded the run-of-the-mill

offi cer. Echoing Beuster’s comments about “making a picture out of a mosaic,”

Klenk looked for patterns of behavior as captured on the index cards to decide

whether she would recommend that the person be allowed to travel. Being

written up for having been a “rowdy” twenty years ago would not necessar-

ily prevent an individual from traveling West, but several instances of similar

behavior would.

In the course of her new duties, Klenk became overwhelmed with the sheer vol-

ume of information that the Stasi collected on an individual in order to determine

if they could visit a relative in West Germany, even for a short time—informants’

reports, police reports, recommendations from the work place, the card catalogue.

And then daily meetings with the leader of the district to discuss her recommen-

dation. As she was talking , a thought dawned on her: “Can you imagine if East

Germany were hosting the World Cup? We would have to investigate every athlete,

masseur, coach, and waterboy. We would have gone crazy!” She shook her head:

“Nein. Nein” as if to say that the thought of it were too awful to contemplate.

In the mid-1980s she became disillusioned with her work, questioning why the

Stasi had to check into the backgrounds of every athlete or factory boss heading

West and whether this was really the job of a Ministry for State Security. Although

she says the Stasi was not in a position to blanket monitor the population, she

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used the identical phrase to Reinhard Kuhlow when describing the Stasi approach

to blanket societal surveillance: “The desire was there.” These revelations com-

bined with the stress of her work caused her to consider leaving the Stasi. At one

point, she asked to return to her secretarial position, but her request was denied.

The fall of the Berlin Wall turned out to be her deus ex machina.

Today, Frau Klenk breathes a sigh of relief that she happened to be on vaca-

tion when the Wall fell. Although this meant that she did not have to deal

with the groups of citizens who monitored those going in and out of the dis-

trict offi ce, she nevertheless was concerned lest the crowd turn violent. As she

explains: “I was deathly afraid during that time. I worried that they would line

us up and shoot us and our families. My son was a teacher and I worried what

they might do to him.” After being turned down for several secretarial posi-

tions after 1989, which she attributes to discrimination against her Stasi past,

she joined the accounting division of the French car manufacturer Renault in

the town where she lives. She was proud that her previous training had prepared

her for private sector work as well: “We were disciplined, industrious, and reli-

able. These were qualities that my new employer appreciated as much as my old

one.” For the past fourteen years, Frau Klenk has worked in the same offi ce and

still gets together for coffee with former Stasi secretaries. She sees the current

negative publicity about the Stasi more as a function of present politics than

historic reality. With a trace of satisfaction, she says: “As the economic situa-

tion in the Federal Republic continues to deteriorate, the government looks for

scapegoats. It’s no coincidence that the Stasi keeps coming up.” This, at least, is

more tastefully phrased than another offi cer who, echoing a similar sentiment,

complained: “In 1937, it was the Jews. Now it’s the Stasi.” 85

Antje Müller—The Ambitious Socialite86

Even at age fi fty-two, Frau Müller does not look out of place wearing the trendy

clothes of a teenager. The attractive former secretary sits in her conservatory and

looks out over the frog pond in her back yard, evidently pleased with the life that

she has built for herself. She was born in Poland, where her father was working

in agriculture before moving to Germany while she was still a young girl. Barely

eighteen when she became a secretary in the Perleberg Stasi offi ce, she was once

chided by her colleague Rudolf Schulze that she made a lot of work for him

because she came from a large family and he had to investigate every relative.

The veil of secrecy around the Stasi meant that she had little idea of the nature

of the work she would be doing. She was not even aware that the abbreviation

MfS stood for Ministry for State Security. Müller was not alone in not know-

ing in advance what type of work she would be engaged in since the Stasi was,

after all, a secret police. Although some expected to be involved in cloak-and-

dagger activities, the majority who joined the Stasi in District Perleberg tended

to envision investigative police work similar to that undertaken by the regular

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criminal police. It would be safe to say that no one joined the Stasi for the end-

less, mundane reporting on the population that occupied the lion’s share of an

offi cer’s day.

Frau Müller was taken aback by the gravity of the initiation process. She was

required to swear an oath at a mass swearing-in ceremony in Schwerin and

was immediately whisked away to a two-week intensive course on Marxism-

Leninism, the history of the GDR, and the history of the Soviet secret police.

Although women in the Stasi were not permitted to carry weapons, a few times a

year they had to practice fi ring a gun and undertake some light outdoor physical

fi tness activities. Müller soon came to love the comradery of the unit, looking

forward to annual parties and fl irting with her primarily male colleagues. “We

were a great collective,” she said.

Her job entailed typical secretarial duties such as retyping memos (the Stasi

did not possess photocopy machines), transcribing, and other offi ce duties.

In 1981 she was promoted to the position of personal secretary to the district

director, a move that was somewhat disappointing as she aspired to a more

challenging job in the evaluation branch where Frau Klenk worked. To have

been promoted to this branch, however, would have required additional train-

ing outside of the district, and the Stasi preferred that she stay close to home

to tend to her children, an attitude that was pervasive in the male-dominated

secret police.

Müller becomes somewhat evasive when the topic turns to societal monitor-

ing and the shockingly large informant network. She admits that she did not

really question what her colleagues were doing and repeatedly returns to the

point that she was eighteen when she began working for the Stasi. Once in,

it was diffi cult to leave. As a way of side-stepping the issue, she says that if the

Stasi was involved in repression, then it was wrong for it to have been—without

admitting that the Stasi was indeed an agent of repression.

Frau Müller too recalls the document destruction that took place in the fall of

1989. At one point, because of the limited capacity of the coal-burning fi replace

in the district offi ce, the Stasi began trucking the documents out to the woods

nearby where, she thought, they might still lay buried. Frau Müller is an asser-

tive, confi dent woman, and it is diffi cult to imagine her trembling in fear; yet the revolution of 1989 caused her to have an almost complete physical collapse. By

her own account, she threw up only three times in her life because of stress and

nerves—twice at the birth of her children, and once in November 1989 when the

district leader sent the women of the offi ce home. As she left the district offi ce

on her bicycle in the dark, she looked up to see rows of citizens lining the route,

pointing their fi ngers. The minute she got home, she vomited.

After a short period of being without work, Frau Müller was hired by a West

German billboard company that had opened up an offi ce in eastern Germany.

One of the company lawyers, she recalls, made it clear that she was unwelcome

in the company due to her Stasi past. Nevertheless, she stayed with the company

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for seven years before personal circumstances caused her to look for other work.

She had a series of secretarial jobs with a wood company, a call center, a lawyer’s

offi ce, and even learned Swedish at one point because she thought she might

relocate there (at least one of her former co-workers had gone this route). In

2004, looking for a new challenge, she bought the convenience store where she

now works. In many ways, she fi nds this turn of events comical: “I sell cigarettes,

tabloids, and lotto tickets—none of which I’ve ever been interested in!”

Matthias Piekert—The Realist87

Of all the Stasi personnel interviewed, Herr Piekert is the only offi cer I could

imagine with an iPod and Facebook account. He is forty-fi ve but looks ten years

younger due to his thick, jet black hair, jeans jacket, and energetic dog bounding

around him. Piekert is bright and entrepreneurial, by day taking numerous calls

on his cell phone from a former Stasi colleague with whom he works in a trans-

portation company; by night reading weighty academic works, including Jens

Gieseke’s monographs on the Stasi (which he considers reasonable accounts).

Piekert was only twenty-eight when the Wall fell and therefore one of the newest

generation of Stasi offi cers. His only memory of East Germany was one with the

Wall in place, an aspect of the regime that never bothered him because he did

not care for travel.

Originally, Piekert thought that he would become an army offi cer like his

father, but when approached by a Stasi contact in 1984 while he was in the army,

Piekert reconsidered, even though he was not entirely sure what line of work

he would be getting into. Like Frau Müller, he had heard of the Stasi but had

no clear vision of what its duties were. He described his impression of the Stasi

as “secretive but neutral.” Although he believed in the regime, he admits that

he joined the Stasi in part due to a sense of adventure, in spite of his recruiting

offi cer’s admonition that it wouldn’t be “like James Bond.”

Piekert worked in the Stasi department responsible for counterespionage

(Department II). The only major site of interest in the district for enemy agents

would have been the Soviet garrison in Perleberg that housed the latest Warsaw

Pact equipment—Perleberg’s location was a mere 9 miles (15 km) from the Cold

War front. In his fi ve years with the Stasi, Piekert never caught a spy, although

he maintained a large roster of informants for this purpose. The crushing pres-

sure from above to recruit informants and to meet with them frequently irri-

tated the young Stasi offi cer, who also talked of having informants who were

“card corpses.” In order to fulfi ll recruitment quotas, some informants were

recruited under pressure, and these were always the weakest informants, offer-

ing up banalities that barely satisfi ed their reporting role. Although his appear-

ance was disarming, Piekert could be heavy-handed during the recruitment

process. If an informant hesitated to join, he asked them threateningly whether

they “supported peace or war.” If Piekert determined that it was a lost cause, the

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candidate would be released without consequence. Alternately, Piekert might

bring up some minor incident in the candidate’s past—perhaps a brief conver-

sation with a West German at a rest stop on the road from West Germany to

West Berlin—to blackmail them in to informant work. Piekert considered this

obsession with informants and their reports the greatest weakness of the Stasi:

it led to poor quality reports on the population and distracted from duties

of safeguarding economic and military sites. He complained that these duties

should not have been at the core of a secret police: “We did the work of a regu-

lar police force, we did the work of a city administration, but we did little secret

police work.”

In many ways, Piekert’s tasks were those that one imagines of a secret police

offi cer—apprehending enemy spies—and thus he can be somewhat more objec-

tive on other aspects of Stasi work like the level of societal surveillance, which

he was not involved in as such. He candidly admits that had he been asked to

monitor and control the population, he would have done so with the same level

of dedication and enthusiasm he approached his other tasks. In another com-

ment that lends credence to Piekert’s account, he said: “I was part of the system,

so if repression took place, even though it was not in my branch, I bear some

responsibility.” That being so, Piekert’s views on the level of societal monitor-

ing merit close attention. Piekert claims that monitoring in the GDR was not

“100 percent blanket coverage, but it was extremely high,” and went on to say

that if one considers the border controls, the Wall, and the Stasi, “the GDR had

a perverted approach to security.” It is interesting that this offi cer, who frankly

accepted a certain degree of responsibility for repression although he himself

was not personally involved in societal monitoring, and who was as objective

an “outsider” as one could be while still a part of the Stasi, saw the Stasi as an

instrument of “extreme surveillance.”

Piekert recalls only one serious demonstration in 1989 outside the district

offi ce, which was diffused simply by ennui. Although somewhat concerned

about the crowd, Piekert was put at ease by the fact that the Stasi’s informants

made up a portion of the demonstration. Nevertheless, in case things spiraled

out of control, he and his colleagues armed themselves with fi re extinguishers.

Piekert feels compelled here to the right the record: “So many historians marvel

at the peaceful conduct of the revolutionaries in 1989. The fact is that it didn’t

come to violence in the fall of 1989 because both sides exercised restraint.”

Piekert relates a telling incident that reveals how both Stasi and the general

public perceived each other. When the Stasi allowed members of the citizens

movement to enter the Stasi building in the fall of 1989 after the Wall fell, one of

the citizens asked to see the blood stains from the Stasi’s victims. When Piekert

responded mockingly that they used the pile of brown coal to cover the stains,

some of the citizens started to move away the coal. Although there is no doubt

that the Stasi was not engaged in murder in its later years, it nevertheless must

accept some of the blame for this monstrous perception that permeated the

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population. The Stasi to a large degree cultivated the aura of sinister mystery

around itself. In another district offi ce, East Germans armed with shovels and

pick axes demanded to be brought to the Stasi’s torture chambers. 88

As much as he realized that the Stasi as it then existed was coming to an end,

he also remembers that many offi cers held a secret hope that the Stasi would

continue in some fashion. These offi cers used the guise of document destruction

to burn all of their problematic or tiresome fi les, but kept safe their informant

fi les and similar documents, which they thought might be useful again in six

months. Piekert is fi rm in his resolve that all of the Stasi documents should

have been destroyed: “It’s too bad that we didn’t destroy all of the documents.

It makes me sick today to see the diffi culties that some informants run into

because they worked for us. The truth is that many informants told us nothing.

And many we pressured into working for us.”

In the fi rst few years after unifi cation, Piekert thought about moving his

family out of Germany, in part because of an incident that occurred in 1991

when he approached a pastor about allowing him to hunt on church lands. The

pastor was aware that Piekert had been with the Stasi and responded that he

“would talk to him from his position as pastor, but not as one human being to

another.” They ended up sitting down and having a drink, and talked for hours.

In the end, the pastor followed the path of Solomon, neither permitting him

nor refusing him to hunt on church property. Although he is self-assured, there

is something about Piekert’s conduct that suggests he is still confl icted about

his past. He purposefully sought out the target of one of the Perleberg Stasi’s

long-running operations, the pastor, Dr. Woronowicz, although there would be

no compelling reason for him to do so since he was not personally involved.

It does not appear that Piekert intended to apologize for the Stasi’s actions nor

did he appear to seek catharsis. After an afternoon conversing with Piekert, the

pastor offered the former Stasi agent two children’s Bibles, which Piekert duti-

fully passed on to his children. Although he is not religious, Piekert was willing

to allow his children to make this decision for themselves. He thinks that one of

his boys has come to believe in God.

Late in our conversation, one fundamental difference between East and West

Germany seemed to occur to Piekert: “I would admit that had things happened

the other way, had East Germany taken over West Germany, we would have

locked up every member of the West German secret service.”

Rolf Schwegel—The Spiteful One89

Of all the former Stasi offi cers who continue to live in District Perleberg, Herr

Schwegel is the one who has the most contact with his former colleagues. This

is not because he likes them—quite the contrary—but because, out of a sense of

duty, he provides many of them with one of his farm-raised ducks at Christmas

time. For a good part of the interview, Herr Schwegel went over the list of former

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| 65

Stasi workers obtained online and alternatively ridiculed or hurled vindictives

about each one. By the end of the list, it was not enough that an offi cer were

“a poser” but the “biggest poser of all time,” and this was the mildest form of

rebuke. For practically every individual, he recalled some incident where they

insulted him in one fashion or another. After Schwegel handed in his Stasi

identifi cation card in 1989 (he retired on schedule, luckily for him just before

the revolution), his colleague said: “I guess I can’t call you comrade anymore.”

Schwegel was exasperated and tried to explain that he was still in the party but

had just retired from the Stasi. In fact, Schwegel’s relations with his colleagues

seemed to be a never-ending source of frustration.

Setting aside his mother’s trepidations, Schwegel joined the Stasi in 1964 and

worked in the very sensitive medical sector, monitoring in particular medical

professionals who might have been considering fl eeing the Republic. He was

pleased with his informants in the medical world, all of whom met with him

on a regular basis, unlike his unreliable youth informants. Over time he had

built up a cadre of four informants in the Wittenberge hospital (one of whom

was a nurse, one a doctor, the others he could not recall), three informants in

the hospital in Perleberg, and one informant in the small medical center in Bad

Wilsnack. Schwegel spent much of his time painting a realistic portrait of the

medical situation in the GDR based on the informants’ reports, and the portrait

was sobering: faulty hydraulics causing operating tables to randomly rise and

lower during operations, an acute shortage of rubber gloves, medical profession-

als seeking any opportunity to leave the GDR, and the like. Schwegel was enraged

that the party never properly responded to his reports on the disastrous situation

in health care. Even today, it still irritates him that after the fall of the Wall, former East German leader Erich Honecker disparaged the Stasi in a Moscow inter-

view; Honecker said he never read the Stasi reports since they contained the same

gloom-and-doom information as the tabloid West German Bildzeitung.

Given his focus on the medical fi eld, it is perhaps understandable that

Schwegel did not see the Stasi as an instrument of blanket surveillance, dismiss-

ing any notion of totalitarian rule with the simple observation that “there were

villages in the district that I could care less about.” As some of the evidence

already encountered has suggested, however, the Stasi could not be so neatly

compartmentalized. By virtue of Schwegel’s physician informants, he was privy

to information about patients (as was Tenbrock in the District Gransee offi ce)

regardless of which village they came from. Moreover, time and again informants

changed their places of work or moved, and still they remained on the books

even if their new location was originally one that did not factor into Stasi plans.

Herr and Frau Paupst—The Committed Support Staff 90

The Paupsts appear to be very comfortable in their apartment above a store in

Perleberg, both with their surroundings and with each other. Although they

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do not sit beside one another on the couch, they show their deep affection for

each other in subtle winks and in their constant apologizing when interrupting

the other. Herr and Frau Paupst both worked at the district offi ce in supporting

roles, he as chauffeur for the district director and she on the cleaning staff.

Herr Paupst started with District Perleberg in 1970, not entirely sure what

type of work the Stasi undertook, but happy to be the leader’s chauffeur after his

stressful stint with the border troops. As time went on, even though he was not

in operational duty, Herr Paupst believed that he was contributing to socialism

in his own way: “I stood behind the thing [socialism]. I worked for the Stasi

out of conviction.” He loved working on the cars in the district, and recalls

fondly the very fi rst car that he drove the leader in—an expensive Muscovitch.

Later, he would drive an East German Wartburg (one step up from the ubiqui-

tous Trabant), and the Russian-built Volga and Lada. In the latter years, regular

offi cers shared the six Trabants that the offi ce possessed, but prior to that most

offi cers got around on either a moped or small motorcycle. In the late 1980s, as

East Germany found itself crushed underneath its debt load, offi cers had to dip

into the coffee fund in order to pay for gas for their business trips. If there were

any question about the sensitivity of his job, it was answered in an incident

shortly after his arrival when the district leader hit a post coming out of the

underground parking. At the garage, a mechanic took the license plate from the

leader’s car, placed it on his own Trabant, and drove to safety in West Germany.

Because of the frequent trips around the district, and the longer rides to East

Berlin, no other co-worker spent as much time with the district’s leaders as Herr

Paupst. He was inordinately fond of the earlier leader, Herr Tilse, “someone

who you could really talk to, even about family problems.” The leader confi ded

in his chauffeur, but used the familiar “Du” only while in the confi nes of the car,

gently reminding him that “the minute you get out of the car, you’ve forgotten

everything we talked about.” Tilse drove himself to work in the morning and

reserved Herr Paupst’s services for longer trips. Tilse would have a social drink

from time to time but did not drink heavily, often asking Herr Paupst to come

pick him up from a party function half an hour after his arrival under some

trumped-up pretense of his being needed in the offi ce. Tilse’s successor, Werner

Ryll, was the opposite personality, insisting on being driven to work every morn-

ing and wanting his chauffeur to report in on his whereabouts on a regular

basis. He made a point of going to every occasion where alcohol was served,

often leaving his chauffeur to wait for him in the car until dawn. Frau Paupst

became animated when the conversation turned to Ryll’s behavior, recalling her

own earlier incident when Ryll turned down her request to spend a few extra

days with her daughter as she gave birth.

What emerges from both Paupst’s accounts is a Stasi collective that from 1985

on was increasingly dispirited due in large part to its drunken, uncompassionate

leader, who pushed offi cers beyond capacity and reason. That the District Offi ce

had grown well beyond the original tight collective into a sprawling apparatus

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| 67

also contributed to bad overall morale. Christmas parties were no longer fun,

the Paupsts recalled, because everyone had to rush back to work. “Ryll unsettled

our district offi ce,” Herr Paupst summed up.

The Paupsts had little diffi culty fi nding work after 1989. He works in a truck-

ing company along with his former co-worker Piekert, and she is in custodial

services at a local fi rm. The only incident that caused them any concern about

their treatment in the new Germany occurred shortly after 1989. At that time,

the couple lived in one of a cluster of seven or eight prefabricated high-rise

apartment buildings, which had gone up in Perleberg fairly late in the GDR’s

history. By 1990 the general upkeep of the building was sorely lacking, which

was perhaps understandable given the general chaos of the postrevolutionary

spring. The lobby in particular was fi lthy. Herr Paupst put up a notice for the

residents suggesting that they all chip in to clean up the lobby. Upon returning

the next day, he found that a large “X” had been drawn across his notice and

that somebody had scribbled: “Herr Paupst. The Red era is over!” The Paupsts

promptly moved out.

Bernd Lohre—The Unrepentant One91

As the individual tasked with tracking down those behind anonymous letters

against the regime and behind anti-Communist graffi ti, Bernd Lohre considered

his job a very important one. It involved endless hours of pouring over writing

samples (some obtained by fabricated essays in high schools) and comparing

them to the unidentifi ed letter. Lohre loved the thrill of the hunt and found it

intoxicating when he was able to fi nd the culprit among the tens of thousands

who lived in the district.

Lohre did not originally plan on working for the Stasi, but had imagined a

career in the criminal police instead. Although his father-in-law worked for the

Stasi, he had little idea of what the job would entail, believing it might be detec-

tive work very similar to that of the regular police. He threw himself into his

work and was quickly singled out for his successes in apprehending the authors

of anonymous letters against the regime.

For Lohre, the real crux of Stasi work was the recruitment of informants, what

he calls the “Alpha and Omega of operational work.” Lohre was candid about

the challenges that the Stasi faced in recruiting an informant. To penetrate the

church, an institution against which the Stasi was “completely helpless,” it was

better to recruit an informant on the outside who would work his way into the

church milieu. Otherwise, the Stasi would not trust the informant completely.

Although on paper it appears that many informants worked for the Stasi out of

conviction, many were indeed pressured into working for them; Stasi offi cers

doctored their reports because a coerced informant was the least desirable for

higher-ups. From the mid-1980s on, as the situation in the GDR deteriorated and

popular frustration grew, it became almost impossible to recruit an informant

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out of conviction. The standard recruitment phrase that the individual would be

assisting the GDR in maintaining global peace now fell on deaf ears.

Lohre believes that the recruitment of informants speaks to the manner in

which the Stasi worked according to areas of priority ( Schwerpunkte), rather than blanket surveillance of the population. The Stasi, he argues, reacted to situations

and concentrated its efforts in areas where new crises seemed to be emerging.

He said, for example, that if there were three hundred workers in a certain divi-

sion of the rayon mill, and fi fteen of them applied to emigrate, the Stasi would

then actively seek out an informant to assess the situation in what had become

an area of priority. Similarly, one night in the late 1970s there was a large brawl

between police and youth in Wittenberge. During the questioning, the Stasi

recruited twenty-three informants who were then required to monitor youth in

the district. As Lohre said: “We asked ourselves the question: ‘Where is it neces-

sary to recruit an informant?’ ” He dismisses the concept of blanket surveillance

as “ridiculous,” pointing out that there was no way to monitor every nook and

cranny of the district, yet at the same time he acknowledges that blanket surveil-

lance was a term that one did hear around the offi ce.

“I was not alone in noticing that the work we did in the late 1980s had little to

do with state security and we were, after all, the Ministry for State Security.” This

refrain had been reiterated frequently enough in the interviews that it must be taken

into account when addressing the history of the Stasi. There were many offi cers

who were becoming disgruntled with the burgeoning tasks of the Stasi into areas of

mundane background checks and securing parades. This is not to say that the Stasi

personnel were quasi-revolutionaries;92 most remained obedient and dedicated to

the regime. They simply wanted to get back to a state where they “guaranteed peace

in the country and defended against enemies.” Of course, this idyllic past never

really existed; from the 1950s the Stasi had taken on tasks that went well beyond a

traditional understanding of national security, including broad societal monitoring.

Lohre placed the blame for the expanded duties squarely on the shoulders of Erich

Mielke (“who would sell his own grandmother”) and his eagerness to demonstrate

the prowess of “his” Ministry for State Security.

In the turbulent fall of 1989, Lohre feared the worst: “I was certain that

I was going to be strung up on a lamppost. I told my children not to tell anyone

where their father had worked. Because of the feelings against us, I was angry

that the Ministry had transported our weapons to the regional offi ce. Now we

were defenseless.” To this day, Lohre’s children have denied that their father

was a Stasi offi cer. Given the changed situation in the fall of 1989, the German-

German border became congested and many former Stasi offi cers like Lohre

joined the burgeoning ranks of customs offi cials. With the Stasi Files Law and

vetting of individuals for previous Stasi involvement, Lohre was dismissed from

his civil service position and for the next thirteen years worked in Wittenberge

assembling furniture. In 2005 he stopped working because of his deteriorating

health. As his wife has recently died, Lohre fi nds himself frequently alone, but

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he refuses to get together with former Stasi. “Nowadays,” he says “I try not to

talk about the Stasi.”

Horst Sauer—The Recruiter93

Horst Sauer avoids eye contact when he talks, and he often allows a hand ges-

ture to substitute for the word he is not quite able to come up with. The widower

appears nervous, frequently glancing out the window to the busy street outside.

As one of the key recruiters for the Stasi, Herr Sauer spent more of his time

outside the district offi ce than in it. His was not the work of a typical opera-

tional offi cer—recruiting informants, societal monitoring, conducting surveil-

lance operations—but it was nonetheless critical work, for he was responsible

for making sure that the next generation of Stasi offi cers would be in place.

Herr Sauer was a regular at the district recruiting offi ce for the National People’s

Army, where he would sit with regular army offi cers when candidates presented

themselves for duty, participating in the conversation only if the candidate had

indicated that they would like to serve more than the required two years of ser-

vice. For Stasi recruitment offi cers, this was a sign that the individual was dedi-

cated to the regime. Herr Sauer would suggest to the recruit that he could serve

his time guarding party and Stasi installations in Berlin as part of the elite Feliks

Dzerzhinski regiment. Three years in this regiment provided the Stasi with an

opportunity to determine whether the candidate would be suitable for full-time

work with the Stasi. In response to a question about the relative ease or diffi -

culty of obtaining recruits for the Stasi, Herr Sauer stated simply: “It was hard

to recruit people.” He also actively recruited from among the ranks of offi cers’

children.

Although he considered much of his work “dry paper-pushing,” he neverthe-

less believed in what he was doing: “I was convinced by the whole thing,” he

said almost bashfully.

Rudolf Schulze—The Leader-in-Waiting94

Schulze’s living room looks like a hunting lodge. Deer antlers and boar tusks

adorn the dark panel walls, fur carpets lie in front of the cottage furniture.

Hunting magazines and books about forests are neatly stacked on tables or on

the shelves of the credenza that takes up the far wall. Somehow the plush bun-

nies leftover from Easter in the front entrance seem sorely out of place. Rudolf

Schulze, a large man with short-cropped gray hair, answers the door in gray

slacks and a turtleneck.

Schulze was recruited for the Stasi in 1967 while he was working customs at

the German-German border; he was one of a number of Stasi offi cers whom

the industrious leader of the district offi ce, Herbert Tilse, recruited directly, a

characteristic of Stasi recruitment that appears to be unique to the district level.

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T H E F I R M

Certainly, it would be diffi cult to imagine a regional Stasi leader or one of the

department leaders in the HQ in Berlin personally recruiting offi cers. Schulze

admits that he was attracted to the Stasi in large part because of the salary and

benefi ts. By 1978, as the Stasi began to devote serious attention to replacing

the fi rst generation of leadership, Schulze was earmarked to assume a leading

function in the district. Part of his grooming involved working closely with the

deputy district leader and reading sensitive materials reserved for leadership and

future leadership cadres.

Schulze worked on counterespionage in Department II. Schulze’s biggest head-

ache was the twice-yearly exchange of equipment that the Soviets undertook at

their barracks in Perleberg in order to make sure that this forward post of the Cold

War would have state-of-the-art technology should war break out. In the fi nal days

of the Cold War, the Perleberg garrison received shipment of the ultrasecret T-80

Soviet tank. Schulze and his team made sure that the nighttime exchange of tanks

and weapons took place beyond the eyes of locals and enemy agents.

Like Lohre, Rudolf Schulze believed that the Stasi followed the principle of area

of priority in its approach to informant recruitment. He dismissed out of hand the

suggestion that there were informants in pubs and restaurants, citing not the moral

part of this equation but the purely technical aspect—pub talk tended to be exag-

gerated and unreliable. Stasi offi cers needed facts and proof, not malicious gossip. If the Stasi were to prosecute successfully, it needed more than just hearsay from a restaurant. Although there are incidences of the Stasi recruiting waiters and innkeepers

in the past, by the latter years this was certainly the exception, not the rule. In truth, however, it was not entirely necessary. The Stasi was able to obtain its information

from other gathering places like churches, dance halls, and offi ces.

At the same time, he complained that the party was paranoid, citing examples

of local party offi cials who called the Stasi district offi ce every time they heard

the slightest rumor about something amiss in the district and berated the Stasi

offi cers: “How is it you have no idea what is going on?” Schulze’s disgust at his

party superiors expressed itself in other instances as well. He complained that

by 1988 the party told the Stasi not to bother reporting on the chronic problems

in the rayon factory in Wittenberge since there was nothing the party could do

about it. In one of the few instances when Schulze became animated, he railed

against the party for not addressing the exodus and travel issues that had been

brewing in the 1980s and which the Stasi brought to its attention on several

occasions: “The party was helpless. It had no answers.” Although he may have

been critical of his party superiors, Schulze was by no means an opponent of the

regime: “The vast majority of the Stasi, including me, stood behind socialism.”

Klaus-Peter Schmid—Neighboring District Leader: The Ideologue95

As a lieutenant colonel, Klaus-Peter Schmid was the highest ranking Stasi offi cer

interviewed for this project. He wears a blue vest and slippers, his thin white

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hair brushed back to reveal a widow’s peak. His living room is humble. Throws

cover the chairs, crystal, and model trains are on display in a cabinet. We talked

over a lunch of chicken and white asparagus, the only choice of vegetable, given

the spring season in which we met. Herr Schmid is remarkably fi t for seventy-

seven, although his chiseled, almost perfect wrinkles make him look older. His

wife joined us for lunch but seemed reticent to talk until the topic turned to

freedom to travel, when she opened up about the many marvelous places to

travel in Eastern Europe. And the beaches of Bulgaria! Oh, the beaches! Herrlich!

Magnifi cent! It really was no loss to have been confi ned to travels in Eastern

Europe.

Herr Schmid’s path to the Stasi was a typical one. He worked at a cement fac-

tory until 1954 when he joined the Stasi in the District Pritzwalk offi ce, where he

would return in 1964 as director after a brief stint as deputy director of the Kyritz

offi ce. For the next twenty-fi ve years Herr Schmid guided the district offi ce imme-

diately to the east of District Perleberg. He portrays himself as a serene captain of

his ship, above the fray and the day-to-day messiness of operational duty, keeping

only a light hand on the tiller. Other district leaders, like those in neighboring

Perleberg, should have been wise to adopt his soft approach to power, he suggests:

“Today, Tilse and his wife sit trembling in their apartment. I never did. There was

no reason to. Not one person in the district, not one person, said a cross word to me after 1989. You see, I never lost contact to the masses.” This was so, he explained,

because: “When I left my home at 7 a.m. heading to the offi ce, I chatted with

people along the way to get the lay of the land. I wished them a good day. I knew

many doctors and police offi cers and would talk to them as well.”

Schmid claimed to be suspicious of his offi cers who were running an army of

informants, seeing an offi cer who had lost the personal touch. This latter state-

ment is, of course, utter nonsense. In a bureaucracy driven by paperwork and

bean-counting, in a system that built informant recruitment into the annual

work plans of its offi cers, it is absurd to suggest that some offi cers would be

allowed to eschew all this in favor of casual conversations with acquaintances.

Even today Schmid is aghast that his neighbor, a police offi cer, with whom he

often chats while the latter is out gardening, does not want to hear Schmid’s tips

on the population.

Schmid became most spirited—leaning forward, his weight on the arm of the

sitting chair and his voice raised—when he discussed the greatest changes that

he noted during his long tenure with the Stasi. He lamented the passing of the

era when Stasi offi cers and informants worked for the cause of socialism rather

than for a paycheck. “Where are the ideologues?” he thundered. “We should

have been fi ghting for a cause. And then accepting money for the job.” The current situation in Germany, to which he kept returning, was proof enough that

the old East Germany had been on the right path: “Look around you—crime is

rampant, criminals have more rights than victims, police cars drive around aim-

lessly until they get a call, and politicians do nothing. The other day, Jehovah’s

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Witnesses came to the door. I said I was an atheist. All you had to do was look

at everything that was happening in the world to come to the conclusion that

God did not exist. I invited them in nonetheless, and was very happy to talk to

them.”

P E R F E C T LY O R D I N A R Y P E R P E T R AT O R S ?

For the most part, the composition of the Districts Gransee and Perleberg Stasi

offi ces was in line with the larger Stasi. Over the years, the complement’s aver-

age age crept up so that the typical Stasi operational offi cer was a male in his

early forties. In the vast majority of cases, Stasi offi cers at the district level knew no other secret police existence than that of the district level, nor did they vault

from the district to a higher position elsewhere, as one account suggests. 96 From

this point of view, the Stasi in the districts was exceptionally insular. The Stasi

out in the provinces was just that—provincial. Gransee and Perleberg offi cers

had been trained predominantly in a trade and tended to enter the Stasi directly

from their line of work. This evidence suggests that district offi ces were gener-

ally behind other Stasi units in recruiting members from the intelligentsia and

middle classes, as the percentage of working-class recruits overall in the Stasi fell

to 13 percent in the 1980s while it remained much higher in the districts. 97 Over time Stasi recruitment of full-time workers came to be based more on political reliability than on the strategic targets outlined in Stasi guidelines. The fi rst recruitment guideline issued by the Stasi, the 1959 Directive on Recruitment,

foresaw recruitment primarily from the army and the police, an approach that

lasted (in theory if not in practice) until 1985 when new guidelines called for

increased recruitment from those involved with industry. 98 In the end, however, the ideal recruit was a Communist-raised individual with relations in the Stasi,

regardless of their previous place of employment.

The documents and interviews also demonstrate the totalitarian nature of

the GDR in other ways beyond strictly that of surveillance. The Stasi, as many of

the offi cers made clear in almost nonchalant asides, was enormously powerful;

it had the ability to use the state and its apparatus for its own purposes. Offi cer

Tenbrock arranged for his top informant’s daughter to be admitted to medical

school; Lohre instructed all teachers in the district to obtain writing samples for

him. The Department of Personnel and Training exerted its enormous power

in order to ensure the orderly acquisition of new recruits. It obtained employ-

ment for spouses, it took care of every detail in wrapping up duties with a pre-

vious employer, and, in a country with chronic housing shortages, it arranged

for apartments for its new offi cers. Totalitarianism must be understood not

as a state consistently exerting control over individuals, but doing so when it

needed to. In Donnersmarck’s movie The Lives of Others, this power to con-

trol the lives of East Germans was captured brilliantly (and, eerily, very similar

to the real-life case above) in the scene involving the oppositional playwright

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| 73

Dreyman’s neighbor who, having witnessed the bugging of the apartment, is

sternly warned by the Stasi Captain Wiesler: “Frau Meineke, a word about this

to anyone and your Mascha will lose her spot in medical school tomorrow. Is

this understood?”99

The Perleberg district offi ce was considerably larger than its Gransee counter-

part, and its offi cers in general better educated. Its employees were also slightly

older. Although Perleberg employed more women than the Gransee offi ce,

including one in operational duty in the evaluation branch, the percentage of

women in the Stasi at a district level was low in comparison to the Stasi over-

all, a result of the absence of mail monitoring at the district level where the

lion’s share of women in the Stasi were employed. Historians have explained the

remarkably few women in leadership positions in the Stasi by the continuing

gender bias in the Stasi leadership that women should tend families, not run

informants.100 Of the so-called “Fortune Two Thousand,” the top Stasi positions, only forty-eight were occupied by women, and of these only four in operational

branches. 101 Even though Erich Mielke appeared to emancipate women for Stasi work in his order of 1962 in which he emphasized that women in a socialist society were equal to men, the reality was that every Stasi worker had to be prepared

to work longer than the mandated forty-eight-hour work week, something that

would affect women disproportionately as they bore the brunt of the “double

burden”—working and raising a family. As Jens Gieseke has written, Mielke felt

he could not plan the Stasi’s tasks around the opening times of day cares. 102

This view of women’s domestic role was not limited to the Stasi. Even though

the GDR in 1970 could point with justifi able pride to the fact that women were

34.3 percent of physicians, 53 percent of judges, and had obtained the world’s

highest percentage of female participation in an industrialized work force, 103

an employed woman still had to conform to a male-engineered ideal. Images

of women in GDR magazines showed women in an earlier era working heavy

machinery and later on as smartly dressed technical workers, but always as an

employed woman and mother, who took care of meals and the home. 104

In the Stasi, this double burden tended to be resolved by impeding promo-

tion for women so as not to affect their traditional role as nurturer. Annual

evaluations refl ected the different criteria for men and women. Whereas men

were judged on their performance of assigned tasks, women’s evaluations com-

mented on their “friendliness” and willingness to “pitch-in.” 105 There may have been something particular about secret police work that caused the male leadership of the Stasi to think women ill-suited for the tasks, but their views were

not entirely out of step with party policies that promoted both female employ-

ment and a higher birthrate, with the latter frequently taking precedence.106 That

Frau Müller’s ambitions were thwarted by a similar attitude in District Perleberg

implies that chauvinism penetrated into the smallest territorial unit of the

Stasi, yet Frau Klenk, also a wife and mother, performed exceedingly well in her

leadership position in the same offi ce and was recognized repeatedly for her

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contributions. Why the experiences of these women in the same district offi ce at

the same time would be so different remains for the time being a mystery.

Neither leader of the district offi ces in the last years of the regime had any

inhibitions about using the apparatus at his disposal to the fullest and demand-

ing long hours from his employees. The abrupt, heavy-handed Werner Ryll in

Perleberg succeeded in alienating the vast majority of his employees, while

increasing societal monitoring. From the accounts of former employees, Hans-

Jürgen Töpfer in District Gransee appears to be a less loathsome fi gure than

Ryll, although he too was a dedicated Chekist who, in order to advance his own

career, asked his superiors in 1980 to prevent his parents from traveling West.

Although the district leaders were part of a larger Stasi that had been increas-

ing societal monitoring since 1953, the combination of systemic factors and the

role of personalities is nevertheless notable. At a district level, with its intimate

relationship to the population and a relatively small contingent of operational

offi cers, the leader made an appreciable difference in the operation of the Stasi

and by extension in the lives of ordinary people in the district. Certainly, all

offi cers interviewed talked of just how exhausting their job had become by the

late 1980s, a confession that could mean only one thing in the context of East

Germany—more societal surveillance, be it in the form of informant recruit-

ment, background checks on travelers, or operational activity. There was, how-

ever, another critical way in which the district leader shaped the Stasi offi ce

under his command—in the recruitment process itself. Many offi cers were either

handpicked by the district leader, personally known to him, or approached by

him with an offer of employment, all of which suggests that the district leader

played an important role in grooming the next generation of Stasi offi cers. At a

minimum, it suggests once again that the Stasi in the districts was deeply insular

and rooted in its immediate surroundings.

For many scholars, what motivated individuals to work for the Stasi is the

most pressing issue for a more complete understanding of the offi cer corps and

its conduct although, to be sure, this is not a debate that has the same urgency as

that of perpetrators’ motivations in the heinous crimes of the Third Reich. As the

interviews have made clear, Stasi offi cers joined the ranks of the secret police for a variety of reasons—fi nancial reward, fringe benefi ts, eagerness to serve the cause

of socialism, adventurism, and, in many cases, false expectations that the work

would be like that of a private detective. It is this point—that recruits were fre-

quently in the dark about what their work would entail—that is often missed in

scholarly treatments of the Stasi and which proceeds from the assumption that a

recruit knew what to expect, an assumption that inaccurately magnifi es the ques-

tion of motive. As time went on, however, every single Stasi offi cer interviewed

became disillusioned with his work—albeit to varying degrees.

For some, the Stasi had become involved in areas that had little to do with

what they perceived as the mandate of the Stasi; thorough background checks

on every person who applied to emigrate was surely the duty of some other

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branch of government. Endless reporting on the population and the years-long

operations against individuals who exhibited no oppositional activity also

irked many Stasi. Today, the vast majority of the Stasi personnel heap scorn on

the party for the absurd level of surveillance and for the obsession with infor-

mants. 107 One former major said: “There really was no need to recruit new informants every year. I was tasked with recruiting so and so many informants, which

was very diffi cult in such a small territory.”108 There was, as I have mentioned, a mathematical problem as well—you could not have everyone reporting on

everyone. Although the party was indeed partially responsible for creating this

state of affairs—the Stasi was an instrument that carried out instructions—the

people who made up the Stasi must also accept responsibility for their direct

role in surveillance, which Herr Piekert and Herr Kuhlow readily acknowledge.

Several Stasi offi cers who engaged in honest refl ection on their work for the GDR

lamented that the Stasi had become an instrument of widespread repression.

Unlike Gerd Wiesler, the fi ctional Stasi captain in The Lives of Others who

has doubts about the organization to which he has dedicated his life and sides

with a prominent regime opponent, there is no sense in District Perleberg or

Gransee that the offi cers were remotely close to treason. Although there was

certainly frustration that the party had not addressed the issues that were

bringing people to the streets, 109 Stasi workers remained loyal to the regime: they recruited informants, they ran operations, they hunted down authors of

anonymous letters, they hid the truth about the cause of death from parents,

they broke up engagements, they staged break-ins, and they made life unbear-

able for regime opponents. In spite of their inner concerns, in spite of their

slight moral protest, in spite of their hostility toward their party bosses, they

continued and indeed increased their exhaustive work of societal repression

and, it should be emphasized, at no point did any of them indicate that they

feared reprimand should they not fulfi ll their duties. In fact, it is striking how

many challenged their superiors about workloads and the incessant demand

for informants, all of which suggests that Stasi personnel continued in their

posts for reasons other than fear of what might happen had they stopped par-

ticipating in societal repression.

Perhaps predictably, the two reasons that many continued in spite of reser-

vations were similar to those suggested for joining the Stasi—belief in social-

ism and a generous salary. Because salaries depended on rank, years of service,

bonuses for operational successes, and responsibilities, it is diffi cult to general-

ize about Stasi salaries. However, a Stasi captain who ran informants, like the

ones interviewed here, with ten years’ experience, could expect a salary around

2,200 East German marks (Ostmarks) a month in the 1980s, more than double

the average worker’s salary in the GDR.110 Yet a third reason for remaining with the Stasi emerges from the interviews: the camaraderie of the collective. The district offi ce was not only where offi cers ran informants and deciphered handwrit-

ing, but also where they shared coffee with colleagues, held Christmas parties,

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fl irted, and united against a domineering boss, a closeness that other offi cers

remember as unique to the district level. 111

In turning to the question of totalitarianism, Martin Malia’s approach reso-

nates strongly with the history of the Stasi in Districts Gransee and Perleberg:

“Totalitarianism does not mean that such regimes in fact exercise total control

over the population; it means rather that such control is their aspiration.” 112

Several offi cers stated in no uncertain terms that the Stasi strove for blanket

surveillance of society, which has an unmistakable “totalitarian” undertone

to it. “The desire was there” was a refrain that several Stasi offi cers repeated.

Herr Beuster formulated it differently but the message was the same: “We

were interested in everything,” and went on to draw the analogy of using the

card catalogue system to form a complete picture of an individual from the

“mosaic” of information available. Even those Stasi offi cers who deny the exis-

tence of blanket surveillance acknowledge that the term itself was “in the air”

in the hallways of the Stasi offi ce. One of the fi rst Stasi memoirs to appear after

the fall of the Wall, well before the renewed debate on totalitarianism took

hold in the historical profession, discussed the Stasi’s ambition to “blanket

monitor and observe the country” 113 at the latest with Order 2/85 in 1985.114

Another early interviewee claimed that every “man and mouse” was moni-

tored.115 To suggest, as some offi cers have done, that blanket surveillance could not have existed in East Germany because revolutionaries were able to take to

the streets is to confuse blanket surveillance with political repression.116 The

latter requires active engagement at a political level, something that was lack-

ing in 1989.

As several offi cers commented in their interviews, Stasi offi cers recruited

informants in areas of priority rather than to haphazardly monitor society. At

the same time, what seemed a neat and tidy compartmentalized process on

paper looked decidedly less so in practice, as informants changed locations and

workplaces and were rarely let go. In other words, an argument that points to

the Stasi’s emphasis on areas of priority in order to undermine the totalitarian

concept misses the crucial point that the areas of priority approach itself held the potential for much broader societal surveillance. In addition, the areas of

priority encompassed societal areas that covered the overwhelming majority of

the population.

Former Stasi offi cers in a fascinating “insider” account have squarely

addressed the question of blanket monitoring vs. areas of priority, arguing

that the Stasi had precisely defi ned areas of society that it was instructed

to monitor. Leaving no room for uncertainty, the authors write: “All in all,

there never was blanket monitoring and surveillance of GDR citizens by the

Ministry for State Security,” 117 yet by their own admission it was impossible to be “exact” in the surveillance of the areas of priority, and the increased

duties assigned to the Stasi in the 1980s vastly expanded its purview. The

Stasi became, according to the insiders, a tool to manage a population

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| 77

increasingly disgruntled by the party’s ineptitude. In a statement that rings

with candor, the former Stasi offi cers acknowledged that they were becoming

involved in widespread control of society: “With the transfer of an increasing

number of duties to the Stasi, to the Ministry of Interior, and to other state

departments, duties that should have been more properly taken care of at a

political level, the party attempted to make up for its own political defi cien-

cies by downloading to other agencies: These agencies were to keep societal

response to party decisions in check, and make larger, more negative reac-

tions to political decisions easier to control.” 118

The idea that the Stasi had increasingly become a substitute for a failing

political system was raised in several of the interviews for this chapter. Stasi per-

sonnel were angered by the party’s failure to address defi ciencies in the medical

sector, things such as inadequate supplies or faulty equipment, or the exodus

of East Germans, issues that could not be resolved by an increased number of

informants. In the end, perhaps the party’s greatest error was to believe that

political problems could be solved with police methods.

The interviews also challenge the standard interpretation of informants as

a barometer of regime support, in particular the notion that the Third Reich

was more “popular” than East Germany: many Germans spontaneously

denounced to the Gestapo whereas the Stasi needed to groom an army of semi-

professional informants. Just as Eric Johnson’s works have helped to show that

this approach does not address the complexity of Gestapo-society relations, 119

so too is a redress of the signifi cance of informants in East Germany neces-

sary. Stasi offi cers confi rmed a fi nding that the Stasi was more reactive than

originally thought, due in part to the number of “irregular collaborators” and

“casual employees” or contact persons ( Kontaktpersonen) (see chap. 4) who pro-

vided information to the Stasi in a manner not dissimilar to that of Third Reich

denouncers. The fact that Stasi offi cers found it increasingly diffi cult to recruit

informants toward the end of the regime also helps revise the idea that East

Germany’s unpopularity was evidenced in the need for many informants. At

different times in East Germany’s history it was easier to recruit informants

because of a certain support of the regime. By the latter half of the 1980s, how-

ever, it seemed that no amount of appeal to serve the “better Germany” could

win over a potential informant.

For such a large organization, one might expect that the personnel would

represent a cross-section of East German society or, at a minimum, many differ-

ent personality types. The Stasi personnel who agreed to be interviewed were,

however, remarkably similar. In general, they were subdued, considerate, mat-

ter-of-fact (perhaps even humorless) individuals; none of them bristled at any

questions nor were they testy. Only Frau Müller, the district leader’s secretary,

could be said to be animated. None of them became agitated in the course of

the interview, nor did they look particularly uncomfortable. Apart from Herr

Kuhlow, who expressed profound remorse, these were individuals who had a

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clear conscience.120 That their work might have been in some fashion morally reprehensible seems not to have occurred to them, echoing the sentiments of a

former leader of the Stasi offi ce in District Treptow in East Berlin who claimed

that the use of informants was for him never a moral question, but simply a

question of national security. 121

With an open admission that I have come to know these individuals, mak-

ing it harder to be objective, it is diffi cult to know how to categorize full-time

Stasi workers. The term “perpetrator” seems far too harsh and, given its asso-

ciation with the Nazi era, inappropriate.122 These Stasi workers are a blend of bureaucrat and front-line case offi cer, often spending countless hours in

the offi ce pouring over paper work, directives, and reports, but also working

outside the precinct engaging in surveillance, meeting informants, and psy-

chologically harassing opponents into submission. They are certainly not the

“desk murderers” of Raul Hilberg’s infamy, nor are they harmless paper tigers.

They occupy some middle ground of an individual who had the ability to

control the life opportunities of their fellow citizens, often in heavy-handed

ways, but whose conduct was in no way reminiscent of the “ordinary” men

who made up the infamous Police Battalion 101. The term that the Federal

Commission for the Stasi Files uses to describe those who worked for the

Stasi, both full-time and as informants, is Begünstigste, or “those advantaged by their association with the Stasi,” a passive term that insuffi ciently captures

the fact that they acted upon other people. Given that the same commission

uses the term Betroffene—“the affected ones,” to describe Stasi victims, it might be more appropriate to consider Stasi offi cers not as “perpetrators” or “advantaged ones” but rather as “affectors of lives.”

With the exception of Klaus-Peter Schmid, the committed ideologue who

berated the newer generation of Stasi offi cer for their lack of commitment to the

cause of communism, none of the Stasi offi cers interviewed were chest-thump-

ing patriots or bloody-minded. Even those who were critical of certain aspects

of its work chose to focus instead on the “good” that the Stasi did, like catching

foreign spies, protecting the economy, or hunting down former Nazis. These

are not blind ideologues who adopted a mantra of “my Stasi, right or wrong”;

they are the furthest thing from fanatical. They generally supported the cause of

socialism, albeit without the revolutionary fervor of the war generation—which

was true in other branches of the state apparatus123 and in other East European

states. Even in the Soviet Union, home of the Communist revolution, the typical

functionary in the postwar period was “no longer the Communist believer and

enthusiast of the 1930s, but the careerist who might not believe in the Party or its

goals but carried out its orders nonetheless.”124 There was a sadness to many of the interviewees, bordering on shock that their ideology, which had been taught

to them as scientifi cally, demonstrably better than capitalism, as favored by his-

tory, as not simply a truth but the truth, had been swept away in the blink of an eye. Before saying anything about his time with “the Firm” Offi cer Tenbrock

I N T H E S E R V I C E O F T H E F I R M

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set the stage with his lament: “I’d like to say at the outset that you cannot dedi-

cate your life to something and then suddenly turn on it.” Another Stasi offi cer

phrased it this way: “The thought that it was all for naught is almost too much

to bear.”125

After 1989, the younger Stasi offi cers adapted to the new Germany to vary-

ing degrees whereas the older ones seem to have withdrawn somewhat. That

sense of belonging, both to a collective and to a historical moment, has van-

ished, leaving the Stasi personnel to conduct their lives almost exclusively in

their family circles. This was made clear to me when one Stasi offi cer drove me

to the train station and on the way we passed Herr Kuhlow, the Stasi-turned-

physiotherapist and a long-time colleague, riding his bicycle. My driver did not

acknowledge him in any way, except to turn to me and say: “He was one of ours.

But we don’t talk anymore.”

3 THE CANDIDATE

Stasi Informants

w I T H T H E S W E E P I N G R E V O L U T I O N S O F 1989 that toppled, almost in an instant, the dictatorships of East-central Europe, it appeared as though the fi les

of seven secret police organizations would be opened, a prospect as important

to regime victims as it was enticing to scholars in both the West and the East.

Apart from the opportunity to investigate the sensational, including the involve-

ment of the Bulgarian secret police in the attempted assassination of Pope John

Paul II, Stasi support of the PLO, or the use of X-rays by the Romanian Securitate

(secret police) to sterilize regime opponents, fi le access would allow for a histor-

ical understanding of Eastern Europe’s most important instrument for societal

control. But the lofty expectations for fi le access were, for the most part, dashed.

As neo-Communists came back to power in several countries, and as ordinary

citizens increasingly worried about their past appearing on the evening news,

access to the fi les in many cases shrank, or was never granted in the fi rst place.1

Some members of parliament argued that the fragile new democracies needed

time to develop before they could undertake a reckoning with the past.

At the heart of the discussion around fi le access was really only one issue:

the role of informants. It was by no means clear to any decision maker that

there was merit in revealing the hundreds of thousands of betrayals contained

in the labyrinthine archives. Because of the potential for the documents to

rupture families and friendships, some in East Germany, including the infl u-

ential minister of the interior, Peter-Michael Diestel, and even members of

the Citizens’ Movement involved in the round-table talks, argued for a com-

plete destruction of the documents. Others who shared this opinion feared

worse: reprisal murder. East Germans involved in the Citizens’ Movement who

stormed the secret police buildings in December 1989 and January 1990 were

determined, however, that the fi les would be opened, no matter how pain-

ful. The fi rst freely elected members of the East German parliament, some of

whom had themselves been in the Citizens’ Movement, agreed, and granted

almost complete fi le access. 2

This turns out to have been a wise decision indeed. The fi les have, to be sure,

caused friendships to end and families to be ruined, but in general the fi les have

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proven that the family remained a sanctuary against an invasive state presence.

No one has been murdered or physically harmed as a result of the fi les, not even

in the southern industrial city of Halle, where the list of informants was pub-

lished for all to see—an illegal act. 3 As a result of daring decisions by both the East German and subsequently all-German parliament, East Germany’s secret

police fi les are the most open secret police fi les in history, and with more than

fi ve million applications to view the fi les already (the overwhelming majority by

private East Germans, rather than academics, inquiring about their past), there is

good evidence that fi le access was broadly desired.4 How long this state of affairs will continue remains to be seen. Debate rages in Germany today between politicians who want the fi les transferred into the federal archive system, and those

who wish to maintain the Stasi fi les’ special status. 5

Once recruited, informants gave themselves cover names like those of students

anonymously entering chat rooms—Cherry, Max, Ram, Angel, Machine, Artist,

Sugar. Several of these cover names are part of the German landscape: “Notar,”

the alleged cover name of Gregor Gysi who led the revamped Communist Party

after 1989 and is still the German Left’s great hope; “Sekretär,” the cover name of

Manfred Stolpe who, despite his Stasi association, went on to become premier

of Brandenburg and a minister in the federal government, and “Margarete,” the

alias of the renowned East German author Christa Wolf. 6 Although the cover name has a certain James Bond fl air to it, the Stasi was eager to dissuade informants from the notion that a cover name was a necessity because of the Stasi’s

various engagements in underhanded activities. Rather, Stasi offi cers encour-

aged their informants to think of cover names in terms of a “working name” or

“pseudonym.” 7

Given their prominence in the debate around fi le access, their staggering

numbers (there were nearly twice as many informants as regular Stasi workers),

and their prominent role in societal monitoring, it seems wise to consider how

the Stasi found and worked with informants. Let us return to our quiet districts

in East Germany where the Stasi agents were active, as they were throughout the

country, in seeking out, recruiting and running ordinary Germans to monitor

society. In the vetting and recruitment process, the Stasi always referred to a

potential informant as “the candidate.”

T H E N U M B E R O F I N F O R M A N T S

If there were documents from Gransee and Perleberg that contained informa-

tion on the number of informants the Stasi employed in any given year, they

have fallen prey to the fi le destruction that took place in the fall of 1989. A few

signifi cant documents on this question have survived, including end-of-year

reports on the informants in District Perleberg for 1984, 1985, 1987, and 1988,

along with some telling documents from Gransee. It is not possible, however, to

trace the size of the informant net in these districts from inception to end.

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T H E F I R M

It is important to distinguish the different categories of informants. Although

the media commonly employ the generic “IM” to signify a Stasi informant,

there were in the 1980s six types of Stasi informant, each with concrete roles and

responsibilities. At fi rst blush the various acronyms can be confusing (IMS, FIM,

IME, GMS, IMB, IMK), but the roles of each can be categorized fairly neatly. 8 The fi rst fi ve types of informant were individuals who monitored society in some

fashion, whereas the last category (IMK) represented an individual who pro-

vided his house keys to the Stasi so that a case offi cer could meet his informant

away from the informant’s work or home, in return for a token monetary sum

or perhaps a coal delivery. The owner of the premises was not permitted to be

in the house when the meeting took place. These conspiratorial dwellings were

vital to the Stasi given the inherent diffi culties in meeting with informants at the

local Stasi branch, at the informant’s workplace or, as sometimes occurred as a

last resort, in parks or cemeteries. In an interview, Rolf Schwegel recalled with a

certain fondness how he frequently rode his motorcycle out to secluded park-

land for what he termed “fi eld and forest” meetings with his informants.9

The number of conspiratorial meeting places was astonishing. The Potsdam

branch of the Stasi archive had a map of the city of Potsdam on one wall, but it

is almost impossible to make out the city beneath the forest of push pins that

indicate a conspiratorial dwelling. The Stasi took the identifi cation and acquisi-

tion of conspiratorial meeting places very seriously. Prior to approaching a can-

didate, the Stasi drew detailed maps of the area around the dwelling, more often

than not had obtained a basic layout of the apartment, knew roughly where

the furniture was located, how many entrances it had, and the backgrounds

of everyone else who lived in the building. 10 The IMK was a passive informant who did not report on others, yet without these types of informants the entire

system would have been diffi cult to run. It might be helpful to separate out the

IMK from the other informants in order to distinguish between “passive” and

“active” informants, as some historians do, 11 and indeed the Stasi itself tended

to do so in order to determine the number of informants available for monitor-

ing, but for the purposes of understanding the level of societal involvement with

the Stasi, the IMK must be taken into account. A fi nal point about the categories

of informants is worth mentioning: they were fl uid. A regular informant could

be “downgraded” to an IMK or other category, and vice versa.

In the last few years of the regime, the total number of informants in District

Perleberg hovered around six hundred. By the time of the Stasi’s collapse, there

was in District Perleberg roughly one informant for every seventy-six people

between the ages of eighteen and sixty-fi ve. 12 Stasi documents, it should be remembered, reveal the number of informants at any given time, not the aggre-gate number who had ever worked for the Stasi. If one desired an indication

of societal involvement in the Stasi, a useful ratio might be that of current and

former informants to population, which would certainly be more than one infor-

mant for every seventy-six pre-retirement adults.

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The number of Stasi offi cers who ran informants in District Perleberg

decreased slightly over these years, from twenty-three in 1984 to eighteen in

1988. Considering that the number of informants remained steady, the constant

refrain from offi cers that their workload increased over time rings true.

Another interesting statistic, since it reveals much about the Stasi thought

process, is the number of meetings that took place between Stasi case offi cers

and their informants. That the Stasi even recorded this number reveals the

Stasi obsession with frequency of meetings. There were roughly seven meet-

ings between informants and their case offi cers taking place on any given day

in the late 1980s. Out of these meetings came a striking level of paperwork. In

almost every year of the late 1980s, informants generated more than fi ve thou-

sand reports on the district.13

On a document from 1985, the leader of District Perleberg, Herbert Tilse,

scribbled a note in the margin that provides historians with excellent insight

into the nature of Stasi work. The document was a statistical report from the

fi rst three months of 1985 on the frequency of meetings with informants. Tilse

circled all of the cases where offi cers were meeting less frequently than in 1984,

and wrote: “After careful examination of informant work in our district, I have

determined that our goal of every informant-running offi cer working with ten

capable informants has not been reached. The offi cers do not apply them-

selves suffi ciently, and are not forced to do so by their department heads.” 14

This document contains twenty tabs, one for each offi cer that ran informants,

with pull-out spread sheets of when they met with informants, and to what end

the informant’s information was put (overwhelmingly just societal observation,

and much less related to a specifi c operation).

For the Stasi, it was a numbers game—the size of the informant roster, the

frequency of meetings, the number of reports. It is no wonder that Stasi offi -

cers felt enormous pressure to hold meeting after meeting with informants

and to increase the number of informants, rather than to focus on the quality

of reporting. Senior Stasi offi cials at the district level believed that the sheer

size of the informant net combined with exhaustive meetings would secure

the area. Several Stasi offi cers in the districts stated in no uncertain terms how

this relentless push to acquire more informants caused them to despise their

superiors. Matthias Piekert, for example, referred to a “sick” obsession with

informants and complained bitterly about informants recruited for no other

reason than to boost the roster. This practice, he thought, was the Stasi’s lethal

weakness.15

In the regime’s fi nal decade, District Perleberg revealed itself typical of the

overall Stasi in the informant areas of gender and the use of minors. In 1988,

of twenty-fi ve informants recruited, three were women, and two were under

the age of eighteen. For 1987, there were twenty recruits (n0 women, one under

eighteen), 1985—twenty-four recruits (four women, one under eighteen),

and 1984—twenty-two recruits (three women, two under eighteen). 16 District

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T H E F I R M

Perleberg’s informant net was approximately 85 to 90 percent male and com-

prised between 5 and 10 percent minors.17

District Gransee residents were subject to a greater informant presence than

were District Perleberg residents, a surprising fi nding given its small size and

its general incompetence. In 1988, there was roughly one Stasi informant for

every sixty-six people between the ages of eighteen and sixty-fi ve in District

Gransee. 18 This is an astonishing level of surveillance, and one unmatched in Eastern Europe.19 (For instance, a university the size of Harvard with roughly 20,000 students hypothetically placed in District Perleberg could expect to have

263 informants on campus, certainly at least one in every large lecture class. If it

were in District Gransee, there would be 303 informants.)

Whereas District Perleberg witnessed a slight increase in the number of infor-

mants, the trend in District Gransee was downward. This might be explained in

a number of ways. First, the trend in the overall number of informants in the

GDR was slightly down (from 111,000 in 1983 to 108,000 in 1989, IMK excluded),

a result in part of instructions issued in 1979 to improve the quality of the infor-

mant net. 20 In the region of Potsdam, in which Gransee was situated, the overall informant complement dropped by nearly 11 percent. With reference to Gransee

in particular, there is also a good possibility that the drop in informants was due

to the by then well-known ineffi ciency of this branch. The District Gransee offi ce

had the fewest informants of any of the fi fteen districts in the region of Potsdam,

even compared to districts of a similar size like Belzig, Kyritz, Pritzwalk, and

Wittstock,21 and was below the regional average in almost every other “operational” category.22

A fi nal possible explanation for the decline in the number of informants

in District Gransee is the most interesting of all: an increasing number of East

Germans were refusing to become informants, or were ending their associa-

tion with the Stasi. Several Stasi offi cers mentioned that they found it more

diffi cult to recruit informants in the fi nal years of the regime than in earlier

ones. As one made clear: “I used to be able to say to a candidate: ‘ You’ll be

supporting the German Democratic Republic.’ Towards the end, that just didn’t

wash anymore.”23 One study has suggested that one in ten East Germans in the

region of Potsdam who were approached for Stasi work declined. Some made

clear their refusal on grounds that they did not support the state, others because

of health or family issues, which could have been convenient excuses. 24 What remains unclear is why this would have been more prevalent in Gransee than in

Perleberg where the informant roster remained fairly stable.

S TA S I C O N D U C T W I T H I T S I N F O R M A N T S

In its nearly forty-year history, the Stasi laid down fi ve directives regarding

informants, and none in its last twenty years. Although the directives illus-

trate a progressive desire for a more refi ned approach to recruiting and running

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informants, they do not diverge from the central tenet of informant work: the

informant was the most important weapon in the regime’s fi ght against “the

enemy.” 25 The initial two sets of guidelines reveal a secret police organization both still somewhat raw, as illustrated in its crude approach to recruitment

whereby coercion bordering on blackmail was accepted and even promoted,

yet already mature beyond its years. The 1950 directive, which appeared only

seven months after the establishment of the secret police, contained informa-

tion on the screening, recruitment, and running of informants, and already

there was a classifi cation of informants into “secret co-workers,” defi ned as

those who had contact with enemies; “informants,” defi ned as those who

were in a position to provide general information, such as waiters, inn owners,

and insurance agents; and “individuals who maintained conspiratorial dwell-

ings.” 26 Although these categories would be refi ned over the years, the broad parameters for types of informants was set in 1950. Given the level of detail

contained in this fi rst directive, there can be little doubt that KGB advisors had

a hand in its authorship. 27

In Perleberg, the Stasi began its search for what were initially called “V-Men”

( V-Männer) or “Trusted-Men,” even before the Stasi was offi cially founded.

Karl Ehmann, a Communist who had served time during the Nazi era in three

notorious prisons (including Berlin’s Columbiahaus) because of his political

affi liations, would prove to be one of the very fi rst informants recruited in

the district. The bald, divorced, fi fty-year-old former salesman who was on

the verge of marrying a woman fi fteen years his junior came to Perleberg—in

part because of his divorce and because of the opportunity to work at the trac-

tor-lending station of an agricultural collective. As early as this recruitment,

which spanned the six months from December 1949, the Stasi had a strategy

for vetting that would be a characteristic of Stasi work henceforth—the use

of offi cial sources in determining whether the candidate would be a suitable

informant. 28 The Stasi was interested in particular in the individual’s personality, relationships, and workplace conduct. 29 Debauchery, adultery, tendencies to alcohol—these were all vices that the Stasi wanted to know about its

potential informants. It is one of the great ironies of Stasi history that the Stasi

sought information on whether the candidate was clean, morally upright, and

respectable, so that they could be put to work fi nding out intimate details on

their neighbors. 30

In this case, a member of the local branch of the Communist Party knew the

candidate (a fellow party member) and offered the Stasi an assessment of him. 31

Shortly thereafter, Karl Ehmann did what was required of secret informants, an

act that has been so damning for those who in the past twenty years have tried

to deny working for the Stasi: He handwrote (these are seldom typed) his decla-

ration of willingness to work for the Stasi, he signed and dated it, and he chose

a cover name that he would use in his dealings with the Stasi. Karl Ehmann

became informant “Bird.” Only in rare cases, including that of Gregor Gysi, were

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T H E F I R M

informants permitted to forego the written commitment to cooperate with the

Stasi. Ehmann’s commitment was as follows:

I declare myself prepared to fulfi ll to the best of my knowledge and con-

science, the duties given to me by representatives of the Ministry for State

Security, as, being a Communist Party member, I recognize the political

necessity of this work. Since I recognize this importance, I also feel obliged

not to mention this matter to anyone, not even to family members. If I do

not abide by this, I am aware that I can be brought to justice.32

Bird proved a mediocre informant. He was eminently suspicious of a book-

keeper at the tractor-lending station because he had daily telephone conversa-

tions with a female, who, the informant admitted, was likely the man’s wife.

After Bird was fi red from the tractor-lending station because he used company

letterhead to try to obtain six light bulbs for his apartment, he found employ-

ment at the decrepit rayon factory in Wittenberge. Over the next four years, Bird

authored more than one hundred reports on the factory and on the nearby

Viskose Basement Pub. In 1954, with Bird now employed at a community col-

lege in Wittenberge, the Stasi ended its association with the informant because

he simply did not have enough insight to provide useful information. In Stasi

jargon, it was said that he “lacked perspective.” 33

The case of Bird provides insight into the nature of the Stasi. Bird was origi-

nally recruited because he worked at a sensitive site—a machine-lending station

that housed agricultural equipment vital in the building of the new Communist

state in the countryside. Bird soon left there, however, and moved on to a fac-

tory and community college. Considering that he no longer fulfi lled the original

reason for his recruitment, the Stasi might well have broken off contact when

he left the machine-lending station, but it chose not to do this until years later.

Targeted recruitment had given way to blanket surveillance.

A tip by an offi cial at the river port in Wittenberge initiated the recruitment of

Kurt Wollschläger, a candidate of interest to the Stasi because several co-workers

with whom he was acquainted were critical of the regime, and because he was

separated from his wife, an advantageous situation, the Stasi claimed, since he

would be in a position to frequent bars in the evening. The Stasi sought evalu-

ations of his personality from a party offi cial at the port, who provided a forth-

right assessment that he was collegial but clumsy and slow-witted, so much so

that he had to be demoted to secretary. The case offi cer sought other opinions

too; his current landlady said he was quiet and polite, but a previous employer

had little recollection of the candidate. Despite the candidate’s membership in

the Nazi party from 1942 to 1945, and despite the fact that he was judged of

mediocre intellect, the Stasi decided to recruit him because of the need to deal

with suspected grumbling at the Wittenberge river port.34 The recruitment was initially to take place at the housing offi ce of the district council, where the candidate would be engaged in a discussion of the severity of the housing situation

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in the West. If he responded positively to the offi cer’s comments, the offi cer

would reveal his Stasi association and attempt to recruit the candidate.

But between the formulation of this plan and the actual meeting, the candi-

date changed jobs, becoming a schoolteacher. The Stasi responded accordingly,

abandoning the initial “housing” approach to recruiting him and instead bring-

ing the conversation to the manner in which West Germany was “abusing” East

German youth, although the exact form of this abuse was not stated. At the

recruitment, the candidate did not respond as hoped. He appeared sympathetic

to the case offi cer’s pronouncements, but when the offi cer revealed his Stasi

association, the candidate balked. When the candidate asked the Stasi offi cer

why he had singled him out specifi cally for recruitment, the offi cer answered

that the Stasi were interested in “only the best.” 35 Flattered, the candidate joined

the Stasi, choosing the less-than-threatening cover name “Snuggles.”

The moment of recruitment was a poignant one that required preparation,

an appropriate setting, a cover story, and, perhaps most importantly, a reading

of how the candidate was responding to the tenor of the meeting. It was to be,

as an early directive phrased it, a work of art.36 In describing the all-important

recruitment meeting, Matthias Piekert explained how he kept several cards up

his sleeve to be played depending how the meeting unfolded. Most candidates

agreed to become informants on the initial request. If they wavered, however,

Piekert would remind them in blunt terms of some infraction, however minor,

from their past. Very rarely did candidates then have the courage to refuse.37

Another of the initial wave of recruitments from District Perleberg demon-

strates how Stasi offi cers had several strategies at the ready to seal the recruit-

ment. Offi cer Stein was to pose as a member of the local government council’s

agricultural branch and invite the candidate in to discuss his work. The plan

was to begin the conversation with a discussion of the importance of farm-

ers with large land holdings (of which the candidate was one) since they were

responsible for feeding the population. Stein was then to bring the conversa-

tion around to the fact that there were people in East Germany who wanted to

bring down the regime by secretly introducing diseases into the livestock. Stein

hoped that this ruse would be suffi cient to convince the candidate to work for

the Stasi, but if not Stein would turn to coercion. The candidate’s wife had been

caught with pamphlets from a West Berlin-based anti-Communist group, the

Fighting Group Against Inhumanity (KgU), and she would be brought to trial if

he did not agree to collaborate. 38 Stein did not have to resort to coercion since the candidate freely agreed to work for the Stasi. The new informant, “Angel,”

might well have thought that spying on behalf of the Stasi was not as glamorous

as he had hoped—part of his duties entailed reporting on the supply of manure

in the district.

As early as 1953, the Stasi leadership was concerned that a failure to iden-

tify suitable candidates coupled with a reliance on heavy-handed methods of

recruitment was leading to an informant net of those who “spoke out of both

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sides of their mouth,” and of “provocateurs.”39 The fact of nearly one million East Germans taking to the streets in more than seven hundred cities and towns

in June 1953 could, of course, hardly have inspired confi dence in the infor-

mant net. 40 In an effort to bolster surveillance, Secretary of State Security Ernst Wollweber undertook something unheard of for the head of a secret police in

late Stalinism: he crisscrossed the country on a public speaking tour to drum

up support for the Stasi. In January 1954 he spoke at a Berlin brake factory; in

February at a steel sheet plant in Berlin-Adlershof and the Weimar administra-

tion school; in April at a factory rally in Ludwigsfelde; in August at the factories

H. F. Werk Köpenick and Leuna Werk Walter Ulbricht; in September in the House

of German-Soviet Friendship in Köpenick; and in December in Mansfeld. 41

The result of this and similar recruitment efforts was an informant net that

doubled in size between 1953 and 1955 and even led to internal concerns that

at this pace “every second East German citizen” would soon be or have been

an informant. 42 Such an undertaking certainly brought with it excesses. In the revised guidelines of 1958, Erich Mielke, the minister of state security, makes

clear that Stasi offi cers were to focus on recruiting candidates through convic-

tion rather than coercion, claiming that the latter had often led to failures that

“damaged” the Stasi. 43 The case of a Wittenberge informant who was blackmailed into informant work on account of his SS past but proved a poor infor-

mant was evidently not a lone case.44 Overall, the handling of informants was to be professionalized. In previous directives, meetings with informants were to be

held “preferably” in specially designated informants’ dwellings; the frequency

was now changed to “normally.” The security of sites within the GDR became

paramount rather than penetration of the many anti-Communist groups oper-

ating against the GDR from West Germany. Informants were to be developed

not only through surveillance tactics but politically, to the point that “he would

even be prepared to give his life for the cause.” 45

Following the collapse of the regime, Stasi offi cials still thought of infor-

mants in these terms, calling them “unoffi cial co-workers” in the true sense of

the words and “political co-fi ghters.”46 Former Stasi offi cers are still fi ercely protective of their informants. One said to me at the beginning of our interview,

without knowing precisely what aspect of Stasi work I would be asking about:

“Under no circumstances will I reveal the names of my informants.” It seemed

important to him that I understand that he still talked to his former informants.

They were not his friends, he clarifi ed, but they still greet each other on the

street, even the ones whom he pressured into informing. 47

A new category, the Secret Lead Informant ( Geheimer Hauptinformator—GHI),

an informant who ran other informants, fi rst introduced in 1953, was expanded

and codifi ed in the new directive, perhaps as a result of diffi culties in groom-

ing these special informants. The remarkable case of Paul Wittkowski was one

of the earliest of this new type of informant. During the war, Wittkowski, a

Jew, worked in Wittenberge until he was drafted into the Wehrmacht by some

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bureaucratic slipup. After the war, as a factory worker at Wittenberge’s marga-

rine plant, he was recruited as informant “Ram” and was, by all accounts, an

excellent informant. He reported promptly for meetings with his case offi cer.

He delivered exhaustive reports on his work colleagues: One worker appeared

at the plant wearing Western-style shoes, another was drunk. In town, a woman

had supper in a restaurant with a man who was not her husband. 48 In six years, Ram delivered more than one hundred reports. These were, of course, not without repercussions for the targets. In a few cases, based solely on Ram’s reports,

the Stasi recommended to party offi cials in the factory that certain workers be

dismissed.49 His performance netted him the occasional cash bonus, sometimes DM 10 for a particularly good report, other times DM 40 for a sustained period

of good work. 50

Two years following his recruitment, Ram’s case offi cer recommended that

he be promoted to senior informant and put in charge of fi ve other informants.

This was the beginning of the end of his time with the Stasi. Overwhelmed by

the work involved in administering his charges, Ram became sluggish, rarely

meeting with the informants under him. Despite prodding from his superiors,

Ram proved incapable of handling his increased responsibility, leading to his

eventual dismissal by the Stasi.51

Partly as a result of the Grand Coalition in West Germany and increased

ties between East and West Germany, the Stasi undertook another expansion

of the informant net in the late 1960s. The guidelines of 1968 were to assist dur-

ing the transition. Stasi offi cers were instructed to be selective in their choice

of candidate and to widen the scope beyond the “easy” targets of party mem-

bers, something that was diffi cult to implement. By 1979 District Gransee was

still reporting that 31 percent of its informants were in the party although their

party association, which would have been known to the public, made them ill-

suited to uncover popular sentiment.52 In an effort to bind the informant more closely to the Stasi and to deepen the apprenticeship, informant reports were to

be written rather than oral, and a new category of informant was introduced,

the Societal Co-Worker for Security ( Gesellschaftlicher Mitarbeiter für Sicherheit—

GMS), an informant who reported on society in general, rather than working a

specifi c case. It was hoped that these duties could then be shifted away from the

overburdened regular informants.

A few years after Guideline 1/68 had been put in place the Stasi began updat-

ing it. In 1979, after fi ve or so years of revision, the Stasi released new, and what would turn out to be the last, guidelines for running informants. Again, the

informant net was to be updated, modernized, and improved. Erich Mielke

reiterated that coercion was the least desirable manner to obtain an informant

and emphasized a pressing need for an improvement in the quality of informa-

tion received from informants.53 Refl ecting this emphasis, the leader of district Gransee called on his subordinates to improve their work with informants, in

particular “increasing the amount of relevant information.”54 Other aspects in

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the latest guidelines aimed to refi ne the informant net. Spot checks and using

informants to monitor other informants were to ensure greater accuracy. 55

Meetings with informants were to take place only in the homes of other infor-

mants. Unlike the guidelines of the 1950s, which provided simple examples and

real-life incidents as illustrations of what not to do, the 1979 guidelines are writ-

ten in a sophisticated manner, refl ecting the higher educational qualifi cations of

the offi cer corps and the generally matured work of the Stasi.

In keeping with the new guidelines, informant recruitment became more

systematic and methodical. Recruiting an informant after a chance encounter in

the street, as had happened in Wittenberge in 1952,56 was much less likely in the later years of the Stasi. So too were instances like the offi cer who, to save time,

attempted to recruit three informants at one meeting, already undermining the

basic tenet that no one else was to know the informant’s identity. 57 At the end of every year, the leader in the district developed a plan for the following year and

outlined the number of informants to be recruited in any given area—such as

church, economy, or youth. As a 1976 proposal for recruitment stated: “According

to the yearly work plan, an informant is to be recruited from within the circle of

mid-level medical professions at the medical clinic in Wittenberge.” 58

This is not to say that a detailed outline of where informants were to be

recruited always translated into an orderly recruitment. An exasperated Erich

Mielke complained: “You can’t just recruit any old unoffi cial employee and

check later what role he can fulfi ll.”59 In the earlier period, recruitment frequently occurred on the fi rst meeting with the candidate, whereas the last decades reveal

a Stasi that met with candidates on several occasions before the actual recruit-

ment offer was made.60 Handwritten commitments were more explicit and demonstrated the territorial nature of the Stasi, as in the case of a minor recruited

by the Perleberg Stasi: “I [name blacked out because the individual is a minor]

dedicate myself voluntarily to work with the Ministry for State Security. I will

dedicate my entire strength toward the security of the GDR. I am aware that I

am not permitted to discuss my work here with any other third person, nor with

other state instruments like the People’s Police or Justice. I will inform the MfS

of all occurrences among young people.” 61 In its last year, the Gransee Stasi was at work developing a new and complex system of information gathering for its

top informants. 62

The system of informants running other informants was also much developed

by the later years. After eight years as an informant, Rudi Gerth of Perleberg was

promoted and placed in charge of eighteen to twenty informants—a shockingly

large number and considerably more than the fi ve or six informants per lead

informant foreseen in the 1953 guidelines. 63 Informant “Reini” was charged with securing the southern half of District Gransee, including all factories, agriculture, youth, and Soviet military installations, and for his outstanding contribu-

tions to the GDR, he was awarded the bronze “For Loyal Service” medal on the

twenty-third anniversary of the founding of the GDR, and the same award, but

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this time in silver, six years later.64 Reini dedicated his life to the Stasi, even continuing to work for it after a heart operation and doctors’ explicit orders to stop

work. When he fi nally entered a center for lung disease on a long-term basis, the

Stasi reluctantly ended its association with him. Due to his immense commit-

ment to the Stasi over the years, the Stasi paid him a disability pension. 65

The Reini case also provides insight into the Stasi’s place of importance

within the GDR. The Stasi requested that a local factory in Potsdam pay Reini’s

salary after the Stasi had inserted him into the plant. The salary of seven hun-

dred Ostmarks a month proved burdensome to the plant, which requested that

the Stasi absorb the expenses of its informant. Since the sum was also too steep

for the District Perleberg Stasi offi ce, the regional offi ce paid for the informant’s salary. Nevertheless, it is signifi cant that even for a few months the Stasi was able to have a factory pay for an informant’s presence.66

Somewhat surprisingly, none of the guidelines on informants deal with a

“lower” category of individual who collaborated with the Stasi, known as

a “contact person,” a type of casual employee, usually someone able to offer

information to the Stasi by virtue of their job, like a school principal or factory

boss. The primary differences between a contact person and an informant were

that a contact person was not given major cases to work, nor did that person

sign a commitment, nor did they receive the occasional monetary bonuses paid

to regular informants. These individuals were nevertheless crucial for Stasi work.

One of those interviewed praised his contact persons as much more reliable and

useful than his informants.67

In sum, the Stasi refi ned its work with informants over the years. In the last

decade of the secret police, informants were sent off to Stasi colleges for instruc-

tion on informant-running, on party directives, and on the global march toward

Communism. 68 They were put in charge of dozens of other informants, were recruited in elaborate operations that frequently took months, even years, and

were classifi ed along a spectrum of six categories (as opposed to the initial three

categories). Not to be forgotten is the enormous increase in the number of infor-

mants that accompanied these changes. From approximately 15,000 informants

in 1951,69 the Stasi grew to 173,000 by the time the Berlin Wall fell.

B L A N K E T S U R V E I L L A N C E ?

Former Stasi offi cers have suggested that claims of blanket surveillance in East

Germany have little basis in reality but are rooted instead in the politics of the

day. Leaving little room for misinterpretation, one group of leading Stasi offi -

cials has written: “Our priority targets were by no means imprecise or elastic,

and therefore did not lead the Stasi to use its instruments in a blanket fashion—

as is frequently [ . . . ] put forward by those with a political agenda.”70 Historians have also highlighted the Stasi’s “targeted” surveillance of certain sites (such

as important factories) or specifi c groups (the church), 71 and have generally

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discarded the term “blanket surveillance” because of its suggestion of a com-

plete and seamless surveillance that never really existed in practice. There can

be little doubt that members of a church group were more likely to be under

surveillance than those not involved, but we must not lose sight of the fact that

the Stasi engaged in widespread general surveillance, nor that the untidy imple-

mentation of “targeted” surveillance invariably led to broader monitoring.

Many of the informants recruited in these districts had no targeted task other

than reporting on ordinary East Germans. The Perleberg Stasi, for example,

identifi ed Wittenberge’s Restaurant Koym as a site for the placement of an infor-

mant. Unlike the factories in the district or the machine-lending stations that

were important sites for the economic development of East Germany, Restaurant

Koym was simply a social gathering place. Margarete Ratzlaff, a thirty-two-year-

old secretary in the Glowen police offi ce, was recruited as an informant when

she proved willing to talk to (unbeknownst to her at the time) a Stasi offi cer on

the street about the restaurants’ patrons. Although she was originally recruited

to monitor the restaurant and the police station where she worked, she did

neither because she found work as a typist at the sewing machine factory in

Wittenberge. Although her reports on work colleagues contained scathing per-

sonal information, the Stasi let her go when it discovered her relationship with

a married man. 72

In the 1960s, the Stasi in District Gransee recruited a man on a disability pen-

sion (someone with “much free time,” as the Stasi phrased it) to report on con-

versations on the streets and in bars. His disability was a result of nerve damage

he suffered at Auschwitz, where his parents were murdered because they were

Sinti (gypsy). 73 Since he was a member of both the local fi shing society and the volunteer fi re department and repaired small items like umbrellas and musical

instruments, he had a variety of societal contacts. 74 Informant “Peter” reported on conversations he overheard in two local restaurants that he frequented, The

Lindendorf, and The City of Gransee: A woman complained that the govern-

ment had promised the citizens of East Germany that it would build houses;

instead it built a wall;75 one person showed around the restaurant photos of his trip to West Germany; a retired man complained that his car was requisitioned

in 1945 and never returned to him; someone else bragged that they had a televi-

sion that could pick up West German channels. 76 On the church square, a person stood in front of a poster of East German leader Walter Ulbricht, clicked his

heels together, and gave the Hitler salute. 77 He overheard someone on the street tell a joke: “Olympic Silver Medal winner Gaby Seifert was in Ulbricht’s offi ce.

For her fi ne performance at the Olympics, Ulbricht granted Seifert one wish.

‘I wish that you would tear down the Wall,’ Seifert replied. Ulbricht answered:

‘I’m very sorry my child, but I can’t do that. We’d be the only two left here.’ ” 78

Informant Peter asked his own daughter to obtain information on youth in

town who might be hostile to the regime, something that the Stasi had encour-

aged him to do.79 Finally, at the age of seventy-two, and having provided details

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on hundreds of random individuals for more than twenty-three years, Peter was

retired from Stasi work. 80

Whereas many younger informants were, by and large, unmotivated and sim-

ply did not report, informant “Emil” was zealous. He reported when groups of

teens gathered on the market square in town. He reported television antennas

on houses that were pointing to West Germany. He reported all occurrences at

the local movie theater where he worked, including when rowdy teens whistled

and yelled, and when two young people with long hair who he had not seen

before attended the 5 p.m. showing. In another instance, he sheepishly apolo-

gized to the Stasi that he had accidentally cut out the wrong part of a movie as he

had been instructed to do. He was supposed to cut out a scene where a wreath is

laid down in honor of those who died in the 1968 “Prague Spring,” but instead

he accidentally cut a scene where a wreath is laid at the World Games in Sofi a.

“Fortunately,” he wrote, “only thirty people were there for the showing.” 81

Emil also duly reported a calculator game making the rounds. The game

went as follows: On a calculator, multiply 1976 by nine, because the ninth Party

Congress of the SED took place in 1976. Multiply this number by 1980, the year

of the next Party Congress. Add to this number the telephone number of East

German leader Erich Honecker, 30 11 55, and then turn over the calculator for

the answer: SCHEISSE [shit]! (35513475)82 Emil’s case offi cer brought this game to the attention of Lieutenant Gaeth with a request for him to investigate the

matter further.

By far the most fascinating of Emil’s reports related to an incident that took

place in 1977, when a freak accident might have caused the world to come within

a hair of nuclear war. During a thunderstorm, a bolt of lightning struck the

Soviet army base in District Gransee and caused two rockets to launch—Blitz-

krieg in a literal sense. Fortunately, the rockets were heading east, as a westward

direction would no doubt have provoked instant retaliation. People in the dis-

trict heard of what had happened and began outrageous rumors that hundreds

were killed. 83

None of the information reviewed in these cases could be classifi ed as “tar-

geted” surveillance, nor can market squares, movie houses, and restaurants be

considered “priority areas” in any reasonable sense. The fact that Erich Mielke

issued guidelines in 1979 calling for the acquisition of more “relevant” informa-

tion suggests that this widespread monitoring had become common practice,

yet there is every indication that the Stasi continued to engage in broad surveil-

lance. In a 1985 review of several districts in the region of Potsdam, including

District Gransee, the offi cers conducting the review wrote that there was “insuf-

fi cient use of informants while at home and in their free time, of their contacts

and associations.”84

Over the years, an obsession with the acquisition of informants set in, leading

the Stasi on many occasions to take on people of limited ability, in frail health,

criminals, and even those who had once proved incapable of informant work.

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One informant who monitored an agricultural collective in District Gransee was

incompetent and generally not up to the task of informing, yet the Stasi refused

to drop him from the roster. After he had been with the Stasi four years, his case

offi cer wrote: “His intellect is weak. The same can be said of his general under-

standing of things. Nevertheless, he can, with appropriate guidance, become a

good unoffi cial co-worker.”85 In the next fi ve years, the informant had no contact with the Stasi. Still, the Stasi refused to give up on him, using a phrase

almost identical to that of fi ve years earlier: “Although the informant has limited

abilities, he can still be developed.” 86 Finally, in 1971, after fi fteen years of sub-par informant work, the Stasi demoted him to the lowest level of informant, a

GMS, but still did not terminate its relationship with him. 87

In another case, informant “Magnolia” stayed on the active roster of infor-

mants after he had had a heart attack.88 And another, a former French legion-naire who served time in prison because he had been beaten up by the husband

of a woman he was seeing became an informant but was released when he blew

his cover. A few years later, the Stasi took him on again.89 In one recruitment, an

informant already working for the Stasi said in his evaluation of an informant

candidate that he was not suitable because he was an alcoholic who had already

been fi red from several jobs, but the case offi cer mentioned none of this when

justifying to his superiors the need for the informant.90

Informant Snuggles was another example of maintaining an informant, no

matter how weak. Snuggles’s case offi cer recorded a litany of complaints about

him. He was meek, he had no opinions of his own, he was lazy. He made excuses

for the lack of information in his reports. Things reached a breaking point in

January 1956, when Snuggles informed the Stasi that he no longer wanted to

be an informant because he was a Christian and he would rather suffer than

cause others to suffer.91 The Stasi offi cer responded coolly, not with truncheons or crowbars as one might expect from Gestapo offi cers, but with refi ned, casual

coercion. The Stasi offi cer simply asked how long Snuggles wanted to remain a

teacher, a question that caused the candidate to become “visibly nervous” and

in the end to agree to continue to work for the Stasi.92 Snuggles’s work did not improve, however, leading to a meeting with the district leader at which the

informant broke down and said: “It is this simple. I cannot spy on people.” 93

Unmoved, the Stasi said it would still be “keeping in touch” with him until it

was able to fi nd another informant in the area. 94

Snuggles, who was recruited to monitor grumbling at the Wittenberge river

port but soon thereafter became a teacher, is yet another example of maintaining

an informant even though the justifi cation for the informant no longer applied.

There were many others. A female informant was recruited to monitor the doc-

tor’s offi ce where she worked. Within a few months, she fell ill and entered the

hospital for an extended period. Once she left the hospital, she could no longer

work and spent her days tending her child who had tuberculosis. Unbeknownst

to the informant, the Stasi monitored her house to see if the child was indeed ill

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or whether she had concocted the story to bring an end to her collaboration. 95

Rather than releasing the informant, the Stasi requested that she report on a

group of housewives in her neighborhood.

A secretary at a medical facility remained an informant ten years after the

physician she was to monitor had fl ed to the West.96 Informant “Silvana” was kept on to monitor the Ravensbrück memorial site when she became a secretary there, although she was originally scheduled to monitor a factory in

Fürstenberg. Her scathing reports on the site director’s alleged incompetence

were partly responsible for his dismissal. It is diffi cult to imagine a scenario

whereby a Nazi memorial site (and a small, thinly staffed one at that) could

be considered a pressing target for surveillance, leaving one to accept that Stasi

reluctance to release informants led to signifi cantly wider surveillance than the

original targets. (As an aside, Silvana encountered a “dreamy” Canadian profes-

sor on a vacation in Bulgaria, and was instructed to keep in touch with him for

information on the Canadian academic scene. It turned out to be not as interest-

ing as the Stasi thought.)97

Early in 1971, the sewing machine plant in Wittenberge was on the verge of unveil-

ing a new generation of sewing machine, illustriously named the ROBOTRON

3000. The Stasi wanted an informant in the research and development branch of the

plant in order to monitor the fi nal stages and launch of the new machine. In leafi ng through his fi les, Stasi offi cer Schmidt noted that the Stasi had had an informant in that section from 1961 to 1967 but that this informant was let go because he did not

have the proper “mind-set” to continue working with the Stasi.98 Specifi cally, his reports were subjective, he had few contacts, he was a loner, and he rarely showed up

for the pre-arranged meetings with his case offi cer. Undaunted, the offi cer recruited the candidate, who readily agreed to work for the Stasi again, signing a commitment

that differed from his fi rst. In 1961, the candidate wrote:

I, Johannes Beil, born on May 17, 1934, declare that I am willing to vol-

untarily work for the Ministry for State Security. I will not mention my

association to any other person, including my own relations. I will pro-

vide my reports in writing and sign them with the name “Sinus.”99

In 1971, the commitment read as follows:

I, Johannes Beil, declare that I am willing to continue my association with

the Ministry for State Security that began in 1961. I will use my knowledge

to prevent sabotage, espionage and other enemy actions. I will take seri-

ously the appointments arranged between us and do my utmost to keep

them. I will sign my reports with the name “Walter.” 100

The new commitment reveals Beil’s previous inability to keep his

appointments.

Predictably, this informant was as weak the second time around as he was the

fi rst, and for the same reasons. He was still a loner and found it diffi cult to talk

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to others, and to make matters worse, he was soon transferred and now had no

contact whatsoever with the ROBOTRON 3000. One might reasonably assume

that at this point, the Stasi would have dropped this abysmal informant, but

it kept him on. In 1983 the Stasi complained that since his wife’s death he was

dressing sloppily, that he was drinking too much, and that he was not keeping

his appointments with the case offi cer. The Stasi still did not release him. 101 As

far as can be determined, he was still working for the Stasi when the regime col-

lapsed in 1989.

In contrast, “Udo” and “Joseph Nöcker” were among the most reliable, long-

serving, and powerful Stasi informants. In 1955, Christian Kupke, a twenty-year-

old biology student at teacher’s college in Potsdam, came to the attention of the

Stasi when an informant at the school alerted the Stasi that he was a potential

informant. Since it did not have an informant in the biology department (of

which the Stasi was suspicious because it participated relatively poorly when

the regime called for help with the harvest), and because the candidate was a

member of the Free German Youth and well liked by his fellow students, the

Stasi followed up.102 On October 24, 1955, Christian Kupke entered a room at his college ostensibly to discuss career options with a representative of the Ministry

of the Interior. The Stasi agent awaiting him engaged him in a general conversa-

tion about his department and about the university before bringing the topic

around to the regime’s need to be vigilant in the face of attempts from the West

to subvert the GDR. 103 Kupke needed little convincing and immediately signed on as “Udo,” the name of a friend he had once had. For his fi rst assignment Udo

was given three weeks to author a report on the social background of his fellow

students and on anyone who traveled to West Berlin.104

When Udo informed the Stasi about his aunt, who taught at the Hochschule

für Politik in West Berlin, a university attended by many students who had fl ed

the GDR, the Stasi asked Udo to contact his aunt with the idea that she herself

might become an informant. 105 Udo was to endear himself to his aunt by learning home repair and then undertaking small repair jobs in her apartment, for

which, the Stasi made a point of telling him, he was not to charge. 106 Despite his

efforts, the aunt was tight-lipped about her school and did not indicate support

for the GDR. She was not invited to be an informant.

In 1957, the last year of Udo’s studies, the Stasi had little contact with him

because he spent most of his time in the library studying for his fi nals. After

leaving the university, Udo became a teacher at the Polytechnisch Oberschule

(POS) in Zehdenick and was therefore taken over by the District Gransee offi ce,

something that did not please Udo, as he felt that there would be little for him

to report on there. The Stasi assured him that this would not be the case. After

his arrival in Zehdenick, Udo married and became the father of two children.

His wife was aware that he worked for the Stasi. By 1961 he had risen to the posi-

tion of associate director of the technical college and continued to be a model

informant. He authored copious reports on the reaction in the district to the

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building of the Berlin Wall and on attitudes of voters that he gleaned as a vol-

unteer at polling stations.107 Udo, a large man with a high forehead and large

glasses, was a gregarious, warm, and exceedingly popular teacher. As Stasi offi cer

Hoffmann phrased it: “Because of his open conduct in public, his love of his

job and his spotless lifestyle, the informant relates very well to his students. He

understands how to develop these contacts for our purposes.”108

Udo’s reports on his own students lack lurid details but nevertheless were

an odious breach of trust. He reported on a female student who was begin-

ning to adopt (unspecifi ed) Western manners. A male student was reported

to be a “lout,” a “big mouth,” and a “real handful.” 109 Udo even passed on information obtained from his children, including that pupils in his son’s

fi rst grade class had shown photos of churches to the class. No doubt with a

certain amount of pride, Udo reported that “his son knew enough to report

this to the teacher.” The teacher did not take any action against the pupils, so

the Stasi began to monitor her.110 Based on a conversation with his older boy who was in the seventh grade, Udo informed the Stasi on students who used

the Hitler salute with each other. When one teacher was let go without notice

for speaking of the West German election in a way that “confused” students,

Udo, according to the Stasi, “worked hard” so that the students would under-

stand why the teacher had been let go, informing the students not only of the

teacher’s political failings but also his “moral” ones.111 Those students who

had been planning on sending a thank-you card to the teacher decided against

this course of action once they heard these details. In the 1980s, Udo, who

was an avid photographer, took a picture of each of his students and made

a montage. When one student asked why a certain student was missing, Udo

said that the student would explain this to the class himself, and the student

got up in front of the class and said that his mother had applied to leave East

Germany. 112

Udo’s power over his students was vast. One of them hoped to study marine

biology at the University of Rostock, but Udo requested the Stasi prevent his

studies in this fi eld since he suspected that the student would eventually use

research in international waters as a pretense to fl ee the GDR. 113 Udo also

asked for Stasi assistance in expelling a twelfth grader at Udo’s next school, the

Dr. Salvador Allende school in Gransee, in part because he wore a Stars-and-

Stripes scarf to a Free German Youth event. 114 Udo had already reported to the Stasi that this student should not be allowed to become a fi ghter pilot because

of his political unreliability. In Udo’s thirty-four-year career as an informant, he

had authored hundreds of reports on students, fellow teachers, voters, and ordi-

nary residents of the district, and had affected the life chances of many of his

students. Recruited in 1955, he was still reporting for the Stasi when the regime

collapsed in 1989.

As part of a targeted effort in the 1970s and 1980s to prevent the exodus of

medical personnel, the Stasi recruited Dr. Rolf Schiefer (cover name “Josef

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Nöcker”), director of the Gransee District Hospital, into informant work.

Dr. Schiefer was a man of impressive physical stature who would be brought

down, ironically, by something very small. One Stasi offi cer recalled Schiefer’s

children dancing around him as they tried desperately to prevent wasps from

landing on him. He had been stung twice before, both stings resulting in cardiac

arrest, and the third time would no doubt have been fatal. He was, nevertheless,

an exceedingly valuable informant, and his case offi cer admitted frankly that

Nöcker had made his career. On several occasions, the offi cer received major

awards for the information that Dr. Schiefer had supplied. 115

Dr. Schiefer, a native of Leipzig, was born in 1931 and brought up by his

mother after his father’s death on the front in 1945. Even as a medical stu-

dent at Karl-Marx University in Leipzig from 1951 to 1956, his commitment to

Communism was clear, as his nickname, “Red Schiefer,” indicated. Following

a short stint with the Barracked People’s Police in Greifswald, he moved to

Heringsdorf, where he took over the surgical division. 116 At the impressively young age of thirty-fi ve, he sought out and won the position of director of

the Gransee Hospital in 1966, an unassuming facility nestled in tall pines on

a hill overlooking Gransee, a very un-hospital-like building that resembles

a villa. Although he left the Communist Party in 1963, he remained a fi rm

believer in the GDR. By 1975 the Stasi was anxious to have an informant in

the medical sector in District Gransee, primarily to prevent medical profes-

sionals from escaping but also because of the strategic position of the hos-

pital. It had a special surgical unit for victims of car crashes off the nearby

Transit route F96 to West Germany. Dr. Schiefer would therefore be in a posi-

tion to provide the Stasi with information on suspicious accidents involving

Westerners or people in transit to and from West Germany. 117 Offi cer Oschim worried initially that Dr. Schiefer would not agree to work for the Stasi, as he

had refused to sign an oath while with the People’s Police in Barracks, but

Oschim’s worries proved unfounded; Schiefer signed his commitment after

a two-hour discussion with the handlers who had come to the hospital to

recruit him. 118

Informant Nöcker’s position proved invaluable. He provided information on

one of his patients who claimed to have contact with a group that helped physi-

cians leave East Germany. In another instance, he reported on a surgeon who

did not wash properly before and after surgery. Despite repeated disciplinary

measures, the surgeon did not mend his ways. The Stasi intervened, collecting

evidence against him (in the aptly named Operation Polyp) and turned the fi le

over to the justice department, which banned him from the operating room for

a year. The Stasi’s original suggestion of a life ban was rejected for fear that he

might escape to the West, where he would be celebrated as a martyr. 119 One of Schiefer’s patients was an electrician who worked at the home of the war criminal Heinz Barth, also a target of a Stasi operation because of war crimes he had

committed during World War II in Czechoslovakia and France. 120

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The manner by which the Stasi took care of its prized informant provides

historians with insight into the extent of the Stasi’s power in state and society.

In early 1978 a power struggle erupted in the Gransee hospital when the city

council, for unknown reasons, sought to remove Dr. Schiefer from his position.

It was, of course, vital that the Stasi maintain him in his advantageous post,

causing the Stasi to go over the head of city council and thwart the attempt

at his removal. 121 In another instance, the Stasi obtained a spot in Humboldt University’s medical school for Dr. Schiefer’s daughter. 122 The Stasi also facilitated Schiefer’s frequent trips to West Berlin, where he was being treated for his

life-threatening wasp allergy. As a result of all of this Stasi assistance, Schiefer

was loyal: “A close, trusting relationship developed between us and the infor-

mant. One of the reasons for this is the Ministry for State Security’s infl uence

in maintaining his current position in the hospital, in facilitating his treatment

in West Berlin, and in bringing about the admission of his daughter to medical

school.”123

The following year, however, the Stasi became concerned about Schiefer’s

loyalty. Since he was often in West Berlin, and since he was investigating West

Berlin–based groups that aided medical professionals wanting to leave East

Germany, the Stasi became concerned that he himself might fl ee. In 1983, the

Stasi placed a microphone in the wall of a Stasi offi ce and secretly recorded one

of Schiefer’s oral reports. The recording was then sent to Berlin for voice stress

analysis, and the results suggested Schiefer was telling the truth. 124 Within a few years, however, the Stasi worried that Schiefer was starting to manipulate them.

When he was fi nally transferred to a hospital in Berlin, the Stasi ended its asso-

ciation with him, a somewhat surprising fate for an informant who had proved

so valuable over the years.125

L I M I TAT I O N S O F T H E I N F O R M A N T N E T

East Germany was a place of pervasive surveillance, and one that over time

moved toward even more complete monitoring of society, yet the nature of the

informant net dampened the regime’s totalitarian ambitions. A system based

on amateur informants was bound to have weaknesses. The element of coercion

in the Stasi’s recruitment of informants lays bare one of the most fundamental

weakness in the Stasi and provides historians with a contrast to the conduct

of the secret police of the Hitler era. Robert Gellately in particular has empha-

sized how little coercion was necessary for Gestapo offi cers because ordinary Germans readily provided them with information on other Germans. 126 Thus, the Gestapo possessed a much smaller roster of informants than the Stasi did.

The Stasi seems to have been well aware that in many cases, their candidates

would not freely work for it. Informant cases from the Perleberg and Gransee

districts demonstrate that some East Germans were not inclined to offer up

information to the Stasi without prompting or a certain degree of coercion.

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Thus the paradox: informants who were obtained through coercion were, quite

simply, unwilling informants, and this fact was not lost on the more reasonable

Stasi offi cers. Lieutenant Tenbrock of the Gransee branch was extremely reluc-

tant to take on an informant unless he or she had agreed to work for the Stasi

of their own conviction.127 It was understandable, then, that many Stasi offi cers chose the easier route of recruiting from the Communist Party, even though

this was generally frowned upon because the general public did not usually talk

openly to party members.

Many of the key elements in the use and limits of coercion in the Stasi’s deal-

ings with its informants were clear in the exceptional case of Paul Bindig, alias

Informant “Schulz.” According to another informant, Bindig, an employee of

the margarine factory in Wittenberge, despised the GDR and vented his frustra-

tions with colleagues at work, complaining about the poor pay and the regime’s

ridiculous claims to be a “workers’ and farmers’ state.” 128 The Stasi immediately recognized an opportunity to penetrate a group of opponents, but here

was an individual who would clearly not volunteer for the Stasi. Bindig’s past

provided the Stasi with the element of blackmail it needed to recruit him as an

informant.

On August 18, 1955, a Stasi agent summoned Bindig to an offi ce in the plant

where he worked. The Stasi offi cer proceeded to engage the candidate in a con-

versation about the current political situation, before bringing the topic around

to the candidate’s role during the Third Reich. After repeated denials, the can-

didate fi nally confessed that he had been in the SS and had worked at the

Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Offi cer Behr informed the candidate that

he could avoid arrest if he agreed to work for the Stasi. Bindig signed his com-

mitment at the same meeting.129 Although Behr planned to use the candidate’s past as required to make sure he fulfi lled his informant duties, he never really

needed to. The informant did not have as much opportunity as the offi cer had

thought to interact with others from the factory, since most of his work entailed

shoveling coal alone outside the factory fences, and the informant was, accord-

ing to the Stasi, “of limited intelligence.”130 What is perhaps most fascinating

about this informant case is not that the Stasi exhibited odious behavior in

employing a former SS concentration camp guard as an informant, but that

the Stasi was interested in him because it hoped he would report on enemies

of the current regime, not, as one might think, to locate fellow SS members in

the GDR. 131

If Stasi offi cers considered coercion a less-than-ideal manner of recruit-

ment132—although one they did not hesitate to use—a series of positive incentives was no guarantee of a reliable informant. “Nelly,” for example,

came to the Stasi’s attention because she regularly visited West Berlin to be

with her two-year-old son, who was seeking medical attention, and because

she was acquainted with a couple that the Stasi suspected was working with

the Investigative Committee of Free Jurists, an anti-Communist group based in

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West Berlin. Nelly’s tips helped lead to the couple’s arrest and a sentencing of,

respectively, six and eight years in prison. For her reporting, Nelly was awarded

substantial monetary bonuses and, much more importantly, the Stasi arranged

that her brother, who had been sentenced by the Soviets to twenty-fi ve years in

the East German prison in Bautzen, be released early. 133 Shortly after her brother’s release, both Nelly and her brother fl ed to West Germany, which caused the

Stasi to pay a visit to their parents. They claimed to have no previous knowl-

edge of the defection but were able to provide the Stasi with a current address.

The Stasi then wrote to Nelly in the West with veiled threats for her to get back

in touch with them:

Dear Margot!

I understand that you’ve arrived safely. I’m doing well, and hope you

are too. I can also let you know that your son is doing well.

It is really too bad, dear Nelly, that we weren’t able to talk before you

left. I hope, though, that you’ll make sure we can talk soon. Although your

circumstances don’t permit us at the moment to see each other, I hope

that you won’t forget about an old friend and that you’ll write to the ad-

dress below. You too are certainly thinking about what you mentioned to

me on several occasions

I’ll sign off now wishing you all the best, and hoping that you will write to

me in the next few days. Otherwise I’ll be very mad.

Yours,

Karl

There is no evidence that Nelly responded.

The Stasi was also prey to normal human physical frailties, although it must

be noted that the number of instances of serious health-related issues in the

informant fi les leads one to wonder if this was more than mere coincidence. In

the case of informant “Cherry,” for example, the Stasi called for more pressure

on her to deliver better information, and several months later she checked into

the Wittenberge hospital because of a nervous breakdown. 134 “Sugar,” a waiter in Wittenberge, had an existing nervous condition that Stasi work appears to have

exacerbated. As Stasi offi cer Berndt summarized at the recruitment: “Because of

his nerve affl iction, we have to be very careful when talking with him. Otherwise

he gets so nervous and frightened that he could bring on a complete nervous

breakdown.”135 After months of reporting, he begged the Stasi to release him because his nerves were “totally shot.” 136 The Stasi granted his request. One informant became so distraught that he came to believe that the Stasi was spying on him, that his wife and all his friends were in the employ of the Stasi. His

case offi cer dismissed the informant because he was “hallucinating” about the

Stasi being everywhere.137

Young informants were perhaps the most problematic to deal with. They were

tentative about the nature of the work and prone to expose their Stasi association.

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Contrary to claims made by former Stasi offi cers,138 the Stasi did indeed recruit

some minors for informant work, their youth and uncertainty partially visible in

the handwritten commitments that bear the hallmark of a shaky, unsure hand

compared to the commitments of the older informants. 139 In one case, the Stasi recruited a seventeen-year-old twelfth grader from Wittenberge in the offi ce of

the school principal. Clearly distraught, he said that he could not become an

informant because this would require lying to his parents, to which the Stasi offi -

cer replied: “It’s not lying if they do not ask you directly if you work for us. You

will conduct yourself as you always have, and that way they won’t ask, and you

won’t have to lie.” Immediately after his recruitment, the candidate told his par-

ents that he was recruited as an informant. The parents were livid and, remark-

ably, phoned the district Stasi leader and told him in no uncertain terms that he

should be ashamed for recruiting a minor. Since the youth was now clearly of no

further use to the Stasi, he was released and his fi le sent to the archives. 140

The relationship to a twenty-four-year-old recruited to monitor a theater in

Zehdenick where rowdy youth had occasionally gathered got off to an inauspi-

cious beginning. The candidate arrived at his fi rst appointment with the Stasi

having had two beers and a cognac but, he claimed, “not drunk.”141 Hoffmann,

the case offi cer, was shocked at his tipsy informant and warned him that it must

not happen again. The informant’s commitment was loaded with grammatical

errors, including repeated mistakes in “I am” ( Ich binn, instead of Ich bin). This was not the result of his drinking beforehand, the informant stated, but gram-mar was not “his thing.” 142

Informants were not simply passive recipients of orders, but in many cases

demonstrated a remarkable manipulation of the Stasi. Informant “Max” from

Mellen was recruited to monitor the local agricultural collective, which had

been founded against the wishes of most farmers. The Stasi was quite impressed

with this thirty-one-year-old informant, praising his dedication and debating

whether he should be promoted. Their trust in him was such that they allowed

him to travel to West Berlin in early 1956 to monitor a week of environmental

events. Upon his return, he was twice awarded cash bonuses of DM 40, but

only two months later, informant Max left East Germany permanently for West

Berlin, taking nine others from his home town with him. 143 There can be little doubt that Max used the information he had gathered in West Berlin while conducting Stasi work to organize this major escape.

It would be an exaggeration to say that the informant tail was wagging the

Stasi dog, but certainly one is struck by the manner in which some informants

used their relationship with the Stasi for personal ends. Informant “Tabacco”

almost never provided information on his co-workers nor did he always ful-

fi ll the tasks assigned to him; instead he reported on “factory issues that were

important to him personally.” 144 If a task that the informant was doing at the workplace as part of his job was distasteful to him, an informant might well

report to the Stasi that it was dangerous.145 Stasi informants also reported on

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workplace rivals or other individuals who had wronged the informant in some

way. The informant network had a built-in element of denunciation for per-

sonal gain, although the 1979 guidelines, which called for greater verifi cation of

informant reports and monitoring of informants with other informants, went

some way toward curbing these incidents.

Having informants run other informants, a practice that was becoming more

common in the last decades of the regime in order to relieve some of the burden

on the regular offi cers, proved diffi cult to administer. Informant Ram, for exam-

ple, had simply collapsed under the pressure of running his fi ve informants, but

his case was not unique. In the small riverside town of Havelberg, informant

Max was put in charge of three other informants, all of them, like him, in the

local police detachment. He proved incapable of obtaining valuable informa-

tion from his informants, despite the urging of his case offi cer.146 Some infor-

mants resented working for a fellow informant and simply refused to do so. 147

Max’s case also provides insight into the manner in which the Stasi was ham-

strung by the real-life situations of its informants. Max met with his case offi cer

on June 16, 1953, the night before the revolution that came within a hair of

toppling the regime. He did not suggest anything amiss. In the week follow-

ing the revolution, Max worked around the clock trying to stabilize the region

and arrest the revolutionaries, so that when he met with his case offi cer he had

little to report since he had been focused exclusively on his police work. The

next meeting with his case offi cer was postponed because the offi cer had had to

be admitted to the hospital. It was two months before Max could provide any

reasonable information to the Stasi. At this point, however, he was due for his

three-week vacation. Although the Stasi was in the middle of an operation to

investigate a member of the police force, they did not meet with this key infor-

mant because he was away on vacation. 148

I N F O R M A N T S A N D T H E L I V E S O F O T H E R S

The archive that the Stasi had had built in its sprawling headquarters complex

in the East Berlin neighborhood of Lichtenberg was made out of reinforced con-

crete in expectation of vast documentation. The six million personal fi les that

sit in those archives were created by tens and eventually hundreds of thousands

of informants reporting day in and day out on East German society for the forty

years of its existence. Stasi offi cers after 1989 tried to portray informants as fulfi lling a public function, much like those who provide tips in the Crime Stoppers

program, of “keeping everyone safe.”149 The documents tell another story. For their part, informants have defended their actions saying that their reporting

was banal and nonincriminating. 150 That much of this information today does indeed appear banal is beside the point. As Werner Beuster observed, many

“ordinary” reports over the course of time helped the Stasi form a “mosaic” of

an individual, and surveillance of an individual was frequently extraordinarily

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T H E F I R M

long. A 1993/94 survey of East Germans who had viewed their Stasi fi les revealed

an average time under informant monitoring of nine years; the longest was thir-ty-six years.151

There were real-life consequences to people in Districts Gransee and Perleberg

from the actions of informants—students denied the opportunity to study

marine biology at the university, teachers and factory workers dismissed, and

the Ravensbrück memorial site director fi red. Longtime, respected informants

like Udo or Nöcker held a great deal of power over other East Germans, their

word frequently taken at face value by the Stasi. In short, informants’ reports

on individuals were not simply idle gossip that ended up in some labyrinthine

archive and forgotten. Societal surveillance in the GDR was never strictly a pas-

sive act.152 On another level, there was something insidious in the very act of reporting personal information to a secret police to vet and store. Even now, it

must be an eerie feeling for people who live in Districts Gransee and Perleberg

today to know that many of their most intimate family secrets sit in binders on

spindly metal shelves in a nondescript building on the outskirts of town.

There was in the Stasi an institutionalized obsession with informants. The

district leadership monitored carefully the number of informants and meticu-

lously recorded the frequency of informant/offi cer meetings. According to one

offi cer, Stasi offi cers were reprimanded for not meeting with informants fre-

quently enough, a statement borne out in the documentation. 153 Moreover, the Stasi maintained informants long after the original reason for recruitment had

expired. One study has found that nearly 78 percent of informants were not

involved in working a specifi c case.154

The recruitment of informants involved many others in the repression appa-

ratus. The Stasi relied heavily on offi cial sources, frequently party members in

factories or school principals for tips about recruitment, or about an individual

once identifi ed as a candidate, but who had pulled in others in their assess-

ments: friends and family members of informants, landlords, teachers, and the

like. The sheer act of recruiting 173,000 informants—perhaps 600,000 in total

in the GDR’s history—must have involved a staggering number of ordinary

Germans.

There were serious limitations to the Stasi’s reliance on an amateur informant

net to secure the district. It was extremely vulnerable to an informant changing

his or her place of work. Operations had to be put on hold if informants fell

ill, got pregnant, went on business trips, or were transferred. Informants were

ordinary people . . . and spying does not come easily to everyone. Some simply

never quite accustomed themselves to informant work, or could engage people

in conversation in a way to tease out appropriate information, in spite of the

Stasi’s best efforts to train its informants. Some had a crisis of conscience. Even

the Stasi noted that some of its informants were too “cowardly” to admit that

they no longer wanted to work for the Stasi, and so tried to force their own

dismissal by fulfi lling their duties poorly or not at all.155 Other informants took

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advantage of their Stasi association for personal gain. All of these issues were

well known to the Stasi, which, through its informant guidelines, continually

refi ned the informant network and tried to limit its defi ciencies. The pervasive

informant system was totalitarian in intent, if ineffi cient in practice.

Despite the challenges of this vast army of part-time informants, Stasi offi cers

could scarcely imagine doing their jobs without them. Two offi cers admitted

that immediately after the Berlin Wall fell, they destroyed huge amounts of Stasi

fi les but protected their informant records. In case the Stasi should rise again,

they wanted to have the informant net operational as quickly as possible. 156

In one of the last recruitments in District Gransee, a Stasi offi cer pondered

the recruitment of Klaus Hoffmann. He wrote down the candidate’s name in the

middle of the page and drew arrows, like a spider in a web, leading between him

and various individuals in the district—an acquaintance in Falkenthal, someone

in Marienthal, a teacher in Gransee. In total, the Stasi thought he had contact to

at least eleven “operationally interesting” individuals.157 What might happen to

the lives of those others depended very much on the offi cer’s next move.

East Germany was divided into 217 districts, and the Stasi had an offi ce in

everyone. Map by Jonathan Kitay

District Perleberg. Map by Barry Levely

District Gransee. Map by Barry Levely

The former District Gransee Stasi offi ce, today a retirement home. Stasi offi cers

conducted their day-to-day business here but always met with their informants

elsewhere. Photo by Gary Bruce

The former District Perleberg Stasi offi ce, today a branch of the local hospital.

Demonstrators gathered outside this building in the fall of 1989 and shouted

at Stasi workers. Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik Außenstelle Schwerin

The statue of Roland stands guard over the city of Perleberg. During the

revolution, East Germans demonstrated on the market square where it is located.

Photo by Gary Bruce

Perleberg’s city hall (left) and St. Jacob’s Church. The Stasi monitored the

church’s minister, Gottfried de Haas, and his family for much of the 1980s.

Thousands of people crowded into the church during the revolution to hear

opponents speak out against the regime. Photo by Gary Bruce

A homemade quasi-submarine abandoned on the shore of the river by a

would-be defector. In one of the more prominent failures of the Stasi in

District Perleberg, the Stasi scoured East Germany for years trying to fi nd the

perpetrator. Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, Ministerium für Staatssicherheit,

Bezirksverwaltung Schwerin, AOP 13 / 88

A helmeted Stasi offi cer (barely visible at left) tests out the quasi- submarine.

After several test runs along the river, the Stasi determined that the perpetrator

abandoned his quest because water was pouring in the open hole at the

top. Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der

ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, Ministerium für Staatssicherheit,

Bezirksverwaltung Schwerin, AOP 13 / 88

Werner Ryll led the District

Perleberg offi ce from

1985 until its demise in

1989. Former employees

heaped scorn on his

heavy-handed manner.

Bundesbeauftragte für die

Unterlagen des Staatssich

erheitsdienstes der ehemaligen

Deutschen Demokratischen

Republik, Ministerium

für Staatssicherheit,

Bezirksverwaltung Schwerin,

KuSch 1160

The Nazi war criminal Heinz

Barth listens to testimony at his

trial in 1983. Finding Barth, a

chance discovery from a routine

vetting, was the most successful

operation in District Gransee’s

history. Barth was sentenced to

life in prison for crimes against

humanity committed in France

and Occupied Czechoslovakia.

Bundesbeauftragte für die

Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsd

ienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen

Demokratischen Republik,

Ministerium für Staatssicherheit,

Bezirksverwaltung Potsdam,

ZUV 66

4 IN THE LINE OF SIGHT

Targeted by the Stasi

o N A R E L A T I V E L Y C O O L N I G H T in 1980 two middle-aged men, Sebastien and Dietrich, 1 stumbled into a farmer’s fi eld near the hamlet of Meuß, north of Wittenberge, struggling with an old wooden cart containing a package weighing

nearly two hundred pounds. In the distance behind them were the parallel rows

of stocky red brick villagers’ houses, only stingily allowing for the cobblestone

street to run between them. They had planned for this night a long time, and

chose the evening very carefully. Hovering between 20° and 30°F, the night

air was ideal for what they had in mind. In the pitch black they unpacked the

cart—a table top, parts of a bed frame, a large metal ring, rope, a propane gas

canister, and nearly 5,000 square feet of material stitched together, partly by

hand, partly on an old Singer sewing machine. The immediate task at hand was

straightforward—breathe life into the empty, crinkled sack spread out before

them like a relief map, step into the homemade basket, and lift off in their bal-

loon, designed mostly from the colored illustrations of the Montgolfi er broth-

ers’ wobbly balloon in children’s books they had borrowed from the Martin

Andersen Nexö library in Wittenberge. Once aloft, a favorable wind was to fl oat

them over the border with West Germany that ran down the middle of the Elbe

River some 8 miles (13 km) away, over a brickyard, and on to safety in West

Germany. The two must have known that in those early morning hours, the

sound of air being pumped into their balloon would have carried great dis-

tances, so they made haste.

Years of planning ended in twenty minutes. 2 The balloon did not fi ll, most likely because of their amateurish stitching job. Now began a race against time.

Since their wives had dropped them off at their summer farmhouse where the

balloon materials had been stored, the two men attempting to fl ee East Germany

had to cart everything back to the summer house, hide it in the basement, and

walk back to Wittenberge before daylight. Two strangers walking along rarely

traveled country roads during the day would have aroused suspicion from the

all-seeing villagers. After jogging most of the way, with the singular thought that

they should have been in West Germany, both men arrived back at their homes

that night in 1980 after their adventurous evening. The task ahead was no less

I N T H E L I N E O F S I G H T

| 107

adventurous: They would have to be sure that the Stasi did not fi nd out about

their attempt to leave the German Democratic Republic.

Dietmar Benecke was twenty years old when he began working as a full-time

Stasi offi cer in 1969. Not particularly good-looking, he was balding with long

sideburns, a goatee, and a thin mustache. Benecke had spent the year prior to his

arrival with the Stasi in the Feliks Dzerzhinski regiment, which was responsible

for guarding Stasi installations and was a common recruiting ground for future

Stasi offi cers. Benecke’s time with the Stasi earned him mixed reviews. On a

personal level, he was boastful, gossipy, and an adulterer, but at the same time

his work for the Stasi had netted him several honors, including the euphemisti-

cally titled Bronze Medal for Honorable Service to the National People’s Army,

an additional two days vacation, and a total of 2,000 Ostmarks in bonuses.3

After his nine years as a Stasi offi cer, Benecke’s penchant to boast landed him

in serious trouble. One night, in an ill-advised attempt to impress his drinking

companions at the local pub, Benecke rattled off dozens of Stasi secrets, the kind

of behavior that was almost impossible to go unnoticed by the Stasi. Benecke

was stripped of his position and sent to prison for four years. 4

After three years of monitoring Benecke in prison, the Stasi pushed for his

early release so that he could return to the Stasi as an informant. They even gave

him 3,000 Ostmarks to furnish his new two-bedroom apartment in Wittenberge.5

The former Stasi offi cer became informant “Axel” in April 1981.

Axel had not been to Wittenberge since his prison term, and he looked up his

aunt when he returned to town. She was delighted to see her nephew, and after

several conversations, mentioned that her other nephew, Dietrich, had thought

about escaping from East Germany by balloon. 6 Eager to investigate this tip, Axel paid a visit to his cousin Dietrich in Wittenberge in December 1981. Dietrich was

the oldest of three children, worked as a locksmith in a factory in Potsdam, and

lived with his second wife, a kindergarten teacher, on Maxim Gorky Street in

Wittenberge. Her new place of employment was a considerable improvement

on the rayon factory where she had worked for years. They were the doting

parents of a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter and spent much of their time

at their modest country farm house in Mesekow, north of Wittenberge, which

they had bought with their good friends the Putzke family. According to Axel,

Dietrich adored his dog and became misty-eyed when his friends pointed out

that he would need to prepare himself for the dog’s eventual death. 7

The cousins had not been close growing up, a fact that was revealed by

Dietrich’s surprise at seeing Axel appear on his doorstep, but Axel brushed off

his cousin’s response by saying that it was a long overdue visit on his part. Axel

began complaining about East Germany and expressed his ardent wish to live in

Hamburg. Dietrich’s wife, Anne, immediately took Axel’s bait and said that both

she and her husband had thought about leaving East Germany for years, ever

since a report on West German television about a couple who had successfully

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T H E F I R M

left East Germany by balloon. Anne showed here, at fi rst glance, a surprising

level of comfort with a stranger, but Axel was family, after all—and ultimately,

Anne did not tell him at this point that the couple had, in fact, constructed a

balloon in an attempt to fl ee. Anne was skeptical about the reports on West

German television about the successful balloon fl ight out of East Germany, as

the reporters had indicated that the balloon was constructed from stitched-

together bedsheets. She thought that there simply were not that many sheets

available for purchase in the GDR. 8 Dietrich, too, confi ded in the informant.

Although initially nervous about talking to his cousin after such a long absence,

Axel laughed off any fears that Dietrich might have, claiming that he could not

possibly be a Stasi informant since he had gone to jail for betraying his former

employer. Reassured, Dietrich told Axel about his desire to leave East Germany

because of its stifl ing atmosphere and travel restrictions.

Dietrich’s motives were much like those of many other reasonable, ordinary

individuals who attempted wild escapes from the GDR. A visit to the Checkpoint

Charlie Museum, which chronicles many of the attempts to fl ee East Germany

and is a highlight for many North American tourists in the German capital,

leaves one struck by the sheer bravado of it all—the man who married a woman

in the West who looked like his wife in East Berlin and then returned to East

Berlin to fetch his real wife, murder the new one, and drive back to West Berlin;

crop duster fl ights to safety where the pilot had never fl own before; homemade

submarines. The people who undertook such risky enterprises were generally

not young males thirsting for adventure, but were often ordinary, thoughtful,

family-oriented individuals driven to life-risking extremes by a stifl ing environ-

ment. In the widely acclaimed novel Krokodil im Nacken (A Crocodile Breathing

Down My Neck), Klaus Kordon depicts the protagonist Manfred Lenz as the pro-

totype of the individual who tried to escape East Germany. It was not in the heat

of the moment that Lenz decided to escape with his family through Romania,

fully cognizant of the risks involved for his wife and two young children, but

after years of quiet contemplation, of fi nally and reluctantly listening to the

“crocodiles” of his conscience who reminded him daily that only in another

environment could he become the writer that he had always wished. 9 Dietrich,

likewise, comes across not as a reckless adventure-seeker but as a man who has

calculated that the enormous risk was worth it for a better life in the West.

When Axel reported his fi ndings to the Stasi, the district offi ce immediately

launched a Personal Surveillance Operation (OPK) against Dietrich called OPK

Balloon, with the intention of monitoring Dietrich and his family for future

attempts to leave East Germany. Such an operation began when information

came to the Stasi, often although not exclusively through its network of infor-

mants, that aroused suffi cient suspicion that an individual was “negatively”

inclined toward the state. In practice, there was no predicting what would con-

stitute suffi cient suspicion, for although all OPKs had to be approved by the

district leader, the trip-wire for the commencement of one varied from offi cer to

I N T H E L I N E O F S I G H T

| 109

offi cer. Nevertheless, the opening report for all OPKs contained the same basic

information, beginning with everything that was already known about the per-

son to be monitored—license plate number, home and work addresses, names

of family members, and his “morality.” The Stasi offi cer behind the operation

then justifi ed in detail why it was necessary to place the individual under sur-

veillance and requested the resources to carry it out, almost always a combina-

tion of telephone taps, mail monitoring, and informants. 10

Dietrich had made it clear in his conversations with Axel that he was still consid-

ering ways of leaving East Germany. He talked of imitating the home-built subma-

rine attempt of a few years earlier, and had also mentioned a motorized hang glider.

Axel speculated that Dietrich’s habit of holding his breath underwater while taking

a bath was likely practice for a water-based escape from East Germany, perhaps

swimming the Elbe River or even the treacherous Baltic Sea.11

At a party over the Christmas holidays, nearly three weeks after Axel had

drifted into their lives, Dietrich and Anne made the mistake of confi ding in him

that Dietrich had tried to escape East Germany by balloon back in 1980 but that

the plan had to be scuttled when the balloon failed to fi ll with air. They told

Axel that Dietrich and his friend Sebastien were to fl y to West Germany by bal-

loon, and then apply under provisions of the Helsinki Conference on Human

Rights to have their wives join them in West Germany. Dietrich confessed that

he wanted to try to escape anew—and wanted Axel to help him—but to do so,

he had to know that he could trust Axel completely. 12

In light of this new information, the Stasi upgraded the operation from an

OPK to the next level, the highest that the Stasi had at a district level—Opera-

tional Case ( Operativer Vorgang—OV), which generally entailed a greater degree of monitoring and a shift from passive observation to active involvement.

Moreover, an OV laid the groundwork for criminal prosecution. OV Balloon

called for the gathering of information on the individuals with an eye to pros-

ecution for an imminent attempt to fl ee the GDR, something that was pun-

ishable under Paragraph 213 of the East German legal code, using an array of

monitoring—Dietrich and Anne’s phone was to be tapped, their mail opened,

an observation post established outside the apartment, Axel was to keep close

tabs on the suspects, while informant “Wedel” controlled peripheral friendships.

Stasi offi cer Dieter Giese, whose duties included checking with the local librar-

ies for books that had been borrowed on balloons or on fl ight in general, 13 did

indeed determine that Dietrich had taken books with titles like Man Conquers

the Air, and What Happened to the Great Inventors? out of the local library.14

It is a curious feature of the Stasi and its place within the East German legal

system that information from its informants could not be admitted into a court of law, yet this was the most prolifi c source of information for the secret police. 15

If the Stasi had been alerted to illegal acts by an informant, it had to fi nd some

other way to bring this information to light so that it could be admitted as

evidence. One option was to use a party member or senior functionary in a

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T H E F I R M

workplace who could have overheard the same information, or seen the same

act, as an informant. Most cases were not this easy, however, and sometimes

the case could not be brought to trial due to insuffi cient evidence—even when

the Stasi knew the individual in question was guilty. Although it is true that the

Stasi could indeed operate outside the law16—house searches, for example, were regularly conducted without a warrant—it did not do so where the submission

of informant evidence was concerned, for one of the overriding priorities for the

Stasi was the protection of the informant’s identity. Stasi offi cers were fi ercely

protective of their informants. 17

As a case in point, one offi cer from District Perleberg, who grew a beard after

1989 so as not to be easily recognized, stood up in front of the assembled offi cers

at the last staff meeting of the District Perleberg offi ce, as demonstrators were

gathering in the streets, and asked not what would become of them but rather

what was being done to protect the informants. 18 Even today, most Stasi offi cers will not reveal the names of their informants.

To return to the case at hand, how, then, could the Stasi prove that Dietrich

and Sebastien had planned to leave the GDR without using Axel’s information?

The Stasi turned to one of its preferred strategies: a staged break-in.19 Stasi offi -

cers would break into the farm home that contained the materials used back

in 1980 for the attempted escape, then have another Stasi agent “happen” upon

the scene and call the local police. In responding to the call, the police would

fi nd the balloon materials, contact the Stasi, and instruct the Wittenberge

police detachment to arrest the owners of the house. 20 At 10:40 p.m. on March 25, 1982, Stasi agents entered the farm house near Mesekow. There, amid the

mess of old men’s shoes, a fading Department of Health brochure titled “Your

Health,” construction material, playing cards, and an air mattress, they found

the equipment that had been used on that unlucky February night in 1980—

rope with carabiners, a propane tank, and other balloon materials. 21 Six people were arrested as a result of the staged break-in—Dietrich and Anne, Sebastien

and his wife, and the co-owners of the farmhouse, the Putzkes. Always on the

lookout for new informants, the Stasi suggested to Frau Putzke that she work

for the Stasi, but she refused.22 As the ringleader, Dietrich was sent to jail for three years and six months. The young father of a three-year-old daughter would

miss many of those early milestones in a child’s life, not the least of which was

the fi rst day of school—which, in Germany, a country that identifi es itself as

a “Land of Education,” is an occasion of tremendous signifi cance. Dietrich’s

co-conspirator, Sebastien, was sentenced to two years and eight months. Their

wives and the co-owners of the farm house were exonerated.

OV Balloon was the most famous case in District Perleberg’s history, one

that was used as a teaching tool for new recruits to the district.23 Twenty years after it was fi rst sent to the archives, Stasi offi cers who were normally very placid became animated. “Finally,” one recalled “we had something interesting to deal

with!” 24

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S TA S I O P E R AT I O N S A N D D AY - T O - D AY A C T I V I T I E S

Operations like OPKs and OVs were the backbone of Stasi activity at the dis-

trict level and, along with telephone and mail monitoring, formed the pillars

of Stasi surveillance. One year before its collapse, the Stasi initiated 7,000 OPKs

and roughly 4,500 of the more sophisticated OVs. Former Stasi offi cers have

claimed that more than 70 percent of these operations targeted individuals who

were planning to physically harm another person, and thus were noble under-

takings done for the safety of East German citizens. 25 The archival record does not support this claim. When the Stasi archives were opened in the 1990s, more

than one million East Germans were revealed to have been the subjects of Stasi

operations. 26

The number and quality of operations against individual East Germans and

the recruitment of informants determined the degree to which the district was

“successful,” and these became the Stasi’s performance measures. If a district

launched just a handful of OPKs in any given year, rather than fi fteen to twenty

as expected, the regional offi ce would severely reprimand the local offi ce. The

Stasi also offered a “carrot,” rewarding districts for above-target operational

duty. Every year in Region Schwerin, district offi ces competed for the Dr. Richard

Sorge Banner, a coveted award named after a German who spied for the Soviets

in the 1930s and 1940s, given to the most active district offi ce in the region based

on its operational activity. The successful district offi ce received a sizable award

of 3,000 Ostmarks, which was usually spent on a party for the entire collective. 27

Stasi offi cers received generous bonuses for launching an OPK, and an even

more generous one if the result were deemed a success, which, to the Stasi, was

a range of outcomes apart from criminal prosecution, including recruitment

of the target as an informant, or removal of the threat through intimidation.

In 1988, the Stasi had on the books 19,169 OPKs and roughly 5,000 OVs. Of

those OVs concluded in 1988, only 28 percent led to a criminal proceeding, 28

but again, this should not be interpreted as failure of the Stasi, which was often

equally pleased if the operation led to the acquisition of an informant instead

of an arrest.

Erich Mielke replaced the earlier screening cases—straightforward back-

ground checks on suspects combined with rudimentary surveillance—with the

more sophisticated OPK in 1971; this element of Stasi work was now to be inte-

grated into the annual planning process of every district offi ce. Mielke’s justi-

fi cation for the increased formality was the standard refrain of a threat from

imperialist powers and domestic resisters bent on undermining the system. In

the important Directive 1/71, Mielke called for the “targeted use of the Ministry

for State Security’s power, especially its informant apparatus, in the surveillance

of certain individuals.” 29 His emphasis on the informant apparatus is noteworthy, and certainly came to be the foremost feature of every operation. Directive

1/71 also called on the Stasi to evaluate systematically the information obtained

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T H E F I R M

in an OPK to determine if an informant might be recruited from those under

surveillance, a point illustrated in the Balloon operation and one that is worth

emphasizing: the search for informants was part and parcel of the OPK, not

a chance by-product. 30 No one was immune from having an OPK laid down against them, as Mielke made clear: “Fundamentally, anyone who is on the

territory of the GDR, permanently or temporarily, can be placed under opera-

tional personal surveillance, as long as there is evidence of it being necessary.” 31

In practice, however, the limitation to the territory of the GDR did not always

apply, as the Stasi frequently ranged into West Germany during OPKs. 32

When Erich Mielke updated the guidelines for an OPK in 1981, he high-

lighted the role of the OPK in monitoring for potential criminal activity: “Given their preventative nature, OPKs are to contribute to the prevention and timely

uncovering of negative-enemy behavior.” 33 Accordingly, OPKs were also to have fi rm timelines in which to expose the oppositional behavior and, although

in practice some OPKs dragged on for years, there was nevertheless a sense of

urgency around them. Ideally, the informant who tipped the Stasi off about an

individual was also to be employed on the OPK so that there would be seam-

less operational surveillance. 34 This was a primary reason why the Stasi was frustrated when the tip to launch an OPK came from an offi cial source such as

a party member rather than one of their own informants. Since the OPK aimed

primarily to determine whether the individual in question was an “enemy” of

the state, it is not surprising that Mielke’s 1981 guidelines called for informants

to monitor the target’s activity in his neighborhood, at the workplace, and in

his free time. 35 How and with whom he spent his time naturally provided clues to the Stasi as to the type of individual it was dealing with, but by extension

also brought others into its purview. OPKs were never confi ned to the one indi-

vidual in question but sprawled to encompass all those with whom the target

of the operation was in contact. The OPK was, then, not a surgical strike against

a potential regime opponent but a blunt instrument that surveyed a number

of individuals.

If there were suffi cient suspicion from an OPK that the individual in ques-

tion was engaged in, or planning on, a political activity that ran counter to the

laws of the GDR, the Stasi upgraded the operation to an Operational Case (OV),

the highest level of Stasi operation.36 OVs differed from OPKs in several ways.

First, an OV was to hold a relatively decent possibility of leading to a criminal

prosecution, rather than simply a preliminary investigation as was the case with

OPKs. Erich Mielke outlined in a directive from 1976 that a suspect could be

involved in any number of activities that would permit an OV, including trea-

son, attempts to escape from the GDR, sabotage, bribery, terrorism, disparaging

of the GDR, and the organizing of anti-state groups.37 According to a leading authority on the Stasi, the catalogue of potential offenses was so wide that an

OV could likely have been justifi ed against every East German at some point in

their lives. 38

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Second, an OV required substantial information in order to be initiated, and

as such was almost exclusively the result of a previous OPK. And fi nally, an OV

was not simply passive observation but required informants to be infi ltrated

into the person or group’s immediate surroundings with the purpose of disrup-

tion. 39 As was the case with OPKs, the informant was the Stasi’s most important tool in an OV although the Stasi strove to have only its fi nest informants working at this higher level. Not simply run-of-the-mill informants, OV informants

(because of the more invasive nature of OV work) were described by Mielke as

“courageous, upright, duty-ready, loyal, and tightly bound to the MfS.”40

Although the Stasi strove to initiate formal operations against individuals, much

of its day-to-day work involved mundane, preliminary investigations to determine

whether there were grounds for a formal operation. There were, for example, literally

dozens of incidents at the environmentally catastrophic rayon mill in Wittenberge

that the Stasi investigated, usually without turning them into OPKs. In 1982 the

Stasi investigated a pig farmer who was dumping manure into the Elbe upriver,

contaminating the water supply of the plant, an annoying but by no means revolu-

tionary act that the Stasi investigated without a formal operation.41 Stasi attention

was also drawn to any remotely oppositional act—like pulling down posters in the

factory that blared socialist slogans, which caused the Stasi to dust the posters for

fi ngerprints, or drawing mustaches on posters of party functionaries, which the Stasi investigated by monitoring employees in possession of blue markers.

The Stasi also systematically followed up on bathroom graffi ti (including the

rather original “I’m seeking a Communist”).42 The appalling environmental devastation that the plant caused was something the Stasi kept an eye on, but there was

little it could do about it apart from inform the party. In 1988, that factory alone

produced the equivalent pollution of a city of 400,000 and was responsible for 40

percent of all emissions in Region Schwerin.43 Fearing that panic would ensue if the director of the plant foundry ordered his employees to wear masks to protect

against the vile emissions, he instead opted against such a course of action even

though the concentration of carbon disulfi de was dangerously high.

Other run-of-the-mill duties that fell to the Stasi were monitoring Western

visitors to the sewing machine factory in Wittenberge and the enormously

time-consuming task of investigating the background and acquaintance circle

of every person in the district who had applied to visit the West, or whose job

required travel to the West. General reports on the mood of the population also

fell to the Stasi.

S TA S I O P E R AT I O N S , 1 9 5 0 s – 1 9 70 s

When asked about the biggest changes he had seen in the Stasi during his twenty-

fi ve years as a secret police offi cer, Klaus-Peter Schmid immediately responded,

angrily, that employees in “the Firm” were no longer the patriots of the found-

ing years but were nine-to-fi ve offi ce men. 44 On many scores, Schmid was right.

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Some (although certainly not all) of the initial revolutionary exuberance had

given way to mundane bureaucracy and paperwork—but also to a much more

effi cient Stasi. Operations from the 1950s, that turbulent decade in which the

Stasi was founded, reveal a relatively crude approach, executed by offi cers who

were single-minded, infl exible, and to a large degree not as well educated as

some of the later offi cer corps, 45 and a poorly developed informant system much smaller than in later years. The Stasi surgically targeted overt regime opponents.

By contrast, in the 1980s the Stasi was a refi ned secret police outfi t with a variety of surveillance techniques, spy-labs, and a well-developed informant system at

its disposal. The gargantuan apparatus spilled over into many societal sections

in its search for an ever-widening category of enemies. Its vast network of regu-

lar offi cers, informants, offi cial sources, and part-time helpers, combined with

enormous pressure from the party to know everything of signifi cance in the

land, meant that the Stasi and society became mutually entwined. Because of

the Stasi’s infl uence throughout East German society, an examination of any

particular aspect of East Germany needs to include the Stasi in order to be com-

plete. Setting the Stasi aside in order to address a “positive” aspect of the GDR

such as health care can lead to a distorted view of East German history.46

In the Stasi’s fi rst decade, operations were called “screening cases” rather

than the more familiar OPK of the later years. One screening case that stands

out from District Gransee was “Storm,” which dealt with the investigation of

a horse-breeding society. In 1957, the local police detachment brought to the

attention of the Stasi a society that looked as if it might be a haven for former

members of the Nazi party and its paramilitary arm, the SA. 47 The police were suspicious that all of the approximately sixty members of the society wore identical outfi ts—black pants, white shirts, red ties. The fact that this was a fairly

large organization was advantageous to the Stasi since it made it easier to pen-

etrate with an informant, which the Stasi successfully did four months later.

Informant “Hans-Dieter” immediately reported that the executive of the group

was merely a front for the real brains behind the society, several individuals with

ties to a pre-1945 group called the “Black SS Knighthood.” His key piece of evi-

dence here was a speech by the president of the society that seemed “too intel-

ligent” for that individual.48 As he was on the verge of making a breakthrough in the case, Stasi offi cer Meyer waited impatiently in a conspiratorial home at 3:00

p.m. on April 10, 1958, for Hans-Dieter but the informant never showed up. The

following day, Meyer discovered that his key informant in this case had fl ed to

West Germany. 49

Hans-Dieter had, however, contributed to Stasi surveillance by reporting on

the families and friends of a number of the members of the group. The number

of people in the line of the Stasi’s sight had grown signifi cantly beyond the origi-

nal target group. Two years after the operation had begun, the Stasi appeared

very confused—none of the accusations against the group seemed founded, the

members had at no time spoken out against the regime, there did not appear to

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| 115

be a behind-the-scenes leadership, and the group did not even wear a “uniform”

as the police had initially stated.50 To top things off, the informant who had supplied much of this information had fl ed to the West. Still, the Stasi would

monitor the group for another year before bringing the operation to a merciful

end because “there were no signs whatsoever that the group was against our

state in any form.”51

The Jehovah’s Witnesses, because of their pacifi st stance, were a focus of

the Stasi early in its development. They boldly refused, for example, to partici-

pate in the initial East German election of 1950.52 As early as 1954, the Stasi in District Gransee was conducting a screening case against the group (which was

upgraded to a full-fl edged OV the following year.) The three main targets of the

operation elicited little sympathy from the Stasi even though one of the tar-

gets had spent eight years in the partially female-run Ravensbrück concentration

camp for women, and another had spent nine years in a camp because he had

refused to serve in the Wehrmacht. 53 Apart from the three key fi gures, OV Truth encompassed twenty-three others under surveillance. The Stasi was frustrated

by its inability to penetrate this closed society with an informant. Their best

hope was informant “Bärbel,” whose mother and sister regularly took part in

the Jehovah’s Witnesses meetings. Since Bärbel was consistently denied mem-

bership in the group,54 the Stasi tried to disrupt the group by sending anonymous, threatening letters to them in the hopes of sowing seeds of distrust that

would cause the entire group to disintegrate. The Stasi also considered using

a construction worker who often repaired the house where the Witnesses met

to eavesdrop on conversations. 55 Since these measures produced no signifi cant results, and since the monitoring had not revealed major anti-state activity by

the group or an increase in the size of the group, the Stasi closed the fi le. 56

Unlike the later years when Stasi offi cers had to fully justify the laying down

of an OPK or an OV, it took remarkably little in the 1950s for the Stasi to initi-

ate an operation against an individual. A vague tip from a police offi cer suffi ced

in the above horse-breeding case. In another operation, a lawyer reported to

the local Stasi offi ce that a seventy-year-old client of his suspected his clean-

ing woman was a spy because she often sat by the train tracks as Soviet troop

transports rumbled through the district. 57 She also seemed to be spending time

with an “unsavory” character who worked for the German Railway Company.

Stasi offi cer Schmidt talked to the lawyer’s client and to the party secretary at the train station. Having determined that there was something suspicious, the Stasi

launched a screening case against the woman and for the next year investigated

her, the individual at the railway company, and the people in their acquain-

tance. Perhaps predictably, this fi le turned out to be a case of the seventy-year-old manipulating the Stasi to his own ends. He had wanted a physical relationship

with his much younger cleaning lady and became enraged when she refused

and began dating the railway worker instead. The Stasi was to exact revenge on

his behalf, a conclusion that the Stasi also reached.58 Remarkably, the District

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T H E F I R M

Gransee Stasi offi ce was blasé about the fact that it had been manipulated for

private ends and undertook no action against the man who had tricked his law-

yer into reporting to the Stasi.

On a tip from a party member that a physical education teacher in Zehdenick

was continuing to meet with former high-ranking Nazis, the Stasi undertook

some light duties to investigate the individual, and then launched a full-blown

screening case. 59 The Stasi was enormously suspicious that the teacher had left his house in torrential downpour, and assumed that there must have been a

pressing meeting he wanted to attend. (It turns out that he had supervisory

duties, which he could not miss, at the school ). Two years after launching the

operation, the Stasi looked further into the person who had tipped them off and

concluded that she knew the physical education teacher very well, and had often

had run-ins with him. The Stasi concluded: “Since surveillance of the person in

question has not revealed any enemy activity and since the tip was provided to

us in part for personal reasons, [screening case] Nr. 15/57 should be sent to the

archives.” 60

The Stasi of these districts in the 1950s mirrored broader patterns in East

Germany of a relatively small organization, which focused primarily on easily

identifi able opponents of the regime and was highly dependent on spontaneous

denunciation. In 1955, 30 to 50 percent of all Stasi OVs were started as a result

of an anonymous tip.61 This fact has generally gotten lost in the scholarship on the Stasi, which is heavy on the latter years of the organization when the Stasi

oversaw a much larger network of groomed informants. Historians frequently

contrast the Stasi and Gestapo (and, as a corollary, the Nazi and East German

regimes) on the issue of denunciation. One of the richest fi nds of recent years

with regard to the Gestapo has been the fact that the Gestapo was much more

dependent on denunciations from ordinary Germans than previously thought.

The Gestapo was not on every corner, as many had believed, but ordinary citi-

zens willing to denounce their neighbors were.

As time passed, there was a clear shift in the way that the Stasi used denuncia-

tions in its everyday work. In the initial years, the Stasi did rely to a large extent on random, spontaneous denunciations from the general public, whereas the

fi nal years of the regime were marked by a Stasi that responded almost exclu-

sively to tips from its cultivated informants and its contacts, including leading

factory functionaries and offi cers of the regular police. Spontaneous denuncia-

tion as such, in marked contrast to the Third Reich, had ceased.

During the Stasi’s period of brisk expansion from 1957 to 1971, it also began

to operate differently, moving away from its founding ideology of confronting

class opponents and beginning to take on functions not normally associated

with a secret police—functions related to behind-the-scenes guiding of society,

to infi ltration of state and bureaucracy on a mammoth scale, to the develop-

ment of a sprawling net of informants, agents, and spies. Certain operations

of the 1960s in Districts Gransee and Perleberg demonstrate both the leftover

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| 117

methods of an unrefi ned secret police and the beginnings of the more sophis-

ticated apparatus of the latter years. In OV Maler (painter), an individual at the Wittenberge vegetable oil processing plant was investigated for his verbal support of Alexander Dubcek’s Prague Spring in neighboring Czechoslovakia. The

Stasi instructed an informant to search the suspect’s wallet, which he kept in

his coat pocket in his work locker. The informant found a piece of paper with a

series of numbers and letters as follows

X

12/3

02,30

P

6—4

X=R-X 3 m

Koord. 11/1b

7/a-x

Pail. X 12/4, 3, 7, 5

115°, 89°, 37°

Believing this to be code for a dead-letter box, the Stasi forwarded the cryptic

note on to Berlin, but the cryptanalysts there were unable to break what was in

all likelihood a harmless form of personal math shorthand.

The fi le for OV Maler contains a fl owchart outlining the connections that

he had to twenty-four people in town—all of whom were placed under sur-

veillance in the course of the investigation. As the operation moved into its

fi fth month and as the Stasi had yet to fi nd enough incriminating evidence

on the suspect, Stasi offi cer Pippig, in yet another blunt approach typical of

the earlier years of the Stasi, instructed his key informant to take the suspect

out for drinks in the local pub. The Stasi had previously arranged that the

barkeep would hand out free beer as part of an upcoming beer competition

so as to entice the suspect to have too much to drink and incriminate him-

self. In the end, the suspect was indeed arrested. 62 Missing documentation

prevents researchers from knowing why he was arrested and whether he was

convicted.

Citizen reactions to the “protective border measures” of August 13, 1961, as

the Communist Party termed the Berlin Wall, caused a small fl urry of Stasi activ-

ity in these districts. In Wittenberge, the Stasi apprehended an eighteen-year-old

student who had laid hundreds of fl yers at people’s doorsteps urging them to

“Think about Berlin” and vote against the unity list in the upcoming elections.

The student, who had the bad luck of being spotted at Peace Square by a party

member while distributing his pamphlets, received a jail sentence of one year

and four months. 63 A worker at the rayon factory in Wittenberge was also investigated by the Stasi for speaking out against the Wall. If he expressed remorse

about his statements when confronted by the Stasi, he was to be allowed to con-

tinue in his job because he was a skilled employee. If he stood by his statements,

the Stasi was to arrest him. 64 The concluding report does not reveal his fate.

By the 1970s, even outlying rural districts like Gransee were becoming more

professionalized in their operations. OV Student, an extensive operation in

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T H E F I R M

1977/78 conducted by the Gransee Stasi offi ce, exemplifi es the “new” Stasi. The

documentation on the operation that sits in the Stasi archive today in Berlin

fi lls six bursting fi le folders, and more than 1,570 pages—more than any given

volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The student in question was a twenty-

year-old architecture student who had become pen pals with a prisoner in West

Germany in 1975 via the BBC program “Friday Club.” The two fell in love and

exchanged gold engagement rings through the mail a year after their correspon-

dence had begun. 65 Although the Stasi never learned what the prisoner had done to earn jail time, the case offi cers were aware that he had received four years and

that he was due to be released in May 1978.66 The basic goal of OV Student was simply to prevent the student from leaving East Germany illegally to be with her

fi ancé. Informants were used, as usual, to monitor the student, but the Stasi also

attempted to break off contact altogether by sending her a letter ostensibly from

the prisoner in the West. Years later, the Stasi offi cer who drafted the letter stated matter-of-factly that he had authored the letter himself, taking great care that it

sound genuine. Upon receipt of the letter, in which the prisoner claimed that his

fi ancée was just one of the many girls that he wrote to in East Germany as part of

a general West German prisoner pastime, the female student became very upset,

to the point of wanting to break off the engagement. 67 The Stasi offi cer behind the fabricated letter took it as a compliment that his forgery was so good the

recipient did not doubt its authenticity. The prisoner, however, was eventually

able to convince the student that he was not the author of the letter.

Things turned more serious when the prisoner suggested that they take a

hotel room in East Berlin after his release and try to get her pregnant. She could

then apply on humanitarian grounds to leave East Germany. 68 At 7 a.m. on October 29, 1977, at the Berlin Wall crossing point on Heinrich-Heine-Strasse,

the student stood waiting to see her fi ancé for the fi rst time in her life. In the

Stasi fi les on this operation, grainy black-and-white pictures taken with a zoom

lens show an elegant woman nervously checking her watch. She waited in vain

for two hours before taking the subway back home. Following her failed attempt

to meet up with her fi ancé, Offi cer Gaeth confronted the student directly, telling

her that she would lose her place in architecture school if she did not break off

contact with the prisoner.69

The student agreed to end her relationship. Following her fi nal letter to her

fi ancé, the prisoner responded with several letters of bewilderment, all of which

the Stasi intercepted.70 Two months later, comfortable that she no longer had contact with the prisoner, Gaeth approached the student about another topic:

whether she would work for the Stasi as an informant. She agreed on the spot

and took the code name “Franziska Linkerhand” after the novel by Brigitte

Reimann. 71 Although the Stasi had caused her anguish, her reaction should not

be baffl ing. Ralf-Dieter Gaeth had exhibited on several occasions the power that

he wielded—he could prevent her further studies, he controlled her mail, he

had halted the entry of her fi ancé into East Germany, he had had her stripped of

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| 119

her identifi cation card and replaced it with a PM 12 card (Pass- und Meldewesen

[Passports and Registration]) that restricted her ability to move about East

Germany. To a twenty-one-year-old student, the Stasi offi cer must have appeared

as someone with far-reaching powers, someone not to be denied. It would be

an error to think that the student had agreed to become an informant out of

conviction. She must have believed that to refuse to do so would have had seri-

ous repercussions for her. Since she spent most of her time in Weimar at the

architecture school, District Gransee transferred her fi les to the District Weimar

offi ce, and her fate remains unknown.

Operation Student in particular offers an opportunity to dispel the version

of informant work offered in “offi cial” histories of the Stasi, whereby infor-

mants were recruited strictly for a specifi c task rather than as a general attempt

to augment the informant roster. The 2002 volume Die Sicherheit (Security), a

work written by former Stasi offi cers, argues that “informants were recruited

neither to build up a swollen reservoir of conspiratorial assistants nor to meet

quotas, but rather exclusively to help with concrete assignments.” 72 In this

operation, the architectural student was recruited for no other reason than

that the controlling offi cer recognized an opportunity to recruit an individual

into Stasi work who, because of her experience with the organization, was

likely to agree.

O P E R AT I O N S I N T H E 1 9 8 0 s

The larger, multilayered, and generally more refi ned Stasi operations of the

1980s in Districts Gransee and Perleberg stand in sharp contrast to the opera-

tions of the earlier era. For both districts, the plurality of operations in the 1980s (more than 40 percent for each district) dealt with monitoring individuals who

had applied to leave East Germany, an issue that the Stasi never satisfactorily

resolved. The catalyst for such an operation was the above-board application

of an East German citizen to leave East Germany, an act that was indeed legal

in East Germany but overwhelmingly led to a denial unless the applicant was

a senior citizen. Between 1977 and 1988, 121,000 East Germans emigrated legal-

ly. 73 The bureaucratic term for a would-be emigrant was Antragsteller auf ständige Ausreise (AstA), or “applicant to permanently leave the country.” In 1989, many East Germans put a capital A in masking tape in their car’s rear window. This

was required by law for those just learning to drive, called Anfänger (beginners), to signal to other drivers one’s lack of experience on the road. In the last days

of the regime, however, putting an A in one’s car window became a protest act.

Many experienced drivers adorned their rear windows with the A to indicate

they were an “Applicant” to leave East Germany. Given the proliferation of these

window signs in 1989, and the fact that at least some of them were legitimate,

there was little the police could do. It is worth making clear here that these were

not individuals who had applied to visit the West temporarily for an important

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family occasion such as major birthdays or funerals—the background screening

of which also fell to the Stasi—but to leave East Germany permanently.

An application to emigrate from East Germany was a red fl ag to the Stasi of

an opponent of the regime and someone who might look to illegal means to fl ee

East Germany if their application was not approved. In the case of the unorigi-

nally named OPK Zahn (tooth), a female dentist and her husband, a food engi-

neer, applied to emigrate to West Germany in 1984 and were, as a consequence,

placed under surveillance. Unbeknownst to the dentist, her husband had been

an informant for the Stasi for two years in the 1970s, and he greatly feared repri-

sal from her should she fi nd out. Some of the fi rst measures to be undertaken in

OPK Zahn were standard fare for the Stasi—monitoring of the individuals’ mail

(letters to and from the couple were steamed open, the contents photocopied,

and the envelope ironed shut), establishment of observation posts around the

couple’s home, obtaining samples of their handwriting, and, most importantly,

employing informants (in this case, informants “Andrea” and “Pluto”) to fi nd

out as much as possible about their interest in leaving East Germany or, alterna-

tively, what they planned if their application were to be rejected.74

As several cases have demonstrated, informants played the most important

role in monitoring suspect individuals in OPKs and OVs, far beyond the impor-

tance of telephone or mail monitoring. Much like white blood cells, informants

were to locate bodies harmful to the well-being of the corpus and disseminate

information about their presence to the immune system. In the cases of appli-

cants to emigrate, the Stasi instructed its informants to encourage the applicant

to withdraw their application; this was the easiest solution to the perceived prob-

lem. Informant Pluto, for example, had been a longtime friend of the couple (he

had met the husband back in high school) and invited them over for a pleasant

night of rummy, per the instructions of his controlling offi cer.

Pluto was able to determine that the wife was upset because the regime forced

her to work in a hospital rather than take over her father’s dental practice. In a

sad case of putting her husband on a pedestal he did not deserve, she believed

that the real reason she was not permitted to take over the clinic was that her

husband had refused to work for the Stasi. 75 In the course of the conversation, Pluto obtained the names of several individuals with whom the couple had contact, names his case offi cer then forwarded on to the regional level. Indicative of

the power of the informant, Pluto recommended to the Stasi that the dentist not

be awarded her father’s practice since he did not believe that it would cause her

to withdraw her application to emigrate.76 Phone monitoring had revealed that the dentist called her sister and her husband in East Berlin. The Stasi then began

a fi le on this couple, too, and asked the regional Berlin Stasi offi ce for any information on them. 77 Informant Andrea, responsible for monitoring the dentist at her workplace, reported to the Stasi that the dentist had complained about the

GDR to her patients, even going so far as to say that the GDR was similar to the

Third Reich. 78 By June 1984, about fi ve months after the operation had begun,

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the Stasi knew that the couple had postal or telephone contact with two sisters

and one aunt in West Germany, a fellow dentist in Wittenberge, and three other

East German citizens. Within a few months, the number of individuals in the

operation who were “secondary people,” as the Stasi termed it, rose to thirty-

four. 79 OPK Zahn, just like the search for informant candidates, soon ballooned to touch many more individuals than the initial couple in question.

Two years after the operation had begun, the Stasi was frustrated that there

still were no grounds to prosecute the couple. They were determined to follow

through with the application to emigrate and had made no signs of preparing

to leave the GDR illegally. Undeterred, the Stasi simply changed the focus of

the operation, looking to obtain a conviction for slander or defamation of the

GDR.

Meanwhile, the private life of the couple deteriorated as they desperately

waited for permission to leave East Germany. In April 1986, the husband quit

his job and began checking on a daily basis with the local council to see if his

application had been approved. Within a year, his wife had quit her practice,

and the couple had sold their house to a local veterinarian. Encountering dead

ends at every turn, they wrote ceaselessly to anyone who might be able to help.

In 1986 and 1987, they wrote nearly fi fty letters to the local council asking for

updates on their fi le and drawing attention to the wife’s deteriorating health as

her nerves frayed waiting for news. They wrote to the East German leader, Erich

Honecker, on three occasions, letters in which the utter anguish of the couple is

palpable: “In our powerlessness, our despair, and our mercy, we turn to you. We

ask you to intervene on our behalf.” 80

Driven to desperation, the husband entered the district council offi ce in

Perleberg and said he would not leave the building until he had an answer on

his application. At that point, he had been waiting about four years. Following

his arrest by the Stasi, the husband calmly explained to his interrogating offi cer

that he did not consider it a crime to want an update on his fi le after four years,

nor did he consider it a crime to want to leave East Germany. 81 The husband was sentenced to ten months in jail in Cottbus for the public disruption he had

caused at the council offi ce. 82 In a strange twist, the closing on the sale of the

house was postponed because of the jail sentence, but the veterinarian was in

the process of moving into the house and pressured the Stasi to remove the fam-

ily. In order to appease the veterinarian, the Stasi released the husband from jail

and relocated him in the West. Shortly thereafter, his wife and daughter joined

him for the new life in West Germany that they had been seeking for so long.

What is frustrating for a historian of the Stasi is the lack of patterns or predict-

ability in its conduct. OPK Transport, for example, is a case that is fundamentally similar to OPK Zahn, both in content, in the era it occurred, and in the district: A husband and his wife applied to leave East Germany in 1985. Both worked in

the health sector in important jobs; she was a nurse at the Wittenberge hospital,

he drove an ambulance. Both became belligerent as time went on, appearing at

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the council offi ce in Perleberg on a regular basis, writing letters to local offi cials, and at one point threatening to look for a “public” solution to their quandary.

She quit her job.83 Five months after the start of OPK Transport, the couple was permitted to emigrate to West Germany, where she found work as a nurse and

he as an ambulance driver. 84 Unlike the fi rst case, where the husband ended up serving jail time for his contentious attitude, this couple was simply allowed

to leave. There is no good explanation why the fate of the two couples was so

different.

Stasi operations that attempted to coerce East Germans to withdraw their

applications to emigrate exhibited a high tendency to use contact persons and

irregular collaborators, a logical course to pursue given that family members in

particular could use their infl uence to the Stasi’s advantage. Understandably,

most would-be emigrants had confl icted feelings about leaving friends and

family behind. It was not uncommon for the Stasi to approach an applicant’s

mother to urge the applicant to refl ect on her increasing need for care, or to

have a close friend or co-worker relate what a loss it would be to him personally

if the applicant were to leave East Germany. 85 In instances where the applicant

did not have stable family relations or work environment, the Stasi turned to

more creative methods of locating collaborators who could exert pressure on

the individual to remain in East Germany. In OV Treffpunkt (meeting place), the Stasi used the former cellmate of a twenty-one-year-old applicant to leave East

Germany to convince him to withdraw his application. 86 Their efforts failed.

The focus of attention for Stasi offi cers in District Gransee was the more

than twenty Soviet and East German military installations housed in the dis-

trict. The Stasi constantly feared that the area was overrun with spies eager to

glimpse the latest military hardware of the Warsaw Pact. From 1983 to 1986, for

example, the Stasi investigated an innkeeper who mentioned in passing that he

thought a new rocket base was being built in the district. Mail monitoring, the

slipping-in of an informant as waiter, and three years of monitoring his friends

and relatives revealed nothing out of the ordinary. 87 Even more revealing of the tension surrounding these sites was OPK Observant, in which a West German

couple was investigated because they had visited her in-laws on a regular basis

in East Germany, and on two occasions had been spotted with binoculars near

a Soviet military base. When approached by the police, the couple replied that

they were interested in their family’s nearby property, and in particular whether

there were still catfi sh in the pond. 88

Locals revealed in casual chats with undercover Stasi offi cers that there had

not been fi sh in the pond in ages, and that a catfi sh was far too large for that

pond anyway—suffi cient evidence for the Stasi to believe it had a been fed a

bogus cover story. One of the Stasi offi cers assigned to the case rapidly became

an expert on catfi sh, voraciously reading the only academic monograph on the

subject. The offi cer wrote, in all seriousness: “Jozef Mihalik in his publication

on catfi sh writes that it is the largest fresh water fi sh in Central Europe, and can

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achieve 3 to 5 meters [9–16 ft] in length. This conclusively demonstrates that no

fi sh of this size can live in the 30 cm [12 in] deep pond and thus the claim by

the West German citizen to want to see if there are catfi sh in the pond must be

viewed as a cover story for observing the military site.” 89 After a year of observing the couple’s visits to East Germany, and continuing talks with fi shermen in the

area, the Stasi admitted that there was no evidence of espionage and sheepishly

acknowledged that a “fi sh very similar to the catfi sh” had inhabited the pond

for decades.90 Apparently, the last thing that the Stasi thought to do was inspect the pond for fi sh.

The most signifi cant operation related to a military base began in the

quiet of a June 1987 night in the countryside near Gransee. It was this oper-

ation that proved so exhausting to Markus Schram, encountered in chap-

ter 2. A German teenager by the last name of Baer climbed a wall and was

16 feet (5 m) within the boundaries of a Soviet military installation when

a Soviet guard in a watchtower spotted him. The nineteen-year-old guard

entering into the last hour of his twelve-hour shift shouted at him fi rst in

Russian, then in broken German: “Stop. Be shot.” The boy scurried over

the wall as the soldier fi red a warning shot into the air, and ran into the

woods. The Soviet soldier gave chase. Feigning fatigue, the boy dropped

to his knees in front of the soldier, at which point the fl eeing suspect’s

brother jumped out of the woods and tried to grab the guard’s AK-47. The

soldier fi red. The fi rst bullet ripped through one boy’s upper thigh, and he

dragged himself several feet before dying. According to the Soviet soldier, he

shot the second boy in the throat in self-defense and killed him instantly.

A short distance from the bodies the Stasi found a moped and some tools,

suggesting that the reason for the boys’ interest in the installation was to

secure parts—either by theft or barter—for the moped. 91 The boys had been regulars at the military base, often collecting scrap metal and waste from the

kitchen.

Fifteen minutes after the shooting, the Soviet commander telephoned the

police station at Gransee about the incident, and by 7:00 p.m. a doctor from

town had pronounced both boys dead. The offi cial autopsy conducted at a

nearby army hospital revealed a damning inconsistency in the soldier’s story.

Although the fi rst boy did indeed die from blood loss as a result of the bullet

wound to his thigh, the bullet in the second boy was found wedged near his

upper teeth on the left side of his mouth, and the entry hole clearly was in his

back. Without mincing words, the doctor reported: “The entry hole found in the

corpse of [name blacked out] contradicts the testimony of the Soviet guard, who

claimed that at the time of fi ring the victim was facing him.” 92

Unknown to most Western researchers during the Cold War, the Stasi was respon-

sible for damage control in the face of disasters. When an Interfl ug fl ight carrying a Mecklenburg school group crashed in 1985 just shy of East Berlin’s Schönefeld

airport, for example, the Stasi was fi rst on site. Töpfer, the leader of the District

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Gransee Stasi offi ce, was on the scene within twenty minutes of the shooting at

the Soviet base. At eight the next morning, the Stasi held a meeting at which all

members of the district offi ce were informed of what had happened and ordered to

keep in close contact with their informants to monitor the district. The Stasi called

for immediate mail monitoring of the relatives and acquaintances of the victims,

as well as blanket mail monitoring of the cities of Gransee and Fürstenberg for at

least eight days, and longer in the immediate area of the shootings.93

Even before the formal OV Vergeltung (retaliation) began, the Stasi met with

high-level contacts from the area to explain what had happened at the Soviet

base. The leader of the Soviet military base was informed on a continual basis

of Stasi activities. The Soviets agreed not to frequent some of the pubs in town,

nor to walk the streets in groups. Of course, the Stasi was extremely concerned

with tracking the progress of gossip about the event, duly noting four days

after the occurrence that word had leaked out to the towns of Zehdenick and

Gransee and into the countryside, and bars fi lled with chatter about the event,

most of it highly disparaging to Russians, including a common refrain of “If

you are our friends, why do you shoot us?” 94 In one case, a twenty-one-year-old with a troubled past and fortifi ed with alcohol accused a restaurant owner of

being a Russian friend, spitting at him: “Don’t you know that they’ve shot two

Germans?” The youth brawled with police as they moved in on him and his

friends, amid his taunts of “I don’t know why I paid dues in the German-Soviet

Friendship League—I guess for the coffi ns of the boys.” The young man was

sentenced to one year and three months in jail for rowdy behavior. 95

The extent to which the Stasi orchestrated the funeral service for the Baer

brothers provides insight into the manner in which ordinary Germans were

co-opted into the system of repression on an ad hoc, frequently involuntary

basis. (Although the names have been crossed out in the Stasi documents as

required by German law, they have since become common knowledge and can

therefore be used here.)96 In order to keep the father of the boys under tight control on the day of the funeral, the Stasi arranged with the funeral director

that Herr Baer would not be able to inspect the bodies too closely during visi-

tation. (The parents had divorced well before 1987 and the mother had moved

away, leaving the father of the teenagers as the focus of the operation.) An infor-

mant had already investigated the background of the hearse drivers who would

transport the bodies and of the workers assigned to dig the graves. The issue of

whether the sons had been shot in the back had not gone away, and the Stasi

took great care to cover up the Soviet soldier’s conduct. An informant reported

that the father had discussed with the parish priest who would be conducting

the funeral service whether it might be possible for the priest to inspect the

body. In reviewing the plan for the day, the Stasi also noted that after the service

at noon and prior to the reception, there would be a period of roughly thirty

minutes when the caskets would be unsupervised, and could present an oppor-

tunity for the father, or others, to inspect the corpses.97

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In the end, the father was not able to inspect the bodies closely enough dur-

ing the service to see the entry wound—thanks to the combined efforts of 110

Stasi offi cers, 74 police offi cers, and an undetermined number of informants

and “irregular collaborators.” 98 In addition, the number of individuals whom

the Stasi monitored apart from the father is noteworthy—the hearse drivers and

grave diggers, the parish priest who gave the eulogy, and the mortuary assistants

who prepared the corpses for viewing. Informant “Cordula Peters” reported

that the eulogy did not contain any provocative references, stating simply that

the two boys had died “tragically.” 99 Perhaps as the fi nal insult, Herr Baer was instructed as to what would appear on the gravestones.100

Four weeks after the incident, the Stasi was shocked to fi nd that West German

radio, television, and newspapers carried the story of the shootings, including

the widely read tabloid Bildzeitung, which stated: “At a barracks of the Soviet forces in Germany, near Fürstenberg, a 16- and 19-year-old were shot. They

wanted to trade for scrap metal as they had in the past.” By using informants,

the District Gransee Stasi were able to determine that the father’s sister-in-law,

who lived in West Germany, had provided information to the West German

press on what had occurred.

At this point, the Stasi began OV Vergeltung against Herr Baer in order to

prevent him from retaliating against the Soviets, whether verbally or physically,

and to stop him from talking to his sister-in-law in the West about the incident.

The backbone of the Stasi’s approach to this “issue” was per usual—it would

employ informants from the population to monitor the individual, as well as

offi cial contact persons. The lead informant in this operation was “Troll” (the

most troubling aspect of this name is that the informants always freely chose

their own cover names). Informant “Werner” monitored the target at the work

place; informant “Sunshine” (clearly, a happier disposition) was in contact with

the sister-in-law who lived in Berlin. The Stasi also saw in the Herr Baer’s boss

an individual who could exert appropriate pressure so that he did not speak

disparagingly about the Soviets or the GDR.

Töpfer, the head of the district Stasi, ordered the father’s telephone moni-

tored, stating that all information describing, interpreting, or commenting on

the incident was of interest. 101 The Stasi also intended to closely monitor his

sister-in-law’s upcoming visit, including searching his apartment, making a copy

of his apartment key, and creating an observation post across the road.102 The

goals of the operation as articulated by the Stasi were straightforward—to pre-

vent the “abuse” of the Herr Baer by “enemy mass media” and other enemies,

and to infl uence him in such a way that he act negatively neither toward the

Soviet forces in Germany nor the GDR overall.103

A year of monitoring revealed little enemy behavior. Herr Baer was behav-

ing himself in public and indeed, he was delighted that he was able to get a car

more quickly than normal, something that the Stasi had arranged. His second

wife’s pregnancy was also at the top of his thoughts. The boys’ graves had not

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been a focus of public demonstrations. Nobody, apart from family members,

dropped by to express their condolences on the day following the burial. Mail

and telephone monitoring had not revealed any particularly noticeable com-

ments by the target or his acquaintances.104 By August of the following year, the Stasi in the district felt comfortable enough to close the fi le. Informant Troll, in

his many personal conversations with the target, had determined that the father

had come to terms with the death of his sons and was focusing on his new baby,

which had arrived in January. The father’s sister-in-law in West Germany was

a woman of modest intellect, according to Troll, who had met her on several

occasions in 1988 when she visited the father and was therefore unlikely to be in

contact with enemy agencies in West Germany. Informant Werner echoed much

of informant Troll’s conclusions, completely ruling out any act of revenge on

the part of the father. The one-year anniversary of the incident passed without

public notice. As a result, the operation was formally closed, with the proviso of

placing an informant in the Fürstenberg area on the anniversary, keeping an eye

on the graves, and monitoring the mail for another six months.105

Methodically and skillfully, with a clinical focus on the job at hand and not

the moral nature of what had occurred, the Stasi had kept secret from the entire

population of District Gransee, and especially from the father, that a teenage

boy had been shot in the back while running away from a Soviet soldier dur-

ing peacetime. Moreover, this operation provides a clear example of how many

in East Germany were drawn into the repression system against their will. The

Stasi relied not only on its own offi cers and informants but on the occasional

cooperation of those in a variety of positions—from factory bosses to funeral

home directors to police offi cers to teachers—who otherwise had no dealings

with the Stasi. In other words, the repressive apparatus of the Stasi cannot be

measured solely on the basis of its offi cial workers and informants. This other

category of individual, it should be emphasized, was not the contact person—

the “offi cial” source to whom the Stasi turned on a regular basis—but often a

one-off or irregular contact. In some cases, the personal friends of Stasi offi cers,

or the casual acquaintance on the street, delivered information to them. 106 The long-serving leader of the district next to Perleberg recalled fondly that “he never

lost contact to the masses” 107 and prided himself on the fact that people on the

street would often let him know what was going on in the district. Setting aside

for the moment whether his relationship to the population was as rosy as he

suggests, he does alert historians to the fact that Stasi personnel had their own

informal networks, which could be tapped for offi cial purposes. In the case of

OV Vergeltung, the funeral home director and the parish priest become—briefl y, unwillingly, informally, but not inconsequentially—agents of the secret police.

Similarly, the effect of the Stasi reached beyond the target of an operation.

“Secondary” individuals who found themselves with even a loose connection

to the subject of a Stasi investigation were monitored and recorded in the card

catalog. To come under surveillance of the Stasi in East Germany, one might

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have only a few degrees of separation from the target of one of their operations.

The dentist and his wife were the focus of OPK Zahn, but there were thirty-

four other people that the Stasi investigated in the course of the operation.

In OPK Meister, an additional twelve came under surveillance. In OV Retaliation, all residents of Fürstenberg and Gransee had their mail monitored for a period

of time. The “secondary people” were the collateral damage in the Stasi’s world

and were not limited to surveillance operations—they were also investigated

when anyone applied to visit the West (some 40,000 East Germans a year vis-

ited the West from 1973 to 1982), 108 or applied for jobs that would bring them in contact with the West, like truck drivers. The Stasi also investigated the circles

of friends, family, and acquaintances of every informant candidate and every

would-be Stasi offi cer.

T H E I S S U E O F C O L L A B O R AT I O N B E Y O N D

I N F O R M A N T S

To monitor any suspect, the Stasi relied on informants, mail monitoring, and

telephone tapping, but another key source of information in OPKs and OVs

was “offi cial” sources such as factory bosses or police offi cers. These individu-

als are sometimes referred to as Partner des operativen Zusammenwirkens (POZW, Collaborative operational partners) but more frequently as Kontaktpersonen

(contact persons). In modern human resources jargon, these individuals would

be considered “casual employees,” with the important distinction that they gen-

erally did not receive payment for their efforts.

One of the saddest limitations of the Stasi Files Law that was promulgated

by the all-German parliament in 1991 was that it barred former full-time Stasi

employees and registered informants from public offi ce, but did not address the

issue of contact persons. One former Stasi offi cer complained bitterly—and no

doubt rightly—that it was unfair that he was banned from employment after

1989 with the public sector, indeed was vilifi ed in the streets, because he had

been a full-time Stasi offi cer, while his contact in the local police detachment

who telephoned him on average fi ve times per day with tips about individuals

was allowed to continue as a police offi cer in the united Germany. These contact

persons presented a challenge to senior Stasi offi cers who were unsure whether

to classify them as informants, who would then be subject to specifi c directives.

In 1989, Erich Mielke was forced to take a stand: “Contact persons are not infor-

mants. . . . We know of cases, however, where contact persons are employed in

OPKs, or where their work differs from that of an informant only insofar as one

is registered, the other not.”109 It was Mielke’s wish that informants be used on a regular basis while contacts were to be used much more sparingly.

Beyond the registered informants and the nonregistered contact persons lies

a third category of collaborator, a category that might be conceived of as “irregu-

lar collaborator.” Former Stasi offi cers, in their highly illuminating two-volume

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T H E F I R M

defense of the Stasi, tangentially refer to this form of assistance to the Stasi when

they write: “It is beyond doubt: Every intelligence service depends primarily on

information obtained by its informants and other ‘tip-givers.’ ”110 Although these tip-givers capture a certain type of collaboration in this category of informant, it

does not fully describe individuals who performed a task or rendered a service,

rather than provided information to the Stasi, like the funeral director in OV

Vergeltung, whose involvement with the Stasi was limited to providing a specifi c service once, for a clearly defi ned purpose. This category would be defi ned by

its lack of regular contact to the Stasi, and as such would have the weakest ties

to the Stasi while still forming part of the repression apparatus. Although the

number of registered informants is extremely high (173,000), this number does

not include contacts111 nor “irregular collaborators.” It is worth stating this point explicitly: the Stasi’s network of unoffi cial cooperation reached far beyond the

well-researched registered informants (IMs) to include contacts and irregular

collaborators.

Several operations should help illuminate these various forms of participa-

tion with the Stasi. School principals and teachers formed an important category

of contact persons for the Stasi because they were so closely involved with East

German youth. Even in the 1980s, high school students were being investigated

by the Stasi at the fi rst sign of oppositional behavior. Franz Lehmann was a ninth

grade student in District Gransee who, in his class on German culture, drew a

picture of “the Future City,” as was required of all students in class. With colored

pencils, Lehmann, a mediocre artist, drew three city streets heading off to the hori-

zon that ended in front of three clearly labeled buildings: a prison, a bordello, and

a nuclear power plant. This negative view of the future was even more suspicious

to the teacher because draped across all three streets was a banner that read: “FC

[football club] Union, German Champion,” even though Berlin Dynamo FC was

the soccer team of choice for the party. The teacher insisted that the student draw

another, more proper, vision of the future. This time the cityscape was dominated

by prisons and large piles of trash. After having gone to the Stasi’s local offi ce to inform them of the incident, the school principal was told that the teaching body

should continue as usual. The Stasi would handle the case.112

Stasi offi cer Werner Oschim followed up with still more contacts, including

the party secretary in the school and the student’s teacher, in order to form a

fuller picture of the suspect. Oschim determined that the student dressed in

punk style (chains, safety pin as an earring, short hair, neck scarves), had no real

group of friends, watched West German television, and was lacking ambition.

He was proud of his father, who had opposed the regime. Oschim concluded

on this, in his view grim, situation: “The task now with [name blacked out] is to

save whatever there is left to save, to limit his infl uence on other students and to

restore harmony to the school.” 113

The following spring, Lt. Ralf-Dieter Gaeth of the Stasi intervened directly,

sitting Lehmann down for a serious chat. Lehmann did not hide the fact that

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he despised the lack of freedom in the GDR, that he would like to visit West

Germany and possibly stay there, and that he liked to push his teachers to get a

reaction. Soon, however, Lehmann ran into trouble with the law and was sen-

tenced to two years and six months at a youth detention facility. (Due to pri-

vacy considerations, historians are not allowed to know what offense the youth

committed.) As his sentence drew to a close, the Stasi approached Lehmann

with a request to become a Stasi informant. Lehmann agreed in July 1987.114

Although not totally naïve, the Stasi was nonetheless so obsessed with the desire

to recruit informants that they took aboard someone who was much more an

opponent than collaborator. “In the fi rst phase, the motive for his unoffi cial

cooperation was thirst for adventure,” wrote Stasi offi cer Bracklow, who contin-

ued, “Furthermore, the informant saw in his close ties to the Ministry for State

Security the opportunity to avoid being sent to jail again.” 115

The newly minted informant soon became involved in oppositional church

activities and the embryonic environmental movement in the district, taking on

a leadership role and helping to produce fi ve issues of an underground news-

paper. The local Stasi offi ce was delighted by his reports on these groups and

provided him with a 100 Ostmark bonus. It took the regional offi ce in Potsdam

to point out that the informant was using his links to the Stasi to protect these

movements, not to destroy them, and ordered District Gransee to call off its

association with him. 116

In the early 1980s OPK Sänger (Singer) monitored an individual who had twice

been arrested for attempting to fl ee East Germany and had now applied to leave

legally. The Stasi approached several contacts to fi nd out more about the individ-

ual and to attempt to infl uence him to withdraw his application. These included

the party chairman at the factory where he worked, the head of the Internal Affairs

Department on the city council where Singer had applied to leave East Germany,

the mayor, a co-worker, and the subject’s mother. As instructed, the mother tried

to convince her son not to leave East Germany because of her failing health. The

son responded that she looked to be in great shape. She also mentioned to her

son her concern that the Stasi had been visiting her ever since he applied to emi-

grate, and she told the Stasi that the more she talked to her son about it, the

harder his views became.117 Because he refused to withdraw his application, the Stasi admitted defeat and resettled him in the West: “Our aim for this operation—

the withdrawal of his application to emigrate—could not be obtained.”118 Singer

went on to live in West Germany, where he would be able to do more than just

“eat, sleep, and work,” as he phrased it.119

In this case the fact that the individual was a loner, former prisoner, and poor

worker caused the Stasi to look to resettlement rather than to more actively pur-

sue the case. It was also fortunate for Singer that he did not contemplate leaving

East Germany illegally, for the Stasi treated those cases differently. An operation

that was conducted side by side with OPK Sänger was OV Treffpunkt, concerning a twenty-one-year-old male who was planning on leaving East Germany

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illegally. The suspect was a troubled youth who had spent time in group homes

in Halle and Dessau and had turned to criminal activities as a teen, stealing

cars and attempting to fl ee East Germany. For the latter offense he spent ten

months in jail in 1980 and, once released, was neither permitted to leave District

Gransee without police permission nor to spend time at two popular restaurants

in town. 120 The suspect continued to write to a friend in West Germany who had escaped East Germany through the mountainous region in Saxony along the

Czech border by stowing away on a cargo train that crossed the border at 2 a.m.

Given his past and recent mail monitoring, which had revealed his interest in a

renewed escape attempt, the Stasi began OV Treffpunkt and turned to an irregu-

lar collaborator, the former cell mate, for assistance. The Stasi located the cell

mate and instructed him to come to District Gransee and talk with the suspect.

Since the suspect was out of town when the cell mate arrived, he struck up a

conversation with the suspect’s girlfriend, who confi rmed that he was planning

on leaving East Germany illegally. 121 When taken into custody for questioning,

the suspect stated categorically: “I will try over and over to leave the GDR and if

I can’t do it legally then I will try by illegal methods. I would also like to add that I won’t shy away from the use of force and if need be of weapons to leave East

Germany.”122 The confession was suffi cient for the Stasi to turn the case over to the local police to begin the prosecution process. 123

B R E A K I N G A N O P P O N E N T

The Stasi did not always seek to arrest regime opponents. Frequently it was

enough simply to scare them to the point where they stopped their activities.

Alternatively, the Stasi could have them removed from a position of infl uence

at work, or the Stasi could pressure them into becoming informants. It would

be an error, then, to measure the effectiveness of the Stasi on arrests alone.124

Although the former could be ad hoc measures, the Stasi followed, from the

1970s on, a formal strategy of limiting the oppositional impact of an individual

in society who was not technically engaged in illegal conduct and therefore

could not be sent to jail. This strategy is known as Zersetzen, translated as “to undermine,” “to subvert,” or “to break down,” and involved unsettling the targeted individuals, often by spreading rumors about them that would ruin their

reputations and cause great personal distress, or by sowing seeds of suspicion

in a group. 125 There was also a certain amount of psycho-terror, such as phone calls in the middle of the night. Many affected by the Stasi referred to Zersetzen as “punishment without verdict.” 126 Mielke defi ned Zersetzen as the “exploita-tion of differences among enemy forces, directed in a manner that results in

the splintering, paralyzing, disorganizing, or isolation of the forces so that their

activities are considerably reduced, or even halted altogether.” 127

Although the tactic had been used in the past, as in the operation against

the Jehovah’s Witnesses in District Gransee in the 1950s when the Stasi sent the

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group anonymous letters to spread distrust among the members, it became the

primary tool of the Stasi with the introduction of Guideline 1/76 in 1976, which

outlined in some detail specifi c methods to break down an opponent. 128 That

the directive came out at this point is a result of détente producing some inter-

national goodwill toward the GDR, which the regime did not want to damage

by employing brutal repression against domestic opponents, and of the fact that

in 1975 East Germany had signed on to the Helsinki Final Act, which called on

signatory states, in very public fashion, to safeguard basic rights. In refl ecting

on these constraints, Mielke said to his assembled colleagues: “You know that,

for political as well as operational reasons, we cannot immediately arrest all

enemies. . . . We know these enemies, have them under surveillance, and know

what they are planning.” 129

Zersetzen always took place within an OV. Gossiping in a pub that an indi-

vidual was an adulterer or an alcoholic was a preferred Stasi method to under-

mine its target, but Stasi offi cers might also post anonymous notices on trees in

the town with the same message. The fi rst leader of the Stasi Archives after the

fall of the Wall had been himself a victim of Zersetzen; his wife received anonymous letters about his (fabricated) extramarital affairs. If the Stasi really wanted

to infl ict damage on the person’s reputation, it would spread a rumor that the

individual in question was a Stasi informant. In essence, the Stasi aimed to iso-

late the individual through the spread of false information and rumors, the

origins of which the individual was never to know. This method of repression

was much more subtle than the terror and torture methods of the Gestapo (and

even of the Stasi in the 1950s), but it was nevertheless insidious.

Unlike Third Reich forms of repression such as concentration camps or the

death penalty, of which one was fully cognizant when embarking on resistance

activity, 130 this was a refi ned, bureaucratic, behind-the-scenes repression. Even until the collapse of the East German regime, many victims of Zersetzen had no idea who was responsible for the sudden downward spiral in their lives. In order

to describe this phenomenon—at once intrusive yet subtle—Hubertus Knabe

has coined the term “quiet repression,” 131 a more accurate term than Clemens Vollnhals’s “gentle totalitarianism,” since many of the Stasi’s actions were not

gentle at all.132 Somehow the description used by O’Brien, the antagonist in Orwell’s oft-cited 1984, does not resonate with the Stasi of the same year, when O’Brien tells the naïve Winston Smith: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face forever.” An imagined East German future

could be better likened to the toxic black cloud in Don Delillo’s White Noise

that hovers ominously in the distance, always threatening, always unsettling, a

constant potential threat.

In Perleberg and Gransee, there are no cases of Zersetzen that involve this

odious defamation of a person’s character, but there are two notable examples

of OVs that made use of Zersetzen in order to limit the impact of certain regime opponents. The fi rst comes from District Perleberg, where the Stasi had been

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T H E F I R M

frustrated for years by the presence of the oppositional superintendent of the

Church District of Havelberg-Wilsnack. Ulrich Woronowicz, a Lutheran minister,

was a forthright, determined, and thoughtful individual who engaged in a range

of resistance behavior that was just shy of being illegal. He helped would-be emi-

grants with their applications, visited political prisoners, and delivered barely

disguised criticisms of the regime in his sermons. He told his parishioners, for

example, not to be afraid even “as the enemy sits among you.”133

In another instance, referring to the large-scale building projects that the

regime was undertaking—the Palast der Republik in Berlin, the TV tower, large

apartment buildings—Woronowicz reminded his listeners that God punished

the builders of the Tower of Babel. 134 Throughout most of the 1980s the Stasi monitored Woronowicz in OV Brille (glasses)—Dr. Woronowicz does indeed

wear glasses—an operation that ran to more than one thousand pages of reports

and employed twenty-seven informants. Even at the time, Woronowicz was aware

that he was the subject of surveillance, as he noticed the cars that followed him

and the distinct clicking on his telephone line. As a result, Woronowicz devel-

oped the habit—which continues to this day—of keeping his telephone calls as

brief as possible. After years of the Stasi painstakingly infl uencing the church

council against Woronowicz, the council was scheduled to meet on November

9, 1989, in order to pressure Woronowicz to resign from his position. On that

day, of course, the Wall fell, and the seven-year operation collapsed.135

There was an important aspect to this case that remains unexplained. In the

early morning hours of a fall day, Dr. Woronowicz, an avid cyclist, mounted

his bicycle to return home after a long day at the offi ce. It was about 1:30 a.m.

As he rounded a darkened corner, a man clad in black shoved a pipe in his

wheel spokes and launched Woronowicz from the bicycle, badly injuring him.

Naturally, Woronowicz suspects that the Stasi was behind the attack, but there

was no reference to it in the lengthy documentation on his case, and none of the

Stasi personnel interviewed later, be they offi cers or support staff, had any recol-

lection of the event. Granted, Stasi personnel could have been hiding the truth,

but the cleaning staff and secretaries would have had no reason to lie, and they

certainly would have gotten wind of such an attack on a prominent minister if

one of their colleagues had been responsible. More to the point, this incident

does not fi t with the manner in which the Stasi operated in the 1980s—it was

too noisy, too brash, not “quiet” enough as Knabe reminds us in his description

of the regime. Zersetzen, the preferred strategy for the 1980s, was much more

subtle.

This is not to say, of course, that the Stasi never behaved so aggressively.

Historians have uncovered Stasi documents from the 1980s for the planned

murder of prominent opponents Rainer Eppelman and Ralf Hirsch (which did

not take place), and the death of Matthias Domaschk at the hands of the Stasi

in 1981 remains unexplained. 136 Nevertheless, these are the exceptions that prove the rule. As Mielke himself said in 1984: “If we weren’t here in the GDR—I’m

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going to tell you this honestly—if I were in the happy circumstance of being in

the Soviet Union, I would have a few of them shot.”137 The individual who dealt

Pastor Woronowicz that blow remains a mystery.

An operation from 1988 in District Gransee that dealt with an anarchist

who was meeting on a regular basis with youth involved in the church offers

another example of Zersetzen. Fearing that he would bring the youth over to his way of thinking, and given that his ties reached to environmental groups such

as the Environment Library in Berlin, a center of a burgeoning oppositional

movement, 138 the Stasi launched OV Anarchist. 139 The person in question had

established a “Federation of Anarchist Communists” and intended to publish a

newsletter and hold meetings with youths not only in the area but around Berlin,

Oranienburg, and Frankfurt/Oder as well. 140 He had already held a “Tolstoy evening” to discuss the great author’s position on various issues, including anarchy.

This was reason enough for the Stasi to bring him in for interrogation and to

warn him that further activities would land him in violation of East German

laws on building anti-state groups.

The Stasi now arranged for his employer to transfer him to a district on the

outskirts of Berlin. But three months later, the Stasi noted that he was still dis-

tributing anarchist pamphlets, this time in District Strausberg near Berlin, and

that his informal meetings (occasionally held at his apartment), were being

attended by various youths from District Gransee. 141 One of the fi rst orders of business for the Stasi was to arrange that the lead member of the group be called

up early for military service in order to disrupt the group. 142 It is not clear why this measure failed—perhaps the suspect was unfi t for military service.

In the middle of that eventful summer of 1989, Stasi Major Bracklow reported

that the use of Zersetzen tactics had successfully neutralized the target of OV

Anarchist—but his level of confi dence is truly astonishing, given the fl imsy manner in which the target was brought under control. It was not the threat of jail or

the denial of a future career that the Stasi lorded over the target, but the disap-

pointment of his mother. Twice the Stasi visited the target’s house in the pres-

ence of his mother and discussed his various activities, making clear that he was

on the verge of arrest. An informant had already alerted the Stasi to the fact that

the target was very close to his mother and that if she were aware of his anarchist

activities, she would be sorely disappointed. Furthermore, the mother would be

mortifi ed if her coffee group found out she had a son in jail. Since she was not

aware of the full extent of her son’s activities, the Stasi revelations dismayed her.

Stasi offi cers reported that she was visibly upset to learn that he was organizing

anarchist meetings. The son, in turn, vowed to give up these activities. Thus,

proceeding on the assumption that his mother would keep her wayward son in

check, the Stasi closed the case. 143

In early autumn 1989, however, shortly before the fall of the Wall, an infor-

mant reported to the Stasi that the suspect in OV Anarchist had not entirely given up his oppositional behavior. Major Bracklow immediately paid a visit to his

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T H E F I R M

mother, questioning her ability to keep her twenty-seven-year-old son in line.

She promised to talk to him, but added: “Things here can’t go on the way they

are”144—a common refrain of East Germans in the summer of 1989. With the fall of the Wall there was no need for the mother to have that talk with her son.

In the course of this operation, and under a pretense that remains unclear,

the Stasi had the “anarchist” read aloud an article from the party daily Neues

Deutschland in order to obtain a sample of his voice, which was sent to the

central archive in Berlin for safekeeping. Transcribing these and similar tapes,

some of which can be played only on obsolete, hard-to-fi nd equipment, has

proven to be an enormously time-consuming task of the archivists who work in

the Stasi archive today. Although the Stasi archive is predominantly paper, the

amount of other media, including tapes, disks, photos, and scent samples, is

also staggering.

Arrest, quiet measures to deal with a problem, Zersetzen, and intimidation

were all possible outcomes of an operation, but so too was Stasi failure. The

Stasi was by no means all-powerful, and it often failed to fi nd the perpetra-

tor of an offense. From 1963 to 1967, the Stasi investigated swastikas that had

been painted on a men’s washroom in the rayon factory in Wittenberge but

were unable to locate the culprit. 145 One of the most spectacular Stasi failures

occurred in District Perleberg in the 1980s. Early one morning, a citizen of the

district was out for a walk along the sandy embankment of the Elbe when

he spotted a curious metal object sitting by the river, the waves lapping at its

wheels. The object was about the size of a reclining chair and had a cockpit

with gauges and wires. In their report, the offi cers referred to it as a “boat-

like fl otation device.” Clearly, this was a homemade quasi-submarine (it was

not able to submerge; the top of it fl oated a few inches above the water’s sur-

face) that had been abandoned by someone trying to cross the Elbe to West

Germany. Stasi offi cers surmised that the waves on the Elbe, a river that can be

wild depending on season and rainfall, caused water to pour into the hatch-

less top and scuttled the effort. Some of the tin used in the construction of the

device was relatively rare and should have made efforts to locate the perpetra-

tor relatively easy, but investigations in factories where it could be obtained

produced no leads. After seven years of dedicated investigation and the involve-

ment of almost every regional Stasi offi ce, the Stasi admitted failure and sent

the fi les to the archives. 146

C A S E S T U D Y : O P E R AT I O N S T O F I N D A U T H O R S

O F A N O N Y M O U S L E T T E R S

The Stasi spent considerable resources trying to determine the origins of anony-

mous letters to local government agencies. The fi les of three operations, OV

Wachs (wax) from 1970, OV Impressionist from 1981, and OV Schreiber (writer) from 1987, as well as conversations with a former Stasi offi cer employed in this

I N T H E L I N E O F S I G H T

| 135

fi eld, reinforce the conclusion that the secret police became increasingly sophis-

ticated, entwined itself fully into the society by numerous and varied relation-

ships, and held sweeping powers that suggest totalitarian elements to its work.

Bernd Lohre, who ended his career as a major in the District Perleberg Stasi

offi ce, specialized in locating the authors of anonymous anti-regime letters. He

trained in Potsdam in handwriting analysis, including small, letter-size writing

as well as larger graffi ti writing. He refl ects today on how time-consuming his

job was, for he had to sift manually through original writing samples to deter-

mine a match to the writing in question, including handwritten applications for

identifi cation cards (which almost every East German had). Other handwriting

samples that the Stasi could access were the CVs or resumes of prisoners (East

German authorities demanded handwritten CVs from prisoners so that they

would have both a writing sample and a record of where the individual was at

various points in their life), letters confi scated by the Stasi, or student essays. 147

Lohre approached his task scientifi cally, fascinated by the challenge of fi nding

the needle in the proverbial haystack. The fact that some of the people he found

were youths who received three-year prison sentences hardly concerned him.

“Saying malicious things about the regime,” as he explained, “was a crime under

the laws of the GDR.”148

The Stasi employed a bewildering array of resources to determine the author-

ship of letters, often completely disproportionate to the mundane statements

contained in any given letter. These letters were never, for example, accusations

of someone’s complicity in murder or a death threat, but rather often innocu-

ous anti-regime statements that would go unnoticed in most societal systems.

Letters and envelopes were sent to Department OTS-Abt 32, a special depart-

ment of the Stasi in Berlin with sophisticated lab equipment, for analysis of

the saliva on the stamps and the fl aps that gave clues to gender and blood type.

Typing a letter instead of writing it by hand was no guarantee of avoiding the

Stasi, as it employed agents to analyze typed text, paying particular attention to

the V and the L, which were often give-aways as to what brand of typewriter had been used. Stasi offi cers in this branch could tell at a glance whether the letter

was produced on an Optima, Erika, or Olivetti machine. 149

Lohre’s fi rst encounter with an anonymous letter took place in 1970 in OV

Wachs. During one of the common spot checks of mail, a postal worker opened

a letter and found the following: “To the fi nder: Vote for the NPD [a neo-Nazi

party], the only party of greater Germany! Down with the Russians! Heil Hitler!”

The letter was signed by “The Black Candle.” The postal worker withdrew the

letter from circulation and forwarded it to the Stasi offi ce. Based on a test of the

saliva on the letter, the Stasi determined that the author was a young man, likely

between the ages of eighteen and thirty. The Stasi therefore requested writing

samples of every youth in Wittenberge—something that involved every high

school in the district issuing a trumped up essay-writing assignment. Only six

days after OV Wachs began, Lohre matched the handwriting of a sixteen-year-old

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T H E F I R M

student to the anonymous letter. Stasi offi cer Pippig was baffl ed that the perpe-

trator was a quiet, polite student who participated enthusiastically in socialist

youth groups and whose father was in the party. Nevertheless, he was arrested

and sent to prison for two years. 150 What is remarkable about this case is the number of individuals who became accomplices of the Stasi, unwittingly to

be sure. Every teacher in Wittenberge contributed in some way to locating the

student who wrote the letters. In this particular case, one might be inclined to

think that their participation in the search was justifi ed, given the odious nature

of the letter. But these teachers did not know the content of the writing, and it

could just as easily have been benign comments against the regime.

This point was made clear in another operation, one beginning on the morn-

ing of September 17, 1981. During a routine sorting of the mail, a postal worker

spotted two suspicious postcards, withdrew them from the mail, and presented

them to Captain Hoffmann of the Stasi. The fi rst postcard was addressed to the

SED leader in Gransee and contained the poem:

We plead to the Russian authorities

Tanks, Rockets, Military Police

Construct peace without weapons.

No one ever hears these words. 151

The second postcard was addressed to the district co-operative store in Gransee

and had but one line: “Sparrows sing it from Dannenwalde to Gransee, [name

blacked out] spies for the Stasi.”152 The crooked handwriting in old German

script seemed to match that on previous postcards, ones that were investigated

inconclusively back in 1977 when the Stasi suspected two individuals of sending

oppositional postcards. That operation had been archived in 1980, but would

now be revived.

The necessary detective work would be undertaken by informants and regu-

lar Stasi offi cers, including those in the Technical Field Operation (Operative-

technische Sektor [OTS]) of the Stasi, a technologically well-equipped,

semi-independent department that was part forensic lab and part private

detective outfi t. It was here that the postcards were to be sent for handwriting

analysis, in particular to determine whether the handwriting on the postcards

matched the earlier cards, or matched that of a variety of individuals in the

store, including the primary suspect from the 1977 operation who had avoided

arrest because of the lack of evidence. The lab was able to determine that the

writing was similar to the postcards of the previous operation, but was not able

to match defi nitively the handwriting of the primary suspect from 1977.

In addition to lab work, the offi cer in charge of the investigation sent a list

of twenty-three questions to an unnamed contact at the co-op store about cer-

tain individuals, including whether they had said anything about the Solidarity

movement in Poland, whether they were able to write in old German, and

whether they possessed a typewriter.

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| 137

The fi nal element of the investigation was to search the primary suspect’s

home. On May 15 at 9 a.m., fi ve Stasi offi cers entered his apartment while the sus-

pect was in a prearranged meeting at work. As a precaution, a Stasi agent was in

his car in front of the apartment building equipped with a walkie-talkie to alert

the agents in the building if need be. The Stasi arranged for the suspect’s female

partner to be occupied at the local party headquarters, and a retired woman on

the same fl oor would be distracted by a visit from her son, a retired Stasi agent.

The apartment directly across was empty. Lieutenant Oschim outlined the types

of materials for which the agents should be on the lookout—store-bought post-

cards, samples of handwriting, any written materials that contained content

similar to that of the postcards, materials in old German script, literature related

to Rudolf Bahro, the former SED member whose arrest in 1977 for criticism of

the regime provoked international outrage. 153 Every room, closet, and drawer was thoroughly searched. Written material, including letters, receipts, recipes,

and brochures were found in the shelves in the living room and photographed

for comparison purposes. After an hour and a half the search team left the apart-

ment, careful not to leave any hint that they had been there. The head of the

operation was convinced that there had been no evidence of their presence. 154

At 10:30 a.m. on June 22, 1982, Stasi offi cers arrested the suspect and brought

him for interrogation to the regional Stasi offi ce in Potsdam. He yelled at the

Stasi offi cers from the time of his arrest, spat, and protested his innocence. On

the same day, charges were fi led against him as the suspect behind fi ve anony-

mous postcards, three from 1977 and the more recent two from 1981. During the

questioning, the suspect was uncooperative, refused to speak, and refused to

provide a handwriting sample in old German script. On top of this, the house

search had not turned up any damning evidence. Frustrated, the Stasi offi cers

repeatedly tried to make the suspect speak so that he might incriminate himself,

but he refused to communicate with them. A criminal studies professor from

Humboldt University examined the suspect and informed the Stasi that it was

unlikely that the individual would change his mind.

All this was somewhat disappointing to the offi cers, who were forced to admit

that due to a lack of evidence the preliminary proceedings against him should

be dropped.155 Still, the Stasi was defi ant: “Although the preliminary proceedings did not lead to a conviction of the suspect, Department XX/2, Department

IX of the Potsdam offi ce, and the District of Gransee are all of one mind, that the

individual in question is the originator of the anonymous writings.” The Stasi

confi dently predicted that the individual would not continue with his writings,

as his brush with the Stasi would surely have scared him, and the case offi cers

also noted with satisfaction that no societal harm had come of the events. 156

A fi nal example of Stasi operations against authors of anti-regime letters

comes from 1987. The leader of the People’s Solidarity Club in District Perleberg

received a shocking anonymous letter responding to her article in the local

newspaper, the Schweriner Volkszeitung, boasting of the humane treatment in

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T H E F I R M

the prison system in East Germany. The discontented anonymous letter-writer

lashed out at her: “I am a former prisoner and I have experienced fi rst-hand the

inhumanity of the SED system. . . . Mistreatment à la Fascism still exists in the

GDR today. There are indeed concentration camps.”157 For the Stasi, the biggest clue to the author’s identity was the seldom-used phrase “à la.” Accordingly,

Stasi informants were instructed to keep their ears out for that telling phrase.

While the letter was sent off to a lab for analysis, the Stasi also gathered writing

samples of all those in the city who had applied to leave East Germany.

Within a few months of opening the operation, the Stasi set a trap by hav-

ing an article printed in the local paper that discussed suicide in West Germany

in a fairly provocative fashion. The anonymous letter-writer took the bait and

wrote to the newspaper stating that many in East Germany also contemplated

suicide. He did not include his name, but the writing was identical to the fi rst

letter, thus providing the Stasi with two pieces of evidence that they were able to

match with the fi les in Schwerin. The Stasi then identifi ed the suspect based on

writing samples that had been obtained back in 1985 when he had sent threat-

ening letters to his second ex-wife (something that netted him jail time). 158 It

is, unfortunately, unclear what sentence the author of the letter received for his

comments that East Germany still had concentration camps.

F I L E S W I T H O U T V I C T I M S ?

For years immediately after the collapse of East Germany, it seemed that the

evening news was somehow incomplete without another sensational revelation

that a high-profi le East German had been a Stasi informant. In a country that had

become far too accustomed at using abbreviations as a shorthand for villainy—

SS ( Schutzstaffel—protection squads), SA ( Sturmabteilung—storm troops), KZ

( Konzentrationslager—concentration camp)—a new abbreviation began making

the rounds: IM, the abbreviation for “unoffi cial co-worker” of the Stasi. The

letters entered into everyday conversations, often uttered in disgust. Although

our understanding of informants is now more complex, at the time IM became

synonymous with the person whom Dante deemed the worst of traitors—the

individual who betrayed friends and family. It is time that KP ( Kontaktpersonen) assumed its place beside IM and accordingly to revise our view of the Stasi as a

strictly proactive secret police to one of a secret police that frequently reacted to

spontaneous tips from those in privileged positions in East Germany as well as

from its informants.

During this period of frenzied IM revelations, there was a group of indi-

viduals who must have been relieved that IMs had become a lightning rod for

public scorn. The Stasi depended almost equally on contact persons, those

many individuals in positions of authority who collaborated with the Stasi,

as it did on its regular informants to monitor society. As much as senior

Stasi offi cials were exasperated with the organization’s dependence on their

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| 139

contacts,159 they should not have been surprised. It was much easier for Stasi offi cers to wait for tips from a school principal, for example, than to engage

in the lengthy process of grooming student informants. In the waning years

of the regime, at least 40 percent of Stasi monitoring operations in District

Perleberg were launched based on tips from contact persons and mail moni-

toring—not from the vast informant army. 160

One step further removed along the spectrum of association with the Stasi

was the amorphous category of irregular collaborators who either rendered

some service for the Stasi, like the funeral home director in OV Vergeltung or the high school teachers in OV Wachs who had their students write essays in order to obtain samples of their handwriting, or who provided information to the Stasi,

like the acquaintances of Stasi offi cers. The Czechoslovak security service, the

StB, had a category of informant called “occasional informant,” and it might be

helpful to think of irregular collaborators or contact persons in those terms.

Although former Stasi offi cers would have us believe otherwise, the Stasi

did not use these varied informants to monitor only those individuals who

fell within its stated priorities. When the head of the regional offi ce came

to District Gransee in 1985 to oversee the transfer of leadership from Tamme

to Töpfer, he addressed the entire complement of the secret police outfi t in

Gransee during which he reiterated the Stasi desire to work according to pri-

orities: “The Priority Principle means that we fi rst address those tasks that are

the most important for the security of the GDR.”161 Priorities were, however, sweeping. As he went on to say: “This requires that we be informed in a timely

manner about everything that is important for the assessment of the political-

operational situation in the District. All informants . . . are to be mobilized to

provide information to us.” 162

In a scene reminiscent of Hitler’s speech to the Reichstag where he read out

Franklin Roosevelt’s letter asking Hitler to guarantee the security of so many

countries that the Reichstag deputies start to laugh uncontrollably, the visiting

senior Stasi offi cer then outlined his priorities: the twenty-three military bases

in the district, economic installations like the electronic plant in Zehdenick and

the rail network, societal sectors like youth, the medical sector, and the church

milieu, and securing the elections set for the following year. Quite apart from

the fact that these “priorities” would encompass the vast majority of the district’s

population, the Stasi could not address these areas in a surgical manner—it was

too big and prone to sprawl, and society too complex to be boxed into tidy cat-

egories. Working according to predetermined areas of concentration might have

been an ideal, but the reality was much closer to blanket coverage. To borrow

a phrase from Robert Service, which he applied to the Soviet system, the Stasi

exhibited “totalizing practices” in its day-to-day work.163

The “secondary individuals,” those who were not the main targets but who

were investigated in the course of an operation, reveal the all-encompassing

nature of the Stasi. They were all subject to, at the least, minor investigation.

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This was true not only for formal operations but also for routine investigations

of applicants to visit the West, of informant and regular offi cer candidates, of

East Germans designated for border service, of those who had to travel outside

of the country as part of their job. “Secondary individuals” were, on the one

hand, a welcome bonus to the Stasi. As a Stasi offi cer from District Perleberg

made clear: “All departments can improve their work on secondary individu-

als who become known to us during an [operation].”164 On the other hand,

the ever-widening circles of surveillance began to overwhelm the apparatus.

Wolfgang Schwanitz, the leader of the short-lived Stasi successor, the Offi ce for

National Security, stated frankly after the fall of the Wall that surveillance had

spiraled out of control: “The number of individuals we were screening was far

too large. This led to an unsustainable expansion of the Ministry’s work.”165

At its heart, the Stasi was an organization that monitored society for those

who, in Rosa Luxemburg’s phrase, “thought differently.” Stasi offi cers worked

tirelessly to insure that a disruption to the socialist order—be it anti-state

graffi ti, the establishment of groups that did not conform to the SED’s world-

view, defections, or whatever form it might take—did not occur. Verbeugung

(prevention or hindering), is a term that the Stasi used ceaselessly in its

documentation. 166 Driving back to his country home after touring District

Gransee in 2006, Lieutenant Tenbrock expressed his exasperation with the

law enforcement agencies of today’s Federal Republic of Germany who wait

for “something bad to happen” before investigating. “We investigated,” he

commented “before the crime was committed, not after.” 167

In order to differentiate the two German dictatorships of the twentieth

century, the German philosopher Margherita von Brentano wrote: “The Third

Reich left behind mountains of corpses. The GDR left behind mountains of cat-

alogue cards.” 168 She is correct, of course, that Nazi Germany’s murder of Jews and other racial “undesirables” had no parallel in East Germany. On another

level, however, she has engaged in a certain sleight-of-hand. The vast numbers

of East Germans on those catalogue cards were spied upon and unknowingly

had their lives altered by secret police agents whom they never encountered.

Those who have viewed their fi les and become aware of the unseen controlling

presence may well wonder at the authenticity of their lives. Opponents who

were methodically “broken down” by the Stasi’s quiet tactics feel the effects to

this day.

It was precisely these quasi-criminal measures employed by the Stasi that

frustrated so many regime opponents who tried to bring former secret police

agents to justice after 1989. Although the Stasi held sway over a future career,

dashed relationships, ruined reputations, and coerced collaboration—could any

of this be successfully prosecuted in a court of law? And if it could be, would it

not be somehow laughable to sentence a member of the largest per capita secret

police in world history for spreading rumors? This longing to have justice served

but being unable to do so is captured nowhere more brilliantly than in Julian

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Barnes’s fi ctional The Porcupine, where the young lawyer Peter Solinsky fails at every turn to come up with a suitable charge against the ousted leader Stoyo

Petkanov. Faced with the prospect of Petkanov walking away, Solinsky becomes

the very individual he despises. He fabricates evidence to convict Petkanov of a

charge appropriate to the bitterness of East Europeans who suffered under the

system—murder of his own daughter. In reality, however, a judicial failure does

not mean the absence of a crime. The East German dictatorship left behind

much more than card catalogues.

5 THE STASI IN

E V E R Y D AY L I F E

d r . w e r n e r h o f f m a n n s t u d i e d m e d i c i n e at Humboldt

University in Berlin from 1954 to 1960 before interning until 1963 at the hospi-

tal in Fürstenberg in District Gransee. The hospital had been the site of Oskar

Minkowski’s breakthrough discoveries at the end of the nineteenth century link-

ing the pancreas to diabetes and ultimately paving the way for the discovery

of insulin. His time in Fürstenberg counted toward his compulsory Landjahr,

a year in the countryside required of all new physicians. In 1962, one year after

the construction of the Berlin Wall (which made previously available western

medicines nearly impossible to obtain) and while still tending to the medical

needs of villagers and miners from the southern GDR who had a union holi-

day retreat near Fürstenberg, Dr. Hoffmann began his specialization in internal

medicine at the regional hospital in Schwerin.

While vacationing on the Black Sea, Eastern Europe’s Riviera, in a resort

that had been one of Stalin’s favorites, he happened upon a high-ranking

administrator in the Wittenberge hospital who arranged for his transfer there.

It was by no means a demotion from the larger city of Schwerin, as the hos-

pital in Wittenberge (housed in what had been during World War II a factory

for bomber optics) was roughly the same size as that of the regional capital

and allowed for greater opportunities for advancement. Five years later he was

promoted to senior physician in charge of the rheumatism division. Within the

decade, he had become one of the very few surgeons in the GDR who could treat

people who suffered from rheumatism in their knuckles, a surgery that was in its

infancy in the West as well.

His fi rst misgivings about the regime came in 1972 when the position of chief

of medicine opened up in nearby Bad Wilsnack. Although the position called

for expertise in rheumatoid arthritis, Dr. Hoffmann was passed over in favor of

a younger physician who had no experience in treating rheumatism but was a

member of the Communist Party. He also found himself in a constant battle

with the party over who would be permitted to take the healing waters in Bad

Wilsnack, his preference being for those seriously ill, the party preferring to use

the few spaces available at the spa as a reward for loyal party members.

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Hoffmann knew that in order to one day become chief of medicine he

would have to join the Communist Party, and so in spite of what he had

seen, he joined the SED in 1974. He was promoted to chief of medicine of the

Wittenberge Hospital in 1978. Financially, this was a good decision. In this posi-

tion he earned 2,500 Ostmarks a month, nearly twice the average wage in the

GDR of 1,280 Ostmarks but, remarkably, on a par with Stasi wages, where the

average wage for Stasi offi cers in the regional administrations was 1,700 a month.

But the Stasi employees also enjoyed an advantageous tax situation, extra vaca-

tion time, exclusive vacation resorts, and generous bonuses.1 Joachim Abraham, for example, who was a Stasi major, received a bonus of 5,000 marks in 1981

for twenty-fi ve years of service, the equivalent of two months’ salary for the top

surgeon in the district. 2 In other words, surgeons and high-ranking Stasi offi cers in the district offi ces earned roughly similar salaries.

Dr. Hoffmann’s position required him to be responsible for every aspect of

the hospital, from the care of patients (with 615 beds and anywhere from fi f-

teen to twenty-eight physicians, the hospital was quite large) to ordering rubber

gloves to ensuring broken windows were replaced, and that there was suffi -

cient coal for heating. Particularly time-consuming was his preparation of an

emergency plan for the hospital in the event of war, which included securing it

against biological weapons, doubling the number of beds, protecting the water

supply, and guarding entrances and exits.

Shortly after his appointment, the urologist on staff attempted to fl ee the

GDR while vacationing in Romania. Although he was a colleague and close

friend of Dr. Hoffmann, the escape attempt caught Wittenberge’s chief doctor

completely by surprise. Months later Dr. Hoffmann and his wife were await-

ing a fl ight to Bucharest at Schönefeld airport in East Berlin when two Stasi

offi cers arrested them and escorted them through the airport, past the ticket

counters, and into waiting vans. He and his wife were transported separately to

Alexanderplatz in Berlin, where they were accused of preparing to fl ee the GDR,

just as the urologist had. In the initial whirr of events, the surgeon had diffi culty comprehending what was happening. When his interrogator asked him if he

knew where he was, Hoffmann answered that he believed he was in police head-

quarters. The Stasi offi cer looked at him squarely and, scanning his face for any

reaction, said: “No. You are at the Ministry for State Security.” Hoffmann was

still not terribly nervous because he felt he had a card up his sleeve that would

immediately end the interrogation. When he calmly informed the interrogating

offi cer that he was a comrade, a party member, the Stasi offi cer barely contained

his laughter and answered: “Do you have any idea how many comrades we’ve

arrested?”

Later that night the surgeon and his wife were transported to the Stasi prison

on Demmlerplatz in Schwerin. During the trip from Berlin, a Stasi offi cer held

a gun at Hoffmann as he relieved himself in a bush at the side of the road.

There was little indication from the Stasi’s actions that they were dealing with a

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talented, unassuming surgeon who had committed no crime. As he was being

led along the hallway of the prison, the Stasi offi cer accompanying him turned

to him and said that if he called loudly enough, his urologist friend would be

able to hear him, a statement that out of the entire ordeal grated on him the

most and still visibly angers him. Further questioning failed to turn up anything

untoward in the couple’s actions, and the couple was released. At 2:00 a.m. they

were driven back to their apartment.

The following day two Stasi agents appeared at his offi ce and reimbursed

him, down to the penny, for the vacation in Romania that they had prevented

him from taking. (The Hoffmanns bought a color television with the funds.)

They then asked him to become an informant. Given what he had witnessed

of the Stasi, its far-ranging powers, its audacity, its self-assurance of its place

in the regime, its disregard for party membership, Dr. Hoffmann felt he had

no choice but to go along with what seemed to be more of a demand than a

request. Every four weeks, Stasi offi cers went to his offi ce and received reports

on the general situation in the hospital. Hoffmann painted a bleak picture of an

insuffi cient supply of rubber gloves and coal, of operating tables with malfunc-

tioning hydraulics that caused the tables to randomly move during surgery, of

lacking and sub-par gastroscopes and ultrasound equipment (which Hoffmann

described as “horrendous, like using a Stone Age ax”), of an overburdened

staff—all of which fell on deaf ears. In his two decades as chief of medicine,

none of the complaints he brought to the Stasi produced any changes to the

working environment in the hospital.

One cannot help but wonder what the cost in human terms would have

been had the fall of the Wall not headed off the impending health-care catastro-

phe. In 1990 the minister of health in the fi rst freely elected government in East

Germany’s history stated candidly that the health care system was in an “existen-

tial crisis.” 3 This is, however, not to take away from the personal dedication of people like Hoffmann, who today exhibit an understandable professional pride

in their work; although the technology was second-rate, he and his staff worked

tirelessly to provide a high level of care and to educate the public about pressing

issues like diabetes, alcoholism, and obesity.

Today, Dr. Hoffmann believes that his ordeal that night with the Stasi was an

elaborate operation to turn him in to an informant, to give him good reason

to fear the consequences of refusal. Even though his controlling offi cer denied

in an interview that this was the reason behind the operation,4 it is nevertheless telling that the surgeon believed the Stasi was capable of conducting such

an operation for that purpose. When asked at interview about the intelligence

he passed on to the Stasi, Dr. Hoffmann referred only to the information he

provided on medical supplies and equipment, but it would have been highly

unusual for the Stasi not to have asked him for information on the political

reliability of his co-workers. Preventing the escape of medical professionals

to the West was one of the primary concerns of local Stasi offi cers, who were

T H E S T A S I I N E V E R Y D A Y L I F E

| 145

clearly annoyed by the urologist’s attempted fl ight to West Germany. Perhaps

Hoffmann limited his discussion to less infl ammatory subjects of his reporting.

His suspicions of a far-reaching Stasi were nevertheless confi rmed after unifi ca-

tion when he learned that his secretary, head of human resources, and the head

of hospital administration were all Stasi informants.

Hoffmann continued in his position through the process of German uni-

fi cation until 1994, when his relationship with the Stasi was made public and

he was let go. Like the many others thrown out of work, the gifted surgeon

spent his days at the local unemployment offi ce, but, at the age of fi fty-eight,

few employers were willing to hire him. He taught for a brief time at a nursing

school before taking early retirement, and now spends his days as a volunteer at

one of the most successful travel agencies in Germany; in keeping with a long-

time German medical belief in the healing powers of thermal waters, he advises

clients on appropriate spas and retreats for their particular ailments. Although

Hoffmann is not unhappy with how things turned out—it is diffi cult to imagine

this eminently serene man allowing anything to eat away at him—he would be

within his rights to be irked by the unfairness of it all. Many physicians who

had informed for the Stasi took up lucrative practices in western Germany fol-

lowing unifi cation where no one questioned their past. Even those who stayed

in what had been East Germany frequently remained in their posts, for the

very good reason that doctors, regardless of their past, were hard to come by.5

Dr. Hoffmann, and by extension East Germans who suffered from rheumatism,

was just unlucky. 6

For the last decade or so of East Germany’s existence, Dr. Hoffmann’s life

was entwined with the Stasi, and its effect on him carried over long after East

Germany disappeared. The question of how, precisely, the Stasi affected ordinary

Germans, the manner by which even those who did not have a direct encounter

with the organization internalized its presence, and the overall impact of the

Stasi on society are questions vital to an understanding of life in the dictator-

ship, yet very little has been written about repression in daily life. Jens Gieseke

has rightly stated that “the quest for the commensurate place of the secret police

and its direct and indirect presence in the overall picture of GDR society is still

in its infancy.” 7 The points of contact between ordinary East Germans and the Stasi, there where East Germans “bumped up” against the East German dictatorship, to borrow a phrase of Sheila Fitzpatrick, were numerous and varied. It

would not be an exaggeration to state that every East German citizen has a “Stasi

story,” either personally or that of a close acquaintance. Some of the brushes

with the secret police were mild, some were harrowing, but all of them reveal a

life that was anything but “ordinary.”

The former East Germans (for simplicity, referred to here as East Germans)

who agreed to be interviewed for this book were contacted primarily through

local newspapers. The Märkische Allgemeine Zeitung and the Gransee Kurier ran ads in the winter of 2006 indicating my interest in talking with residents about

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T H E F I R M

the experience of daily life in East Germany. These newspapers also ran stories

on me and my research, and asked for citizens to contact the newspaper if they

were willing to be interviewed. In addition, several members of local cultural

associations answered the interview request that had been passed on by the

clubs’ executives. Three talented senior history students from Viadrina University

served as my contacts in Germany and arranged the interviews for the spring. In

an unexpected twist, a former resident of one of the districts, who now lives in

Kitchener, Canada, was alerted to my project by a friend who had seen the news-

paper article. My efforts were not intended to produce a representative sample

in a qualitative sense—it is open to debate whether respondents to newspaper

ads can ever be “representative”—but rather to gain insight into dictatorship

through individual biography. In this sense, I was pleased that respondents

came from a range of professions, including physicians, teachers, grocery store

clerks, agricultural workers, pastors, and state offi cials.

One of the challenges of oral history is that human memory is not a still

photograph of a bygone era but a never-ending collage of images, constantly

tweaked by the circumstances of the present. East Germans are not the people

of Pompeii; they were not preserved for the rest of time for future study but con-

tinue to be infl uenced by what has happened since the demise of East Germany,

which, in this case, can be a politically stable but oftentimes tumultuous and

very public reckoning with the past. For our topic in particular, oral history is

tricky in that the Stasi has been such a news item in Germany that East Germans

have become unsure about what they knew about the Stasi at the time, compared

to what they have learned since. For example, the widely used abbreviation for

a Stasi informant, IM, is a bureaucratic acronym used by the Stasi internally that

today has entered the popular discourse, yet was not used by ordinary Germans

during the GDR, who tended to use Spitzel (spy, but in a pejorative sense similar to “narc”) to describe a Stasi informant.

The Stasi remained fundamentally mysterious, its size and methods of opera-

tions unknown to most East Germans. It was precisely because the Stasi worked

“in the dark,” as the fi rst federal commissioner for the Stasi Files, Joachim Gauck,

phrased it, that legislation banning former members of the repression apparatus

from public positions after 1989 targeted strictly Stasi personnel, rather than the

regular police or party who were also involved in repression but worked in the

open. 8 A consistent discrepancy in the accounts of the East Germans interviewed relates to the presence of the Stasi in society. Most interviewees expressed surprise at the enormity of the Stasi that was revealed after 1989, yet based on experi-

ence they strongly suspected that the Stasi had many informants. They discussed

their fears of informants at the workplace, at restaurants, on trains, and in other

public places, yet they do not seem to have drawn from this the obvious con-

clusion that there must have been a vast network of informants in place. One

wonders if the disbelief that East Germans today express at the size of the Stasi

is more a consequence of the shocking media images of the endless Stasi fi les

T H E S T A S I I N E V E R Y D A Y L I F E

| 147

and the revelation of “sensational” informants (like the Olympic fi gure skater

Katarina Witt), rather than a refl ection of their own life experience, which would

have suggested a very large secret police presence. Where East Germans may be

making more of a distinction is in the surprise that they, themselves, were spied

upon. East Germans seem to have known that there were informants, but were

not aware at the time that these same informants could be authoring reports

on them. As one subject of Stasi surveillance said about the ubiquitous Stasi

presence: “Of course we all knew it, we all knew it. But each one of us thought

that he wasn’t personally affected.” 9 Of the East Germans interviewed, at least half had been subject to Stasi surveillance, which they determined by viewing

their fi les after the collapse of the regime. The number of people in the interview

group who had been watched by the Stasi could have been even higher, how-

ever, since to date many of them have chosen not to view their fi les, making it impossible to know if they had been monitored.

East Germans interviewed for this project recall their country as a land of con-

trasts. Even though they genuinely despised the Stasi and the Berlin Wall, many

of them made clear that there was much about the former German Democratic

Republic that they enjoyed. Several interviews emphasized that the GDR was a

land of “simplicity,” where prices of most goods were not only consistent over

the course of years but were the same “from the Baltic to the Czech border”;10

a country where insurance was straightforward, doors left unlocked, and one’s

place of work secure.11 Restaurants always had enough food and drink, even if not necessarily what people were looking for.

Two physicians, although frustrated by the lacking latest technology in the

health sector, generally supported the East German approach to health care,

which designated physicians for assignment in underserviced areas of East

Germany and trained physicians in specialties currently not adequately cov-

ered. 12 On balance, both believed that the health care system was decent, a sentiment echoed by East German patients. The director of a food co-operative

recalled how thrilled he was with the GDR’s health care after breaking a leg

while working on a pipeline in Russia and being subjected there to “medieval”

treatment. 13 The education system also tended to be universally praised. Day care spots were plentiful, and elementary school instruction was rigorous. One

interviewee stated that she would much rather “have a conversation with a fi ve-

year-old East German than an eight-year-old West German.” 14

Praise of the social net even came from an East German who had to aban-

don her lifelong dream of becoming a kindergarten teacher because the party’s

economic planning called for her to be a poultry farmer instead. 15 She protested but then came to, in her words, “arrange” herself with the regime. Indeed,

she became somewhat of a local celebrity and was publicly recognized for her

remarkable dedication to blood donation. In the span of roughly thirty years,

she donated blood more than 120 times. In sum, with the exception of one out-

and-out victim of the Stasi, none of those interviewed universally disparaged the

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T H E F I R M

GDR. They tended to support the idea of the GDR, if not its implementation in

practice, yet at the same time they stated in no uncertain terms that they had no

desire to see the GDR return.

At least a partial answer to this apparent paradox likely lies in the experiences

that the East Germans interviewed had with the Stasi. Almost all of the intervie-

wees had encountered the Stasi at one point or another in their lives, but these

experiences varied greatly. At one end of the spectrum were tangential encoun-

ters that served as reminders of the Stasi’s presence even if nothing further came

of it. A former worker at the MBZ factory complex in Zehdenick remembered

clearly that workers would be pulled from the factory fl oor to talk with Stasi

offi cers in an out-of-the-way room on site. 16 A grocery store clerk recounted how her brother came from West Germany to attend their mother’s funeral, but

since her other brother was in the East German army “suddenly there were two

guys following” the family. 17 One woman’s husband was approached by the Stasi to initiate contact with his sister who had fl ed West. She remembers telling

her husband after the Stasi visit: “Espionage? Oh no. Oh no.”18 It is, of course, diffi cult to know what long-term consequences a one-time encounter like this

would produce for the family, but it would certainly serve to confi rm a notion

that one would be wise to factor the Stasi’s presence into one’s conduct.

A more direct form of encounter involved one-off information gathering

about another individual. An architect related how he was obliged to fi ll out

a Stasi questionnaire about the employees working on his building project. 19

A kindergarten teacher in Gransee remembered a Stasi offi cer coming to her

school to talk to her about her husband’s application to visit West Germany on

business. The offi cer suggested that she should encourage him to visit another

relative on the same trip who worked for the powerful Siemens corporation, the

unwritten assumption being that he would then be able to engage in industrial

espionage. 20 A high school teacher was asked for his assessment of certain students whom the Stasi was considering for recruitment.21 Similarly, a physician recalled a Stasi offi cer appearing at the hospital to ask her to provide information about a colleague who had applied to leave East Germany permanently.

In all of these cases, the individuals cooperated with the Stasi for fear of the

consequences if they did not. Revealing a sense that the Stasi held power that

went beyond the confi nes of its secret police work, the physician admitted that

she feared for her husband’s employment and her child’s educational opportu-

nities if she refused to cooperate. 22 On a less serious but nonetheless revelatory note, the physician’s curiosity about how a colleague was able to acquire high-end antiques was satisfi ed when it was revealed after the collapse of the GDR

that he had been a Stasi informant. Although neither the architect, the physi-

cian, the clerk, the high school teacher, nor the kindergarten teacher had any

further dealings with the Stasi, for a moment in time they became—hesitatingly,

unwillingly—complicit with the repression apparatus and fell into the “irregu-

lar collaborator” category that was essential for the Stasi to conduct its work.

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These two underlying themes of East German-Stasi interaction—being unwill-

ingly recruited into the repression apparatus, and the sense that the Stasi was able

to control life opportunities for oneself and one’s family and friends—are echoed

in the experiences of an innkeeper in Zehdenick. Apart from the busy, blinking

video lottery machine on the bar, the inn on the main street looks much as it

did during the GDR, gold-stained windows giving a warm tinge to the dimly lit

dining room of carved benches and booths. Herr Niemann assumed ownership

of the inn in 1982 after a decade of shift work a local factory. Although there was

an expectation that he would turn a modest profi t, the state made it diffi cult to

do so by virtue of the fact that it determined the price of food and drink. During

his seven years as innkeeper, the prices did not once change: a meal of schnitzel

and potatoes cost 3.60 Ostmark, a beer 1.60. Because Niemann’s inn was one of

only three in the district where foreign guests were permitted to stay overnight,

the Stasi met with him on a regular basis, asking about the movements of the

foreigners. Niemann dispatched this duty with a bare minimum of information,

offering only vague details about directions they went in when they left the hotel

and approximations of times they returned.

A more serious encounter with the Stasi, however, took place toward the end

of the regime. One day, he complained loudly in his restaurant that his applica-

tion to visit his aunt in West Germany on the occasion of her sixtieth birthday

had been refused. The following day, Stasi offi cers met with him in a back room

of the inn and warned him that his business permit would be taken away if he

continued to complain about the denial of his visa. Although it was never fully

clarifi ed, Niemann believes that it is no coincidence that the following week he

received a bill for 6,000 Ostmark in back taxes, revealing again a common belief

among East Germans that the Stasi had unfettered access to information in all

government ministries. Niemann considers it a personal affront that an organi-

zation of Stasi veterans is permitted to exist in the new Germany.23

The only individual interviewed who was a target of a Stasi operation was

Dr. Woronowicz, the parish priest who was at the center of Operation Glasses

in which the Stasi attempted to orchestrate his dismissal. In contrast to the fi rst

decades of the GDR, when the regime depended on the Protestant church for

its nurseries, senior citizens’ homes, hospitals, and other charitable organi-

zations, the regime in the 1970s and 1980s took systematic measures to limit

the church’s role in society, not the least of which was the introduction of the

Jugendweihe (youth ordination), a secular equivalent to confi rmation that soon far outstripped the religious ceremony in popularity. 24 Since 1989, the Lutheran church’s political position of coexistence or, at it phrased it, of a church in socialism, has earned it scathing reviews from several historians who view the church

as having colluded with an atheistic regime and provided the regime with legiti-

macy. 25 And, given that fi fteen million of seventeen million Germans in eastern Germany in the immediate post–World War II period adhered to Protestantism,

it is primarily the Protestant churches that have been the focus of debate.

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T H E F I R M

The interviewees who were involved with the church, however, could hardly

be accused of collusion. Because of Woronowicz’s oppositional—yet, it must be

emphasized, legal—activities such as providing assistance to would-be émigrés

from East Germany and visiting prisoners, the parish priest was targeted for

“disruption” ( Zersetzen) by the Stasi. The Stasi fi rst attempted to ruin his reputation among his parishioners, but the rumors Stasi offi cers initiated fell on deaf

ears due to Woronowicz’s impeccable credentials and evidently moral lifestyle.

It then attempted to remove him from his position by infi ltrating the body that

oversaw his church, an effort that likely would have paid dividends had the Wall

not fallen in the interim.

Woronowicz became accustomed to being followed by strange cars, to hearing

clicks on the telephone line, and to having his conversations at work reported

on by one of the many informants he assumed were monitoring him. (In fact,

twenty-seven Stasi informants were employed against him.) Woronowicz never

encountered the Stasi directly, and he claims not to have feared what they

might do to him, a claim that rings true given how self-assured the soft-spoken

Lutheran minister is and given his decades-long record of tireless opposition to

the regime. As is frequently the case with resisters, however, Woronowicz wor-

ried that his actions would have adverse effects on his family, both in terms

of health and life opportunities, a concern that was borne out. Woronowicz’s

children were prevented from obtaining the Abitur necessary for university, and his wife suffers from high blood pressure, a result, Woronowicz is convinced, of

the family’s long, stressful relationship with the secret police. Certainly, there

were real, long-term mental health consequences similar to post traumatic stress

syndrome to having been a Stasi target and which are being treated in dedicated

clinics in Germany today. 26

Despite the constant surveillance, Woronowicz remarks today on how his

life was not dramatically altered by the investigations against him, although

this would certainly be a different refrain if the Stasi had succeeded in removing

him from his position. In many ways, his was a symbiotic relationship with the

Stasi; his lifework tended to be oriented toward negating the effect of the Stasi

on other people’s lives and assisting them in navigating around it. Individuals

who came to him wanting to fl ee East Germany, for example, were told to apply

to emigrate legally, for “they must never know the truly brutal methods the Stasi

employed.” 27 In this respect, the manner in which Woronowicz conducted his life was not altogether different from individuals who were not the target of

a Stasi operation but who simply assumed and accepted its presence in their

lives. Following the collapse of the East German regime, Woronowicz continued

his work on behalf of the regime’s victims by founding an organization called

Forgiveness in Truth, which, he hopes, will help them deal with their anger

toward their repressors.

Although they were not the targets of special operations as Woronowicz

was, the experiences of Jürgen Heiser and Detlef Jung, both associated with the

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church, reveal the challenges for even mildly oppositional East Germans. As a

parish priest for thirty-eight years at the church in Groß Breese, Herr Heiser was

a typically long-serving clergyman. He was only the twentieth priest in the par-

ish since the Protestant Reformation in 1517, translating into an average tenure

of roughly twenty-fi ve years for each minister. Herr Heiser rarely voted in GDR

elections—something that the Stasi would have assiduously recorded—and he

encouraged his sons to avoid the Free German Youth. Because they were the

sons of a regime opponent who did not partake in the mass organizations of the

party, the boys were forbidden to pursue higher education although they were,

in their father’s words, “very smart.” 28 Herr Heiser resented especially the strictly controlled school curriculum, lobbying fruitlessly to have it include religious

instruction. (Today he fi nds it delightfully ironic that in 1989 Erich Honecker

and his wife sought refuge at a Lutheran minister’s house near Bernau because

no party member would take in the deposed East German leader.)

Heiser was never entirely free of the Stasi. He could hear the clicking on his

telephone as the Stasi’s rudimentary tapping technology kicked in. The organist

at his church was an informant, a fact that she freely admitted to him, explain-

ing that she agreed to work for the Stasi in return for permission to travel west

(which, in fact, the Stasi never granted), and he was aware of informants in his

congregation, one of whom spoke Plattdeutsch (low German, a northern dia-

lect) and could inform on him. On the one or two times a year Heiser gave a

sermon in that dialect, he dared to be somewhat more oppositional, given the

paucity of native speakers of that dialect in his town.

The most shocking Stasi-related incident for Herr Heiser occurred in 1974

when a young man from Groß Breese went missing. When his body was discov-

ered in the Elbe, the regime claimed that he had drowned while attempting to

escape, but residents of the area had it on good authority that he had been run

over by a Stasi motorboat. It sickened Heiser to give the funeral oration without

being able to mention the mysterious circumstances of the young man’s death.

In 1998, the Stasi offi cials involved in the incident were tried in a court set up

in Schwerin’s Demmlerplatz, ironically the former Stasi regional headquarters,

and were found innocent. In order to provide a modicum of solace to the family

after what was in Heiser’s view a horrendous miscarriage of justice, he helped

arrange for a memorial panel to be placed alongside the riverbank where the

young man lost his life.

Spurred by this incident and others involving the Stasi, Heiser gave a ser-

mon to a crowd of nearly 10,000 demonstrators in Wittenberge on January 15,

1990, in which he denounced the Stasi’s presence in society, and he received

a vibrant round of applause when he said that churchgoers were fed up of

having their license plate numbers recorded by Stasi agents. Although he was

sure that he would be arrested for his comments—even though they came

over two months after the fall of the Wall—the regime took no action against

his disparagement of the secret police, which convinced him that the Stasi in

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its revamped form, as the Offi ce for National Security, had, once and for all,

lost its teeth.

As much as his life and the lives of other East Germans were under constant

Stasi surveillance, there is an urgency in Herr Heiser’s plea not to misunderstand

this state of affairs as evidence of a cowering or trampled people. He stresses that

there was still “civic courage” in the GDR and that he refused to let the ubiq-

uitous monitoring rule his life. As an example, he relates an incident in 1986

when he requested from the mayor that he become volunteer fi re chief for the

district, knowing full well that the party would not want a minister to occupy

this position. Heiser was delighted when the SED installed a more “reliable”

fi re chief because his aim all along was simply to have the long-vacant posi-

tion fi lled. Heiser takes pride today in claiming that societal monitoring in the

GDR did not turn him into a “yes-man,” but it is diffi cult to know if his claim is

meant as criticism of those who succumbed and accommodated themselves to

the regime’s ubiquitous presence, or whether he is sympathetic with those who

did not swim against the stream, knowing the serious consequences to his fam-

ily from his life as a regime opponent.

Herr Jung, another interviewee who was a member of the church in his youth,

became the object of Stasi interest when he was seventeen years old. Following a

youth meeting in East Germany, he received a letter from a West German church

youth group requesting that the two groups establish contact. Unbeknownst

to him, the Stasi had intercepted the letter and immediately employed three

informants to monitor him. His fi le would grow over the years to include eigh-

teen informants and some three hundred pages. Herr Jung is remarkably even-

handed when discussing the informant reports on him, claiming that most are

“banal, boring, or naïve.” At this point in the conversation his sister, who had

joined us on the patio, added that many informants were likely protecting individuals with their purposefully generalized reports. It is, however, diffi cult to

imagine that all eighteen informants were “protecting” Herr Jung, or that his

entire fi le offered up banalities.

Although it is true that informant reports did not always accurately refl ect

their subject, as Timothy Garten Ash demonstrated in sometimes hilarious

fashion in his own case, 29 informers today frequently cite the banality of the information to defend their own actions. 30 This is not much of a defense. Stasi offi cers did not consider any information commonplace, but rather all part of a

composite image it worked tirelessly to form about East Germans. Furthermore,

there had to be some element of personal information in the reporting for it

to have any air of authenticity, a fact that required the hardly defensible posi-

tion of information-gathering on someone the informant knew and then, unbe-

knownst to that individual, passing that information on to a state authority.

An unrelated run-in with the Stasi recounted by Herr Jung reveals the power

of the organization in society. While looking for a bank robber, the Stasi took

Herr Jung off the streets and kept him in a Stasi holding cell overnight without

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any communication with his family. His sister frantically called police stations

to try to locate her brother, but to no avail. Although he was released the next day

and was not injured in any way, the incident raises questions about the image

that he and his family would have of the Stasi and how this might affect their

conduct in society. As an organization with sweeping powers and one which

was by every indication “above the law,” the Stasi caused East Germans like Herr

Jung to lead as inconspicuous a life as possible. One fi nal aspect of Jung’s life is

worth recounting: He and his pregnant wife spent their wedding night in prison

after an evening stroll accidentally brought them into a restricted zone near the

border with West Germany.31 It was in part because of this incident that he was throughout his life, as he says, “on his guard.”

Apart from the Stasi presence, East Germans noted the fact of “dictatorship”

primarily in two other venues, travel and television, the latter not to be under-

estimated because it was the most popular home pastime in East Germany. 32

For several individuals, travel restrictions were the most visible manifestation

that the state they lived in was a strictly regulated one. Contrary to what is often

assumed in the West, East Germans could legally emigrate to western countries,

something that became marginally easier following the regime’s signing on to

the Helsinki Final Act in 1975.33 Although it was a lengthy and complicated process, and one that overwhelmingly led to a denial of the request, East Germans

could apply to emigrate to the West (and usually this meant to West Germany).

Between 1977 and 1988, 121,000 East Germans emigrated legally.34 Given the diffi culty of the procedure, thousands of East Germans attempted high-risk mea-

sures of escape—the Stasi prevented fi fty-four attempts to hijack airplanes out of

East Germany between 1962 and 1973—or opted for the easier route of remain-

ing in the West while on an offi cially sanctioned visit.

While the cases of roughly 900 who died at the Wall and the German-German

border while trying to escape are fairly well known, the 1,000 who were injured

at the same locations, the 175 who died swimming or otherwise navigating the

treacherous Baltic Sea to Denmark or Sweden, and the staggering 72,000 who

were jailed for their failed attempts remain in the shadows of historical scholar-

ship. The Stasi was the primary instrument for investigating individuals who

had applied to leave legally as well as those who attempted the illegal exodus

known as Flucht. Applications to emigrate to the West were by no means a new

phenomenon in 1989, although there was marked increase at that time. In 1980,

2 percent of East Germans applied to emigrate; by June 1989 that number had

risen to 12 percent.35

Restrictions on travel to West Germany for major family events like funerals,

anniversaries, and signifi cant birthdays were for many East Germans particularly

irksome. A history teacher from Wittenberge recalls how his trip to West Germany

in 1954 to attend his mother-in-law’s wedding was the last time he was permit-

ted to visit the Federal Republic until his mother developed terminal cancer in

the 1980s, even though he had applied on several other occasions. The strictly

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controlled visas also proved impossible for the teacher’s children to obtain.

Despite his best efforts, his children never had an opportunity to meet their

grandparents.36 A kindergarten teacher from the small village of Neuglobsow echoed these thoughts, observing that the “most bothersome” aspect of the

GDR was the travel restriction, something she would have experienced more

than others, as travel to West Germany was all but forbidden for kindergarten

teachers until late in the regime.37 A grocery store clerk who remembers that her informal interrogation by a party member upon her return from a trip to the

West soured her on future travel across the Wall, is today evidently making up

for lost travel time, recounting enthusiastically her recent trips to Ireland, Egypt,

and Marrakech.38

Others, however, did not appear particularly inconvenienced by the travel

restrictions. Kristina Vogt, who had been forcibly removed from Poland at the

end of World War II, was in many ways the very symbol of the “workers’ and

peasants’ state.” She was part of the generation that undertook the backbreak-

ing work of rebuilding Germany at the end of the war, a task that fell dispro-

portionately to women. Although the Trümmerfrauen (rubble women) have

entered public memory as the classic image of gritty Germans determined to

rebuild their country, this urban phenomenon had a lesser-known counterpart

in the countryside, where nearly one quarter of farms were run solely by women

because their husbands and/or sons had died in the war or were in a POW

camp in the Soviet Union (most of whom returned only in 1955). 39 A destroyed infrastructure and lack of farm implements were chief among the challenges she

faced.

Sitting across from me at a fl imsy table in the vestibule of the farmhouse, rust-

ing implements propped up against the window, Frau Vogt, weathered from the

years of hard agricultural labor, said that travel was for her simply not an issue, 40

almost to suggest that on any given day in her adult life, the pressing needs of

the farm would have taken precedence, that she always had better things to do.

As if to underlie the point, at the conclusion of our interview the septuagenarian

rose and, grabbing a farm tool, hurried back to work in the barn. Although the

regime’s travel restrictions—and their ugly manifestation in the Berlin Wall—

brought many East Germans to the streets in 1989, Frau Vogt reminds us that a

certain segment of the population, as in any society, were content to stay close to

home. This is not to suggest that those who desired a glimpse of life on the other

side of the Wall were adventurous Wanderlusters, but simply to acknowledge that some East Germans, especially if they did not have relations in the West, did not

desire to travel—either in Western or Eastern Europe.

In 1997 in Eisenhüttenstadt, at the launch of his book on opposition in East

Germany, the former pastor and now eminent historian Ehrhart Neubert was

forced to correct his declaration that watching West German television was a

“tolerated form of opposition” with the hasty qualifi cation “only in the last

decade.”41 Residents of this town would have been particularly sensitive to his

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comments given that it was home to the only antenna erected in the GDR to

jam television broadcast frequencies from the West. In 1970 a dentist in the

area used a magnifying glass to try to burn down the wooden tower on which

the blocking device rested; he was sentenced to eight years in prison.42 Several of Eisenhüttenstadt’s inhabitants who were interviewed for an oral history of

Stalin’s massive industrial “model” city in East Germany, which grew up out of

the countryside almost overnight—the town was originally called Stalin City—

recalled threats of arrest from Stasi offi cers for watching western television,

a refrain echoed by several interviewees.

Otto Dachs recalled that, in the 1970s, employees of the German post offi ce

drove around Perleberg looking for houses with rooftop antennas pointing

westward. At one point, a man showed up at his front door with a handheld

apparatus, said, “You are watching western television,” and confi scated the

device attached to his TV that enabled him to receive the western TV signal—

nicknamed by East Germans the “mousetrap.” The man warned Dachs that if

he were caught watching western TV again, his name would be published in the

newspaper. Even prior to this incident, western TV had been an issue for Dachs.

A classmate of his was suspended from their school for claiming that he would

push off his roof anyone who tried to take his antenna to prevent him from

watching western television, even if it meant that they would fall to their death.

Dachs’s support of his friend led to his suspension too.43 A teacher recalled that following the building of the Berlin Wall he was required to visit all parents of

children in his school and instruct them not to watch western television. In any

case, as a teacher in the GDR one had to commit to watching exclusively East

German television.44 One interviewee remembered his concern about watching western television while his future daughter-in-law was visiting the family for

the fi rst time. She initially left the room when it was on but later grew accus-

tomed to it. 45

From the regime’s point of view, the danger of watching western television lay

not in the soap operas or the evening dramas, nor exclusively in the news, which

provided a different worldview, but also in the momentous achievements in the

West. Neil Armstrong’s small step onto the moon on July 21, 1969, was broadcast

live in West Germany, but could be watched only furtively in the GDR. 46

What the Stasi presence meant for the general conduct of East Germans in

their daily life is diffi cult to capture. Two interviewees claimed that they con-

tinued to speak their minds in public, criticizing various aspects of the GDR,

although, to be sure, not about taboo subjects such as the Politburo members,

East German elections, or the Soviet presence. Most of the interviewees, however,

expressed much of the sentiment described by historian of the Stasi Hubertus

Knabe, that trust, spontaneity, and sense of one’s self were badly damaged by the

Stasi’s presence.47 Interviewees, even one who said that he did not fear expressing his opinion of the regime, reported that they were circumspect in restaurants

because of the possible presence of informants. 48

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In the workplace, East Germans assumed the presence of an informant although

they could never be sure who it might be. A Wittenberge teacher believed there

to be three or four informants in the teaching complement; the director of a box-

making factory assumed that his bookkeeper, whom the party insisted he take on,

was secretly working for the Stasi—an assumption that was confi rmed when the

archives opened.49 East German citizens constantly made a judgment about an individual to whom they were speaking and censored their information accordingly. In a remarkable revelation, one respondent’s wife reported how she con-

stantly whispered to her friends and family “quiet, quiet” when in public places,

and still does. Fearing even today that the Stasi has not completely disappeared from the East German landscape, she reprimands her husband for being too

critical of East Germany in public. East Germans also practiced self-censorship in

other, more private areas, including mail and telephone, where it would be very

unlikely for East Germans to speak openly for fear of Stasi interception.

In general, East Germans interviewed here did not fear the Stasi every minute

of every day, but they did acknowledge leading a more cautious life because of

its presence. They were selective in whom they confi ded, most switched off the

West German television station if there was a knock at the door, they kept to

neutral topics in restaurants, and none dared criticize the regime while at work.

Although he was referring to the 1950s, the Polish dissident Czeslaw Milosz’s

view of East European society contains a timeless essence:

It is hard to defi ne the type of relationship that prevails between the peo-

ple in the East otherwise than as acting, with the exception that one does

not perform on a theater stage but in the street, offi ce, factory, meeting

hall, or even the room one lives in. Such acting is a highly developed craft

that places a premium upon mental alertness. Before it leaves the lips,

every word must be evaluated as to its consequences. 50

When prompted about what, precisely, they feared from running afoul of the

Stasi, few had a concrete answer. Prison sentences or physical harm were not at

the center of their concerns, but rather a general sense that their lives would be

harmed in some way by running up against the instruments of repression, that

their children might not be able to pursue higher education, that they might

be demoted, that permission to visit western relatives would not be granted,

that waiting times for cars or housing would be extended. These fears were well

grounded, since repression in the GDR in the later period manifested itself pre-

cisely in the molding and control of life-opportunities for East German citizens,

rather than the blatant use of force that characterized the earlier period.51 East

Germans may not have been simply ruled, passive objects of the state, but the

stick the state wielded over one’s life chances and those of one’s family certainly

set boundaries for their agency.

If caution bordering on fear, and a general sense of keeping a low profi le, were

part of the East German experience, what is one to make of the often repeated

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refrain that East German society was more mutually supportive than the “cold”

Germany of today? Even Dr. Hoffmann seems confl icted about this aspect,

claiming at one point in the conversation that he had felt part of a broader col-

lective in the GDR. He later chastised himself, saying this closeness was a mirage

given the Stasi’s ubiquitous presence. The idea that there was a sense of com-

munity in East Germany that has since evaporated is common in some circles of

East Germany today. In 1998 this sentimental view of the country peaked with

the widely publicized story of a widower in Brandenburg found mummifi ed in

his living room chair in front of the television in his apartment. He had been

dead for four years. Newspapers throughout the region lamented that such a

tragedy would not have been possible in East Germany, where there was more

of a sense of a shared humanity ( Menschlichkeit).

Stefan Wolle dismantled this rosy view in a scathing counterexplanation

of why a body would have been discovered much sooner in the GDR. Due

to the housing shortage, someone would have noticed the mail piling up

or the plants wilting on the balcony and could well have tried to inquire

at the housing offi ce if the apartment were available or, as frequently hap-

pened, simply moved in and thereby presented the housing offi ce with a

fait accompli. The custodians of the apartment building, who not only kept

up the building but also recorded guests who visited longer than three days

and collected funds for solidarity projects, were frequently the fi rst point of

contact for Stasi investigations; they certainly would have noticed a missing

renter. Finally, either the Stasi or the police would have investigated anyone

whose participation in society (usually in the form of employment) suddenly

dropped out of sight. 52

Joachim Gauck has also suggested that the perceived solidarity in East

Germany was a result of having to help each other survive an oppressive

state. 53 If an East German today were asked how she managed to get by, given the chronic shortages of items like car parts or items to repair a leaky fau-cet, her immediate answer would be “Vitamin C” (connections) (in German,

Vitamin B [Beziehung]), knowing someone who could procure the desired

part, or, as East Germans would say, someone who could “organize” it. This

peculiar source no doubt played a more signifi cant role than simply obtain-

ing spare parts, however, as it provided individuals with a sense of network,

of being “propped up” in a human sense as well. A physician from District

Gransee perhaps said it best when refl ecting on the nature of solidarity in East

Germany: “In dictatorship as in war,” she observes, “people come together in

diffi cult times.”54

A C T I N G O N T H E E A S T G E R M A N S TA G E

Although the reaction to encounters with dictatorship, and especially with

the Stasi, depended on the individual and the nature of that encounter, it is

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noteworthy that these East Germans did indeed recognize that they took the Stasi

into account in their everyday lives. This often took the form of self-censorship,

a constant care of what one said to whom. One does not detect from East

Germans’ refl ections on their past that they were gripped by a paralyzing fear,

in the psychological sense of the word—although one interview subject did say

she “was always afraid”55—but rather a deep resignation that one was not the master of one’s own destiny, that to run afoul of the Stasi, even unintentionally, was to sacrifi ce power over one’s life and the life opportunities of family

members.56 This latter point has been borne out in an exhaustive study of 576

East German political victims, 73.4 percent of whom said that their own oppo-

sitional activities brought negative consequences to family members who had

not been involved in opposition, ranging from demotions to denial of travel

permits to denial of higher education to children, and fi nally to, for many, years-

long observation by the Stasi.57

To be sure, these fears did not relate solely to a loss of income, although that

element cannot be underestimated, but it carried with them a wider fear that

must be seen within the context of dictatorship: that of being ensnared in the

repression apparatus. 58 To come into contact with the Stasi in even the mildest form would cause an East German to mentally search his past for whatever

transgression, no matter when committed or how slight, for the content of every

conversation and with whom they had it, for whatever it might be that the Stasi

could now use against them. 59

In a landmark study of thirty individuals affected by the Stasi, Babett Bauer

argues that East Germans’ unease regarding the Stasi presence tended to mate-

rialize after the fi rst encounter with them, but once it did, it remained a per-

manent feature in their lives. Many East Germans who were not engaged in

oppositional behavior but who had simply run across the Stasi in some fashion,

and therefore did not “expect” a run-in as dissidents might, were so shaken

that they launched themselves headlong into East German life. They became

model employees and active participants in their neighborhood associations so

as to reduce the chance of any further encounter with the regime’s structures,

something that might be termed a “pragmatic loyalty.” Others withdrew from

society and sought refuge after their encounter in the sanctuary of private life. 60

What remains unclear in Bauer’s account is the defi nition of an “encounter”

with the Stasi that would spark a life-long defense mechanism against not only

the secret police but its assumed accomplices—workplace supervisors, the party,

mass organizations. To varying degrees, these encounters would have caused

East Germans to internalize the Stasi’s presence. At some level, as Bauer so elo-

quently concludes, repression bored into “the body’s wrinkles and the brain’s

mechanisms.”61

Setting aside those who were directly repressed by the regime, many of the

individuals interviewed claimed to be supporters of the GDR’s societal system,

even though they had had some encounter with the instruments of repression.

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Most of these were ordinary citizens who could hardly be characterized as

utopian dreamers. Brigitte Reimann, the author of the popular book Franziska

Linkerhand, a passionate plea for the socialist city as a living place of communication that was published after her premature death in 1973, is one of the better-

known examples of this sentiment. She believed in the GDR although she too

had become entangled in the secret police apparatus. As she herself admitted,

the Stasi manipulated her into informant work.

In her capacity as “Catherine” and in contrast to the vast majority of infor-

mants, Reimann did not sign a formal agreement—she reported on the artis-

tic and literary community until she denounced herself to the Literary Circle

of which she was a member, thereby rendering her useless to the Stasi. 62

She was bullied into Stasi work, blackmailed into more intrusive spying in

order to free her husband who had been jailed after a fi ght with the police,

betrayed friends and colleagues, and yet remained fi rmly committed to the

GDR. How does one explain this paradox? Like many other East Germans,

Reimann saw “good” in the GDR and an ideal that far outweighed its imper-

fect implementation.

The attempt to separate the “good” from the “bad” in East Germany is indeed

at the heart of much recent literature on the country, although these are not

attempts to resurrect the country or its system. 63 Nevertheless, there seems to be a feeling that one can separate out positive, humanitarian projects conducted

by East German citizens and by the state from the harmful, repressive aspects of

the regime. This was not, after all, the Nazi regime, where a murderous, racial

ideology went hand in hand with the repression apparatus, and whose society

was infused with its odious thought.64 Even the admittedly impressive advance-ments in cancer that took place under the Nazi regime, from which postwar

generations of Germans (particularly women) benefi ted, were conducted within

the framework of protecting the “German genus.”65

Historians of East Germany can point to many humanitarian accomplish-

ments of the GDR that rested beyond negative aspects of ideology, including

widening access to education to workers’ and farmers’ children, recycling ini-

tiatives, and, one frequently cited as a model accomplishment that the new

Germany would do well to emulate, the Poliklinik system of medical care, which gathered under one roof medical professionals, labs, and radiology facilities.

These might be considered similar to the medical clusters, or outpatient mini-

hospitals that one fi nds in many Canadian and American cities, which can deal

with most medical issues short of major surgery. Up to forty physicians and two

hundred nonmedical staff provided medical care in Polikliniken for a wide range of issues, from immunization to counseling for people questioning their sexuality. 66 In fact, more than half of East German doctors worked at these outpatient clinics. Although the severe shortages of medicine and modern equipment

cannot be denied, it is also true that this organization of the medical system

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was advantageous and offered a decent level of health care. Many of those who

worked in it were compassionate and dedicated.

Repression, however, cannot be sifted out of the health care system. One

senior physician maintains that all clinic directors had some involvement

with the Stasi.67 Hospitals were also heavily penetrated, as evidenced by Dr. Hoffmann’s experience and the story of informant Nöcker from chapter

2, but these were not isolated incidents. The regional hospital in Magdeburg-

Altstadt had thirty-one informants, two of whom were high-ranking physicians

in the director’s offi ce. 68 The Stasi could determine who went to medical college in the fi rst place, actively recruited informants at medical school, made sure that

medical professionals did not fl ee the country, and used heavy-handed methods

to recruit even top surgeons as informants. Roughly 3 to 5 percent of all physi-

cians in the GDR were Stasi informants at the end of the regime, a participation

rate signifi cantly higher than the population at large. 69

The Stasi’s aggressive recruitment of informants out of medical colleges

(oftentimes of students under the age of eighteen) paid off in that half of

those adult students recruited remained as informants once they became

practicing physicians. 70 From a secret police perspective, doctors were ideal informants not only for the information that they could provide on the medical sector, but also because they encountered East Germans from all walks of

life in the course of their day. Although the Stasi rarely sought out a doctor to

provide information on a specifi c patient, once the doctor became an infor-

mant they frequently reported on their patients. One recent study estimates

that 25 percent of doctor-informants broke the oath of secrecy, and thus GDR

law, in reporting to the Stasi on their patients’ health, personal situation, and

politics. 71 “Honecker’s health care” may not have been “Hitler’s highways”

but neither did East Germany’s social initiatives exist as an oasis immune

from a repressive dictatorship.

Orlando Figes’s masterful account of daily life in Stalin’s Soviet Union,

The Whisperers, makes plain that the Communist Party orchestrated mutual

surveillance on a grand scale, even to the point that unrelated families lived

together in communal apartments in order for citizens to more easily monitor

each other. This, for Figes, is unique to the Soviet Union: “While the totalitar-

ian regimes of the twentieth century sought to mobilize the population in the

work of the police, and one or two, like the Stasi state in the GDR, managed

for a while to infi ltrate to almost every level of society, none succeeded as the

Soviet regime did for sixty years, in controlling a population through collec-

tive security.” 72

The cult around Pavlik Morozov, the boy who denounced his father to the

authorities as a kulak (a well-to-do farmer) and was lauded as a hero of the

Soviet Union, illustrates the extent to which the state demanded vigilance from

ordinary citizens in policing for enemies. 73 Private life, it was hoped, would

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come to an end. In many ways, the experiences of those interviewed here dif-

fer signifi cantly from this “ideal” of a mutually monitoring society; there was

in East Germany no cult of Morozov or forced living with strangers. Most East

Germans were not burned by the sun of that revolution. In that they were pru-

dent and exhibited deep concern for life opportunities, but did not experience a

paralyzing fear of the gulag, East Germans cannot be thought of as “whisperers,”

but they did become, over the course of years, very good “actors.”

6 THE DOWNFALL

i n o c t o b e r 1 9 8 9 , the residents of Wittenberge began emptying their

cupboards of candles. Armed with this unvanquishable weapon they went

fi rst by the hundreds, then thousands, and eventually tens of thousands to the

Lutheran church, which had been holding peace services every Monday, and

then marched to the T-34 Soviet tank monument outside city hall, where they

left their burning candles. Following East Germany’s collapse the tank was taken

away and replaced by a plowshare, but that display was of short duration. It too

was removed and the site itself turned into a garden. There is no longer a single

public reminder of the revolution that toppled communism in East Germany in

Wittenberge, or in any of the towns in Districts Perleberg and Gransee.

When East Germans took to the streets in those two districts in the fall of

1989, it was the fi rst time in anyone’s memory that these sleepy towns had expe-

rienced any kind of serious disturbance. There were no major incidents during

the Hitler years; the uprising of 1953 somehow bypassed the area. Thousands of

people joined anti-regime protests in towns that unlike Berlin or some of the

southern industrial centers had never given the regime any cause for concern.

The revolutionaries out in the provinces, whose story is infrequently told and

hardly memorialized, partook in the march of history as much as their better-

known counterparts in larger centers.1 That they were able to reclaim the streets in this strictly controlled society shocked the participants themselves.

T H E M AY 1 9 8 9 C O M M U N A L E L E C T I O N S

East German elections were always extravagant affairs. Bands played while local

dignitaries shook hands with voters headed toward the booths to exercise the

“fi rst duty of a socialist citizen,” and offi cials greeted fi rst-time voters with bou-quets of fl owers. The communal elections of May 7, 1989, were conducted with

equal fanfare, but their approach meant that the Stasi in District Perleberg spent

most of the spring 1989 working to secure the electoral success of its political

superiors, the Socialist Unity Party ( Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands—

SED).2 “Symbol 89” was the code name given to the Stasi operation to secure the communal elections throughout East Germany, an operation that involved careful monitoring of individuals who might disrupt the election—such as church

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offi cials or applicants to emigrate from East Germany—and the use of infor-

mants to monitor societal discontent that could lead to nonparticipation at the

election.3 Stasi informants identifi ed 370 individuals who planned to protest the election by not voting, and pointed to a lack of apartment space, poor roads,

and supply problems as key factors behind potential nonparticipation in the

election.4 As the Stasi already had information on 582 individuals, including Jehovah’s Witnesses, former criminals, and church leaders, none of whom were

likely to participate (and in some cases had not for years), secret informants had

uncovered in advance 370 of the 1,068 individuals (or 35 percent) who ended up

not casting a ballot, an impressive performance.5

To an outsider, the results of the elections were an astonishing success for

the ruling SED, reporting an endorsement of the election unity lists of 98.88

percent. Behind the scenes, however, the Stasi was well aware that even in the

strictly controlled GDR, the population in District Perleberg had voiced dissent

in the election. The offi cial number of nonvoters at the election was a stag-

gering 165 percent higher than at the last election in 1986.6 Specialized workers ( Facharbeiter) and factory workers comprised the lion’s share of nonvoters.

Unlike elsewhere in East Germany where individuals wrote letters of complaint

about the falsifi ed results, ministers voiced disapproval in sermons, and dem-

onstrators took to the streets—as was the case of the 1,000 strong protest in

Leipzig—no such protests took place in Districts Perleberg and Gransee.7

Many residents of District Perleberg who refused to cast their ballots on May 7,

1989, did so because of immediate standard-of-living issues. East Germans in the

county of Reckenzin complained of not having access to the city water sup-

ply. The building site manager for the factory VEB Meliorationsbau threatened

not to take part in the election because he had been waiting twelve years for a

telephone. 8 Some residents protested vociferously that the only restaurant in their area had been closed for years for repairs; others complained that they

could not obtain fresh fruit after 4 p.m. 9 In the lead-up to the election, citizens

were called upon to put in writing to their city councils issues that they would

like addressed. In Region Schwerin, 1,715 did so, including 246 from District

Perleberg. The key issues in these letters, according to the Stasi, were lack of

proper living accommodations, damage to the environment, lack of telephones,

poor roads, and lack of building supplies.10

The Stasi prepared a special report on the situation in the city of Wittenberge,

the industrial center of District Perleberg, which suggested that for some in the

district, immediate living standard issues in and of themselves were not the

sole factor behind discontent, but rather the party’s ceaseless propaganda that

glossed over the dire situation. The Stasi admitted that the situation in District

Perleberg was considerably worse than neighboring industrial centers like

Güstrow, and worse than in the region in general. 11 Wittenberge could no longer

meet the bread needs of the population, causing the local authorities to import

12,000 rolls ( Brötchen), a staple in any German diet. The bread was brought in

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weekly from fi ve surrounding districts, which, according to the Stasi, affected

their freshness and appearance. The Stasi did not foresee much improvement in

this area until a large bakery had been built in Perleberg, an improvement not

scheduled until 1994.12

Important factories like the rayon factory (VEB Zellstoff- und Zellwollewerk),

the sewing machine factory (VEB Nähmaschinenwerk Wittenberge), and the

vegetable oil refi nery (Märkische Ölwerke) were often shut down due to a lack

of spare parts. The Stasi grimly reported: “It must be admitted that without sup-

port from the region, it will not be possible to solve the problems of the city of

Wittenberge.” 13 Given the precarious situation there, the Stasi recommended a swift response to the dire supply problems. What is noteworthy, however, is that

this lack of material goods was often coupled with a distrust of the regime. Stasi

appraisal of the popular mood suggest a population exasperated by the party’s

lies about overly fulfi lling economic plans. 14 Deep popular anger resulted from

the contradiction between regime propaganda and actual living conditions. 15

The Stasi documents for District Gransee are not as plentiful on the May

1989 elections as one would like, but those of the Communist Party suggest

that housing issues preoccupied the electorate. The majority of the 274 Eingaben

(petitions) that East Germans sent to state authorities in the lead-up to the elec-

tion landed in the housing branch of the district council. Considering that the

trying housing situation of the immediate postwar period lay nearly forty years

in the past, the complaints around housing were fully justifi ed: one person

requested an apartment with a bathroom, another complained of still having to

live with his ex-wife because no other apartment was available, a family of four

hoped to move out of their one-bedroom apartment, a married couple with a

child were still living with their parents, a family of four requested an apartment

with more than two rooms.16

In order to address the complaints about material goods that were evident at

the election, the SED in District Gransee vowed to raise production of consumer

goods by nearly 20 percent over 1988 fi gures; it boasted of increases in certain

goods in the district that had already taken place: 3,000 more children’s sandals,

2,500 more babies’ shoes, 44 more sofas, 110 more easy chairs, and 22 more

stools.17 In the end, however, despite legitimate housing and material concerns, the elections in District Gransee were less contentious than other places in the

GDR although it is worth noting that the district did have the only electoral

district in the country that did not endorse the unity list, a result in large part of an abusive and roundly despised mayor.18

E X O D U S

On July 26, 1989, the director of the rayon factory in Wittenberge settled down

to breakfast in his Linz hotel, where he planned to conduct business with an

Austrian fi rm. He became upset that his director of technology was late. As a

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member of the SED, a graduate of the Karl Marx University in Leipzig, a reliable

factory colleague since 1978, and the father of four sons, the director of tech-

nology was an unlikely candidate to fl ee to the West during a routine business

trip, but this is precisely what had happened. For days afterwards, bewildered

co-workers gossiped about the defection. 19 This case represents a high-profi le defection from the district and one that the Stasi investigated inconclusively,

but the exodus, both legal and illegal, of East Germans from all walks of life was

becoming a Stasi concern in Perleberg in the summer and fall of 1989.

When Hungary began rolling up the barbed wire that formed the Iron

Curtain between Hungary and Austria in May 1989, East Germans vacationing

in Hungary on the summer break from school used the opportunity to fl ee to

the West. 20 By late summer, roughly 1,600 East Germans had fl ed their country in this manner—on August 19 alone, 661 East Germans fl ed to the West through

Hungary. Although a few days later an East German, Kurt Werner Schulz, would

be shot in a scuffl e with a Hungarian border guard,21 in general the whole scene

was taking place remarkably peacefully.

The permeation of the Iron Curtain between Hungary and Austria was having

consequences in District Perleberg hundreds of miles to the north. The leader

of the Stasi in Region Schwerin sent out an urgent memorandum to all district

Stasi leaders, reminding his subordinates that all those who were applying to

leave East Germany—even for a holiday—must be reported to the SED secre-

tary for the area, and he advised them to be ever vigilant of increased attempts

to leave East Germany directly.22 Furthermore, all those who were applying to emigrate from East Germany were to be monitored by informants in order to

prevent public protest. Informants were also to be used against those who were

planning to travel to Hungary. 23

Concern for “legal” emigration caused Werner Ryll, the leader of the Stasi

for District Perleberg, using a Stasi tactic in place since the 1970s, 24 to command

those in positions of authority, such as factory bosses, to apply pressure on

employees to withdraw their emigration applications. 25 The tactic met with limited success, as some simply left illegally. By August 16 Perleberg District had lost

twenty-six citizens to illegal emigration, and a cluster of fi ve others were holed

up in the West German embassy in Budapest awaiting permission to leave. 26

Within a few months the numbers of those illegally leaving the district rose.

By the end of September, 110 individuals had left, three-quarters of them via

Hungary. These individuals ran the gamut from waiters to doctors and nurses

to employees of the German Railway, the sewing machine factory, and various

construction sites. Following the orders of Erich Mielke, head of the Stasi, dis-

trict Stasi offi cials held daily meetings with the regular police to fi nd out who

had applied for a travel permit to Hungary. 27

In District Perleberg, 1988 had seen a total of eighty-nine applications to

emigrate, involving 193 people (as families applied on a single application). By

June 20, 1989, the District Council had already received seventy-fi ve applications

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to emigrate for 171 people. Forty-four of these applications had already been

approved, and the individuals had left.28 Although we do not have the breakdown of these numbers for District Perleberg, we do have them for the Region

Schwerin, in which Perleberg was situated. A variety of social backgrounds

was represented in the applicants from Region Schwerin—15 percent were in

industry, 7.4 percent in agriculture, 5.8 percent in the construction industry,

13.2 percent in commerce, and 12.3 percent from the health fi eld. 29 Residents of Wittenberge represented 65 percent of the total emigration applications for

District Perleberg. More than 60 percent were between the ages of twenty-fi ve

and forty. Stasi offi cers themselves seemed to be at a loss to explain the exodus

among this segment of the population that had few material concerns, as they

outlined in a report to the district leadership summarizing the situation in the

land: “The following characteristics are typical of those applying to leave East

Germany: All had a comfortable standard of living. They were average to very

good workers at their work places. They participated actively in social functions

of the workers’ collective and in their neighborhoods. None of them gave any

cause for concern.” 30

As had been the case for most of the 1980s, the number of Perleberg residents

applying to emigrate was a focus of Stasi work in the district, as revealed by the

number of operations (OVs) targeting individuals who had fi led applications.

In October 1989 the District Perleberg Stasi had fi ve OVs underway (code named

Tendenz (Tendency), Täuscher (Phoney), Taxi, Brille (Glasses), and Stoma).

OV Tendenz and OV Brille were long-running investigations of two prominent Lutheran ministers; the others dealt with individuals who had applied to leave

for the West. At the same time the Stasi was actively at work on the lower cat-

egory of operation, the OPK ( Operative Personenkontrolle—Personal Surveillance Operation). In May, there were forty OPKs underway, of which nineteen dealt

with applicants to emigrate. 31 By October, the Stasi was involved with fi fty-one OPKs, eighteen of which had been initiated during the year—only three more

than in 1988 and fewer than the twenty-three which the Stasi initiated in 1987

(keeping in mind that the year 1989 was not yet over). There was, in fact, no

appreciable increase in the number of high-end Stasi operations initiated in

1989, although one might have expected a dramatic increase in Stasi monitoring

given the increasingly volatile situation in the Soviet bloc and the exodus.32 In

sum, the District Perleberg Stasi was no more operationally active in 1989 in the

exodus arena than it had been earlier in the 1980s.

Although the Stasi was increasingly concerned with those who left the GDR

illegally—and certainly some of the eighteen new operations (OPKs) in 1989

would have dealt with these individuals or their families—the situation was not

catastrophic. As late as three weeks before the opening of the Berlin Wall, fi fty residents of District Perleberg had occupied West German embassies in Prague and

Warsaw, 107 left via Hungary, and thirty-three remained behind on a sanctioned

visit to West Germany—in total, a mere 0.3 percent of the population. Naturally,

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those who had applied to visit Hungary, and who had also applied to emigrate,

were denied travel permits.33 By early October, the East German government had banned travel to the last permitted Soviet bloc country, Czechoslovakia.

If the bleeding of citizens to the West was of mild concern to the Stasi in

District Perleberg, it was even less so in District Gransee where, by the end of

April 1989, only forty-eight people had applied to settle permanently in West

Germany, half of whom were dependents of adults who applied. 34 Exodus was hardly a factor at the communal elections in May. 35 Even in September, with an increasing number of East Germans applying to leave or departing through

Hungary, only nine people in District Gransee applied to leave permanently,

and up to that point in the year, only six had left the GDR via Hungary.36 Those who applied to leave tended to be in their twenties and thirties. 37 A high-ranking Stasi offi cer who visited District Gransee in the late summer of 1989 indicated

that the pressure on the District Gransee Stasi from would-be emigrants was

“comparatively low,” but warned the offi cers to be on the look out for applicants

to emigrate who might consider collective action such as occupying churches,

demonstrating, or storming embassies.38

O P P O S I T I O N G R O U P S

The ponderous St. Jacob’s church in the heart of Perleberg sat quietly through

most of the years of the GDR, its spacious interior sparsely populated during

church services with perhaps forty to fi fty die-hard churchgoers, almost all of

them over the age of fi fty. In 1989, however, the mammoth edifi ce would not

be large enough to hold the two thousand demonstrators who gathered for an

evening service. With pews fi lled beyond comfort, six hundred demonstrators

had to listen from the market square.

Werner Ryll, the leader of the Stasi in District Perleberg, became increasingly

concerned throughout 1989 with the networks that church offi cials were devel-

oping, particularly around an environmental theme. Nowhere is this demon-

strated more clearly than in the elaborate Stasi OV Tendenz against Parish Priest Gottfried de Haas of Perleberg and his family.

In 1984, the District Perleberg Stasi recruited one of the most success-

ful informants in its history, Frank Pleß, code named Informant “Robert,” a

man who had been married for three years and had a child. Robert’s illegal

activities (which, due to privacy considerations, are not divulged to research-

ers) drew him to the attention of the Stasi and, in return for avoiding a prison

sentence, Robert agreed to inform for the Stasi. Lt. Bernd Besenbiel of the District

Perleberg Stasi offi ce was excited at the prospects of Robert because he was

still young enough to monitor the situation among the youth of the district. 39

A year after his recruitment, Robert was assigned to the Protestant Youth Group

( Junge Gemeinde), where he came in contact with the parish priest, Gottfried de Haas of Perleberg, someone who had already been written up in Stasi fi les for

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his interest in building up the youth group’s presence in the district. By 1986,

Robert’s case offi cer could write with some degree of satisfaction that Robert

had penetrated the group and, equally importantly, had built up a “personal

relationship” with de Haas. 40

The astonishing result of Robert’s longtime friendship with the de Haas

family—he and de Haas’s son, Joachim, had become fast friends—was that

this Stasi informant was one of the handful of individuals present at the highly

secret establishment of an oppositional environmental group. By 1987 the de

Haas family was holding regular evening discussions on environmental issues.

In 1989 Joachim, through his church contacts, had established a link with a

Berlin group founded in 1988 named “Arche-grün-ökologisches Netzwerk” (The

Ark Green Ecological Network) and wanted a Perleberg branch of the group.

Robert was not only a founding member of the Perleberg branch of the Ark

Green Network but also elected to the coordinating committee. The election

took place in the living room of an Ark Green Network higher-up of the Berlin

branch responsible for all East Germany. 41 On his trips to Berlin, the Stasi infor-

mant would often stay overnight at the fl at of this same individual, one of the

key fi gures overall in the movement. Robert and the three others in the Perleberg

group actively took part in environmental actions, such as photographing the

environmental damage caused by Soviet troop movements in the area, writing

to city hall to request more trees be planted, or asking Greenpeace to send two

million letters to East Germans about the environmental degradation in East

Germany. Every aspect of these actions was duly reported back to the Stasi by

Robert.

As a result of this information, in 1987 the Stasi upgraded the operation against

Gottfried de Haas and his wife who, according to the Stasi, was the “dominant”

member of the family, from an OPK (which had been underway since 1985)

to OV, the highest level. The catalyst for the increased attention was the inter-

est in the environmental movement combined with de Haas’s understandable

church contacts across the GDR, and even to West Germany. 42 Robert not only spied on the environmental groups but spent the next two years securing church

documents and letters that would reveal de Haas’s contacts. By February 1989

Besenbiel had grown more concerned about the Ark Green Network group in

Perleberg because it had started to move into the political sphere.

One evening toward the end of the month, Joachim and the three other

network members met in Joachim’s apartment and drafted a letter to party

leader Erich Honecker requesting that diplomatic relations with Iran be broken

off due to the recent call by Ayatollah Khomeni for the execution of Salman

Rushdie as punishment for his book The Satanic Verses.43 Robert questioned the merit of the idea but could not push too hard without arousing suspicion.

Lieutenant Besenbiel accordingly ordered that Robert make sure that no further

environmental groups be established in the district. In a manner similar to

the approach against applicants to emigrate, he suggested that the current Ark

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Green Network group in Perleberg be subsumed under the regime’s “policy of

employing appropriate societal organizations to monitor a group”—a telling

reference to the regime’s use of a variety of instruments to monitor and guide

society. 44

In a meeting about OV Tendenz with his superiors in Schwerin, the head of

Department XX (responsible for opposition in East Germany) stated that the

Ark Green Network did not seem to him to be an enemy organization yet, and

that OV Tendenz should be continued with an eye to reducing the group’s size. 45

In addition, in order to control the regular evenings sponsored by the church

on environmental issues, Ryll ordered the placing of “positive” individuals at

meetings to balance out the number of opponents and to support “the security

organs when the necessary dispersal of the gathering takes place.” He also called

for the placing of experts at these meetings to counter opponents’ arguments

about the environment. Finally, Ryll authorized the removal of the churches’

photocopying permits if oppositional activity continued.46

Besenbiel recommended that Robert be awarded for his splendid work the service

medal of the National People’s Army on the fortieth anniversary of the Stasi—an

anniversary that never came because of the intervening fall of the Berlin Wall. On

October 24, 1989, Robert authored his last report for the Stasi, in which he reported

on a spontaneous demonstration by some six hundred residents of Perleberg who

had gathered in the streets yelling “Gorby! Get rid of the Stasi! We are the people!”47

With that, his fi ve years of Stasi work came to an end.

In many ways the opposition in District Gransee in 1989, and the Stasi’s fi ght

against it, were remarkably similar to that in District Perleberg. Several Stasi oper-

ations targeted Protestant ministers in the district who had long been involved

in raising awareness about the environment but whose activities increased in

1989, along with the response of the population. In 1987 and 1988, churches

in Menz, Zehdenick, and Neuglobsow had hosted environmental “information

days” with exhibits and slide-shows about environmental devastation taking

place in the GDR. Of particular concern to the Stasi was the involvement of

younger people in these events and the burgeoning network of environmental-

ists beyond the district. The Stasi was especially interested in the Umweltbibliothek in Berlin, an environmental library and hub for opponents, which had been

established in 1986. The Stasi’s raid on it in 1987 caused opponents throughout

the country to unite. Although the Stasi was mindful of opponents involved in

environmental activities in Gransee, the numbers involved were quite small:

The three environmental protection days in Neuglobsow in 1988 attracted a total

of about fi fty people. 48 In his 1989 plan, the leader of the Stasi in Gransee called for the recruitment of two informants under the age of eighteen with links to

the church, in addition to the regular recruitment of informants, in order to

counter the infl uence of the church among youth. 49 The Stasi believed that the vast majority of its problems with oppositionals would vanish if it could limit

the church as an oppositional “home.”50

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Also like District Perleberg, the Stasi in District Gransee had a star informant

in the church milieu. The informant “Cordula Peters” (whose real name is Karola

Meineke) was twenty-fi ve years old when she was recruited in 1986 with the task

of monitoring church activity. In fact, her handwritten pledge to work secretly

for the Stasi is a rarity: it states specifi cally that she will engage herself in helping the state “put through” its church policies, whereas the vast majority of pledges

remained purposely vague on the type of work the informant would be engaged

in. 51 Cordula Peters was diligent in her duties: in the space of three months, she authored reports on nineteen individuals involved with the church; she ranked

the ten Protestant ministers and three Catholic priests in the district on a scale

of one to four (one was progressive and loyal, four was “conservative” and pre-

sumably disloyal). All Roman Catholic priests received threes, and most of the

Protestant ministers also tended toward the disloyal end of the spectrum); she

monitored the “environmental Sundays” hosted by the church in 1989 and was

the lead informant in Operation Representative (OV Vertreter) against the par-

ish priest in Menz; she attended the funeral of the Baer brothers who had been

shot by a Soviet soldier and reported word for word what the presiding minister

said about the incident (see chap. 4). The Stasi twice rewarded her for her hard

work with a generous bonus of 250 marks awarded on March 8, International

Women’s Day. Her copious reporting did not come to an end until November

2, 1989.52

P E R L E B E R G ’ S 7 5 0 t h A N N I V E R S A R Y C E L E B R AT I O N S

During the week of August 18–27, 1989, Perleberg celebrated the 750th anni-

versary of its founding. One might indeed be tempted to sympathize with the

Stasi personnel who, on top of their already exhausting duties, now had to deal

with street musicians and entertainers. The festivities, which included parades,

rock concerts, and street performers, were expected to attract as many as thirty

thousand visitors to the town. An elaborate police plan to secure the festivi-

ties, including parking control and general crowd security, was coordinated with

the local Stasi branch.53 Fearful of the celebrations turning into public demonstrations against the regime, the head of the Perleberg Stasi offi ce launched

Operation City Jubilee 89, to be under his direct supervision. A high-ranking

subordinate, Lieutenant Colonel Fluch, put in place a special committee of

seven, including himself, to coordinate the efforts.

Individuals who had been denied the right to emigrate (seventy-one in total)

formed one of the foci of the operations, perhaps spurred on by one individual’s

claim that he was going to burn himself publicly for having been denied exit to

the West.54 Stasi informants tailed him incessantly during the week of celebrations. Apart from operations under way, Fluch called for the use of informants

against anyone who threatened violence during the festivities, against former

criminals, and against members of the church or other “hostile-negative”

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groups. 55 Informants were also to monitor tourists in the area, a delegation from Preetz in West Germany seeking partner-city status with Perleberg, journalists, and key installations of the people’s economy. Informants in the post

offi ce were to be trained to respond to anonymous calls threatening violence.

Individuals suspected of wanting to escape over the border were also to be mon-

itored.56 A handwritten note outlined the venues that various informants were to cover. Informant “Alex,” for example, was to monitor youth dances, informants “Albert,” “Max Krause,” “Beate,” and others were to cover the parade. 57

Four informants were assigned to cover the farmers’ market, four to the rock

concert in a town square, and two to an evening indoor concert. 58 In total, sixty-

fi ve informants were employed in operations prior to and during the festivities.

Overall, the eighty celebrations took place largely without incident, although

Werner Ryll was aghast that the band Rockhaus from Berlin came on stage to the

theme music of the West German evening news. 59 Operations designed to moni-

tor those who had been refused an exit visa, and those who planned to visit the

West were by and large successful. Close informant monitoring meant that these

individuals did not undertake actions against the regime. Those affi liated with

the church were also quiet during the celebrations. Gottfried de Haas, the target

of OV Tendenz, was closely monitored through informants. Although fl ags (both East German and of the city of Perleberg) were torn down during the festivities

and de Haas had arranged two public visits to his church, both of which were

relatively well attended, 60 Ryll nevertheless sang the praises of his informants, who conducted their work with “energy, discipline, and personal devotion.” 61

Given this extreme level of Stasi involvement in local celebrations and monitor-

ing of possible opponents who might disrupt the events, and its deep penetra-

tion of oppositional groups and individuals, the Stasi proved itself an instrument

of control that reached far beyond the bounds of a “normal” securing of a public

event.

T H E L A S T D AY S

Public demonstrations in District Perleberg remained small and nonthreaten-

ing until the third week of October 1989, some six or seven weeks behind the

major centers of Leipzig, where large, regular demonstrations were being held

from the beginning of September, or in Dresden, where ten thousand people

clashed with security forces on October 4.62 Unlike in Leipzig, where there was a brief but visible Stasi presence at the big demonstration of October 9 before the

Stasi retreated into the night, the Stasi in Perleberg remained invisible during

the revolution.

The fi rst major demonstration in the district occurred on October 20—sev-

eral days after the party had shoved Erich Honecker into retirement and placed

Egon Krenz at the helm. Eight hundred people attended a meeting in the

Lutheran church in Wittenberge to hear two female representatives from the

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Berlin-based opposition movement Neues Forum (New Forum). 63 This meeting was followed quickly by similar ones in Bad Wilsnack (fi ve hundred in attendance) and in St. Jacob’s Church in Perleberg (also fi ve hundred). 64 Three days later, two thousand showed up for a meeting at St. Jacob’s Church in Perleberg

led by Frau de Haas, and fi nally, on October 27, in the last major demonstra-

tion in the district before the Wall fell, three thousand people crowded into the

Lutheran Church in Wittenberge, these latter demonstrations similar in size

to those in much larger cities like Erfurt, Rostock, Magdeburg, and even the

regional capital of Schwerin, where fi ve thousand protested on October 23.65 It

is estimated that in the last week of October, nearly half a million East Germans

took to the streets. 66

The meetings in District Perleberg revolved around the opposition platform

of Neues Forum and various other problems in East Germany. Of these prob-

lems, the supply situation and the SED-controlled media topped the list, but

other issues came out in discussion including poor medical facilities and lack

of freedom to travel. The Stasi judged that support for Neues Forum came from

youth, medical professionals, the teaching corps, and workers in large facto-

ries.67 After the meetings, the demonstrators paraded through town in a peaceful fashion and placed candles at the steps of the party building. The nonthreatening demonstrations here contrast with those elsewhere in Region Schwerin,

where the nervousness of the Stasi offi cer who penned the report in November

1989 on Neues Forum activities is almost tangible: “Demonstrations in district and region cities—almost without exception—fi le past SED and [Stasi] buildings […] shouting ‘Get rid of the Stasi pigs,’ ‘Strike them dead,’ and ‘The knives

have been sharpened.’ ”68

In District Gransee, Neues Forum was informally founded under the guid-

ance of the minister from Grüneberg on October 19, one day earlier than the

fi rst appearance of Neues Forum in District Perleberg. 69 Understandably, this new political group became the center of Stasi attention and elicited a memorandum

from the regional Stasi director calling on the district offi ces to use “every means

at their disposal” to gather information on this, the fi rst nationwide political

protest group in the GDR’s history. 70 A few weeks later, about three hundred people attended a rally at a youth club in Zehdenick voicing complaints about

the health care system (one person said you might as well bring a casket if you

have to check in to the local hospital) and others calling for the dismantling

of the Stasi.71 At another gathering in a church in Zehdenick, protestors spoke about the environment and lack of freedom to travel.72

Residents of Gransee and Perleberg also angrily pointed out the unfair advan-

tages of those East Germans with access to western currency, as they were able

to shop at Intershops, which carried higher-end goods and a more plentiful selection. 73 This two-tier access to material goods is emerging in the literature as a source of discontent in the fall 1989 that was largely missed in works that

appeared in the fi rst decade or so following the revolution.74 The last major

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demonstration in District Gransee, a gathering of one thousand people in a

Gransee church, took place one day before the fall of the Wall. 75

In those last days before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, there is a deep sense

of foreboding in the Stasi documents from Gransee that the country stood on

the brink of civil war. Normally, Stasi offi cers held a weapon but twice a year

and that at the fi ring range. But in the fall of 1989 all Stasi offi cers were ordered to carry their personal weapons with them at all times and had explicit instructions to prevent attacks on Stasi installations by every means possible. There

was also concern for attacks on their private residences. 76 On November 3, in the last memorandum of the long-serving minister for state security, Erich

Mielke informed his offi cers that the party was undertaking everything possi-

ble for their protection. 77 Unlike the situation in Tiananmen Square, where the Chinese regime deployed tanks against opponents, a scenario that was increasingly unlikely in East Germany after the fi rst successful demonstrations, it was

probably not a robust military response by the regime that would have caused

bloodshed but the quick trigger of a nervous Stasi offi cer. Even though the police

frequently marched with demonstrators to prevent violence, one cannot help

but think how easily events in East Germany could have resembled the violent

revolution in Romania of a few weeks later.

After the fall of the Wall, the Stasi was renamed the Offi ce of National Security

( Amt für nationale Sicherheit), a short-lived outfi t that attempted to style itself as a constitutional watchdog similar to that found in Western democracies. Most

people in East Germany did not believe that the leopard had changed its spots.

In late November, a group of citizens in Perleberg, including the mayor and

Gottfried de Haas, met with Stasi representatives in the Stasi detachment. The

citizens read aloud a letter that outlined their overwhelming fears in the past

and demanded answers to a number of questions: Would the Stasi renounce

the use of force? How many Stasi offi cials were there in the district? Would the

Stasi open its building for inspection? The citizens also demanded that the Stasi

stop monitoring citizens’ meetings and bugging telephones. The branch director

thanked the group for the letter and committed to a further meeting to answer

the questions. 78 One physician who was among the demonstrators recalled the feeling he had on entering the building: “I was scared. But somehow most of

my fear was already behind me.”79 A few weeks later, Stasi offi ces throughout the country were occupied by citizens concerned about the destruction of documents taking place. This was yet another unusual feature of the East German

revolution: citizens occupying a still-intact secret police offi ce had never hap-

pened before.80

T H E C R O W D I N T H E E A S T G E R M A N R E V O L U T I O N

What motivated East Germans to take to the streets in 1989 has been a lightning

rod for debate. Some historians have focused exclusively on the lack of consumer

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goods81 while others have sought reasons beyond material considerations. Gale Stokes has written, “The reason so many wanted to fl ee East Germany was fundamentally not economic, however. They were fl eeing a stifl ing sense of power-

lessness, the regime’s deadening insistence on capitulation, and the enervating

denial of all possibility of idealism and hope.”82 Konrad Jarausch also argues that the lower living standards merely reinforced political frustrations.83 Other historians speak to the relatively decent living standard in East Germany and

point rather to “utter moral rot” of the regime84 and to denied rights, including the lack of travel. 85

From the evidence for Districts Perleberg and Gransee, it appears that

any explanation of public pressure in the revolution of 1989 must take into

account the failing trust between the population and the regime. It was

often not solely a poor standard of living, but the combination of this with

the overblown SED propaganda that eroded the legitimacy of the regime,

and drove angry East German citizens to the streets. To be sure, there were

also instances when standard-of-living issues alone caused hostility to the

regime. A twelve-year wait for a telephone or a family of four living in a

one-bedroom apartment was, for many, simply unbearable. Interestingly,

the environmental degradation that caused the small underground group

Ark Green Network to form in the summer of 1989 did not launch a discus-

sion in the church meetings of late October. Perhaps the reason for this is

that Perleberg was not a sight of major heavy industry and thus environ-

mental issues were of less concern. It is worth recalling that the Ark Green in

Perleberg never had more than four members, and that their activities were

relatively benign. In contrast, the group in Region Halle fi lmed the horren-

dously scarred landscape around Bitterfeld and smuggled the tape to a West

German television station where it was broadcast. 86 District Gransee, on the other hand, had several environmental groups and did witness popular discussion of the environment.

Failing trust is visible not only in Stasi documents that deal primarily with

oppositional views in the population, but, remarkably, also in Stasi reports

on those who opposed the drift toward revolution. Many were extremely con-

cerned about developments in Poland and Hungary, supported China’s use of

armed force to confront demonstrators in Tiananmen Square, and generally

approved of a more vibrant East German response to opposition at home. 87

How parents could risk taking their children on a wild journey through

Hungary and into Austria was beyond many.88 Some even went so far as to query why the regime did not counteract the fl ood of citizens by reporting on

what had happened to those who ended up in the West. They expected that

those that fl ed would be unemployed and dependent on soup kitchens and

broadcasting this message might stem the tide. 89 Workers of the Wittenberge train station considered Hungary’s opening of the border to Austria to be

treasonous.90

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Even those who sought a more robust SED response to the exodus criti-

cized the SED for a lack of openness and honesty toward its own citizens.

As one report, authored two days after the GDR had restricted East German

travel to Czechoslovakia on October 3, 1989, noted: “Over and over citizens

have expressed the view that people need to hear honest and open opin-

ions.” 91 Another report to the central agency in Berlin, analyzing the situation in the GDR, recommended that the SED retreat from its “propaganda of

success.” “The truth,” the report suggested, “is easier to digest.” 92 This point bears stating explicitly: Even hard-core supporters of communism, those

who wanted a bloody suppression of the cheeky revolutionaries, wanted the

regime to exhibit greater honesty. It should not surprise us that this motiva-

tion would also bring opponents to the streets. Failing trust should take its

place alongside an abysmal situation in housing and material goods, anger

at the two-tier access to consumer goods, denied rights, and political frustra-

tion as motives for public protest.

In assessing the balance between external factors, popular pressure, and

regime implosion, the cases of Districts Gransee and Perleberg, away from

the limelight of Berlin and Leipzig, suggest that the pressure exerted by the

international situation—as manifested in the issue of exodus—was not a key

factor in the revolution. 93 Strictly from a numbers point of view, not quite two hundred residents fl ed District Perleberg by October 1989, whereas one week

in October in that district would witness demonstrations involving roughly

six thousand people. One senior Stasi offi cial candidly admitted that the

pressure from the exodus fi le was “comparatively low” in District Gransee.

Certainly, one is struck by the fact that the applicants to emigrate did not form

a core of organized protests in either district, as was the case, for example, in

Dresden. 94

If one considers the chronology, the trigger for demonstrators in District

Perleberg to take to the streets appears closely linked to the successful Leipzig

demonstration of October 9, and even more so to the removal of Honecker

on October 18. The fi rst major demonstration in District Perleberg took place

two days after Honecker’s removal; in Gransee one day after. The closing on

October 3 of the last country to which East Germans could travel without a

visa, Czechoslovakia, passed relatively unnoticed. One resident of Wittenberge

recalled specifi cally that demonstrations in that town commenced after resi-

dents witnessed the Leipzig demonstrations. 95

From this, we may draw the conclusion that the experience of demonstrators

elsewhere in the land, who did so with impunity, meant that Perlebergers and

Granseers became bolder. An engineer from Wurzen summed up the feelings

of many in East Germany: “I heard on the late night news that there were over

seventy thousand at that demonstration in Leipzig and that it went off without

incident. I poured myself one big Slibovic. I somehow knew that this was the

end of the GDR.” 96

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The fl ight of East Germans was not a major form of protest in District

Perleberg as evidenced in Werner Ryll’s work plan for 1990. His view of Stasi

priorities is striking. He foresaw an elaborate plan to secure the rayon factory

in Wittenberge that was undergoing technological upgrades. Roughly the same

amount of the work plan is dedicated to the fi ght against “underground political

activity,” as Ryll called for more attention and resources to key operations aimed

at hemming in opponents. Ryll envisaged a continuing effort to apply pres-

sure on those who applied to emigrate to withdraw their applications and thus

reduce the numbers leaving East Germany illegally. Stasi offi cers were to deter-

mine who had already left, then trace and monitor their relations and friends in

East Germany. Ryll’s calm projection of quarterly—not more frequent—reports

on this subject for 1990, was issued after Hungary fully opened its border to

Austria. In essence, Ryll called for no more serious measures against the exodus

than in years past, and the place of exodus was not noticeably prominent in his

work plan for 1990.97

It would be an exaggeration to say that the Lutheran church caused the

collapse of East German communism, but it is diffi cult to imagine how the

revolution would have taken place without it. The St. Nicholas church in

Leipzig, home to the Monday demonstrations from which those huge dem-

onstrations sprang, will assuredly take its place alongside other European

buildings of revolutionary import—the Bastille, the Winter Palace, the

Frankfurt Paulskirche. In Districts Gransee and Perleberg, churches provided

leadership, infrastructure (public space, photocopiers, candles), organiza-

tional skills, and the perception of distance from the regime to manage and

guide the demonstrators. More than the open border between Hungary and

Austria, more than material concerns, more than failing regime legitimacy,

more than popular anger toward the Stasi, the church was the regime’s most

vexing problem in 1989.

1 9 8 9 : A C O L L A P S E O F T H E F I R M ?

Many see in the downfall of East Germany a delightful irony—a regime with an

all-knowing, all-powerful secret police proved, in the end, as powerless to stop

the collapse as the Wall did to prevent that fi nal exodus. How could it be that

a regime with a secret police nearly four decades in refi nement was unable to

halt the revolution? The answer to this riddle, for some, is Stasi incompetence. 98

However, the course of the revolution in these two districts should lead us away

from the conclusion that the Stasi was inept, that myopic Marxist ideologues

were gathering reams of the “wrong” information, or were not able to interpret

the information properly. In many cases the Stasi offi cers gathered informa-

tion from seasoned informants and passed the key elements of this information

on to appropriate line departments, such as Department XX, responsible for

internal opposition, and to the local offi cers responsible for information and

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analysis, who in turn fed the digested information to the analysis committee at

the regional offi ces.

There is much in the documents to suggest a high degree of competency on

the part of Stasi offi cers in their analysis of incoming information. In District

Perleberg, they fi ltered the static of myriad complaints about the supply situ-

ation and consumer goods, to issue a special report on the abysmal situation

in Wittenberge, and to draw attention to the negative effect of the regime’s

ceaseless propaganda. The local Stasi offi ce indicated that the supply problems

existed in large part because of an insuffi cient number of bakeries, poor cooling

equipment in grocery stores, and improper cleansing machines in the brew-

ery, not because of saboteurs and agents. 99 They also fl agged the complaints of fundamental supporters of the regime. Their knowledge of Ark Green and the

various other environmental groups in Gransee was up to date and comprehen-

sive; the surveillance of would-be emigrants wide-ranging. Not everything in

the Stasi reports is ideologically tainted, and as such it was indeed an important

(though one-way) line of communication between the population and the par-

ty. 100 In short, the information-gathering apparatus at the district level continued to serve the Stasi well in 1989, as it had for the thirty-six years since the 1953

revolution.

Other historians have suggested that the Stasi “failure” in 1989 was not due

to blind ideologues or basic incompetence but to internal Stasi questions about

its raison d’être. In these accounts, certain Stasi offi cers suffer a profound crisis of conscience; like characters from a Victor Hugo novel, they suddenly question everything they thought to be undeniably true. 101 To be sure, there existed a certain bewilderment in the Stasi about developments in the GDR that required

reassurance. In August 1989 the regional director gave a pep talk to the Gransee

offi cers reminding them of the ideal for which they were fi ghting: “In spite of all

the complications of the current situation, in spite of all the problems, we must

never, as Communists and Chekists, lose sight of our great efforts to strengthen

[our] socialist society. Focusing only on the negative side or, worse, giving in to

fear, is unbecoming of a comrade. You should be vigilant and concerned but

not pessimistic.” 102 This should not, however, be mistaken for dissension in the ranks.

There is little in the documents to suggest that the Stasi was unreliable, let

alone part of a conspiracy to overthrow the regime. In late August 1989, the Stasi

and its informants undertook a major offensive against potential opposition

during the Perleberg anniversary festivities, which drew glowing praise from the

leader of District Perleberg. As late as October 4, the regional level was providing

clear guidelines to the districts to penetrate oppositional groups and to render

them harmless. In Hans-Hermann Hertle’s Der Fall der Mauer, the most detailed account available on the fall of the Wall, the author takes pains to show that the

Stasi did not open fi re on the demonstrators of October 9 in Leipzig because

they were overwhelmed by the demonstrators’ numbers, not because they were

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afraid to shoot fellow citizens.103 And indeed, on October 30, a mere nine days before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Stasi issued to its offi cers what amounted

to shoot-to-kill orders if demonstrators stormed Stasi offi ces. 104

How then did the revolution come to pass? The refrain of Stasi offi cers about

an old, paralyzed party that either ignored Stasi warnings or could not process

the reams of information reaching it from its many sources (including its own

party organization, police, and district council) turns out to have a ring of truth.

The regular meetings of the SED leadership for Gransee and Perleberg from 1989

reveal a party oblivious to the developing anger in the streets. Following the

communal elections of May in District Perleberg, in which the population had

expressed discontent in a manner not seen in East Germany in forty years, the

party leaders reported gleefully: “The election results are a clear indication of

support for the policies of the party of the working class. . . . They are at the same time a resounding defeat for the enemies of socialism. Our communal elections

have demonstrated the greatness, the maturity, and the superiority of our social-

ist democracy. The population’s devotion and sense of belonging to its socialist

Fatherland could hardly be more evident.” 105

One explanation for this kind of rhetoric in the face of evidence to the con-

trary may be the party’s all-too-human tendency to give more weight to the rosy

information coming to it from party offi cials, rather than to the more nega-

tive reporting from the Stasi and its network of informants. An internal party

report claimed in late summer 1989 that discussions with the population on the

twenty-eighth anniversary of the building of the Wall revealed that the “majority

of our people agreed that the Wall should not be removed as long as the circum-

stances that led to its erection remain.” 106 Other reports showed grassroots party members bewildered by East Germans escaping through Hungary: “Many comrades do not understand why young people want to leave for [West Germany],

when the GDR guarantees them social security, employment, and the chance to

become their own person” 107—and even this kind of skewed information was frequently a short paragraph hidden within eight pages of updates on factory

production.108

A shameless propaganda piece on East German television called “Human

Trade,” which “documented” West Germany’s theft of East Germans in cloak-

and-dagger operations, was said to have found resonance with many rank-and-

fi le party members. 109 This kind of reporting simply could not have been helpful to a Communist Party that was trying to deal with issues of crisis proportion

in late 1989. Stasi offi cers were correct that the party would have been better

off listening to what Stasi informants had to say, rather than what the party’s

grassroots were saying. In fact, with the exception of an extraordinary sitting on

October 9, the Stasi did not have a representative at meetings of the party leader-

ship in Gransee throughout 1989.110 The SED made the critical error, as political parties are wont to do, of confusing the views of its membership with those of

the population at large.

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In the scramble of October 1989, the Communist Party in District Gransee

believed that the situation could be brought under control by calm dialogue

and an increased party presence. From October 3 to October 31, for example,

Horst Schultz, the secretary for agriculture in the district, was to have thirteen

public functions, including attendance at a Free German Youth event, award-

ing prizes at a public ceremony, and participating in a membership meeting at

several agricultural collectives.111 In the very last communication from Dieter Schultz, the fi rst secretary for District Gransee, to his superior Günther Jahn, the

fi rst secretary for Region Potsdam, Schultz acknowledges that the supply of the

population with material goods required an “immediate solution” and that “a

certain number” of workers and party members questioned the leadership of

the party, yet this information is lost amid a sea of party platitudes and day-to-

day administration that, by this point, should have been relegated to secondary

consideration. The last phrase written by Schultz before the Wall fell, several

weeks after a wave of demonstrations swept through Saxony, is almost painfully

unaware: “We are convinced that in 1989 we will meet, and in some cases exceed,

our quotas in the number of farm animals raised, and that in 1990 healthy and

productive animal husbandry will guarantee meeting the tasks assigned by the

party.”112

Following the massive demonstrations in Leipzig and other major centers in

October, the SED in Perleberg realized that power was slipping away, yet party

offi cials still talked of reversing its fortunes. Gerhard Uhe, the fi rst secretary of the party in District Perleberg, frankly admitted on November 1, 1989, that many

East Germans opposed the party, the police, and the Stasi, and that the only

way to win them back was through grassroots political campaigning, especially

with the impending legalization of Neues Forum. For the fi rst time in its history, East Germany’s Communist Party would have to canvass like a Western political

party. The fi rst secretary talked about the challenges ahead for the SED: “We will

begin in Wittenberge with an open forum on Sunday at 10 a.m. in the sewing

machine factory. We have no idea how many will come out. . . . I’m telling you

this comrades because the real issue today is whether a socialist GDR will con-

tinue to exist. We must do everything possible to be victorious—hundreds upon

hundreds of little acts with individuals.” 113 As we now know, Gerhard Uhe was putting on a brave public face to cover what was for him the awful truth about

the impending demise of East Germany. Six days after he authored this report,

Uhe shot himself in the head.114

In our ongoing debates about the end of East Germany, it is important to

remember the amazing speed with which the revolution descended on outly-

ing areas, on, one might even be tempted to say, the more “typical” areas of

East Germany. Günter Grass has pronounced in his majestic account of post-

unifi cation Germany, Too Far Afi eld, that 1989 was “not just any year.” By the time 1989 had come to a close, that was certainly an appropriate description. What is

remarkable is how uneventful 1989 was in outlying areas prior to October. For

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most of 1989 the Stasi simply did not judge the situation in the districts to be

beyond its control,115 a sentiment that was captured at the leadership level. On August 31, when Mielke inquired from the Region Gera representative whether

the eve of another June 17 had approached, the representative answered:

“It hasn’t, and it won’t arrive. That’s what we’re here for.”116

One of the most fascinating conclusions from these rich records is that there

is very little indication in outlying areas of an escalation toward revolution and mass demonstrations. The fudged communal elections results produced no

protest, oppositional environment groups were small and under surveillance,

residents were not stampeding to Hungary, and the Stasi offi ce went about its

work with, perhaps, slightly greater urgency but calmly nevertheless. In a report

exuding confi dence less than one month before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and

only three days after the largest demonstration on East German soil since the

revolution of 1953, the Stasi in District Perleberg stated categorically: “In our dis-

trict, the state is secure.”117 When one refl ects on the sudden surge of mass demonstrations and the corresponding collapse of state power, what comes to mind

is a word well known to students of German history—this was a Blitzrevolution, a lightning revolution.

The Stasi was only as effective as its political masters. In embracing party

information and ignoring negative reports, the party did not adequately

respond to East Germans’ legitimate concerns that could have headed off some

of the anger that spilled onto the streets. Once demonstrators began taking

to the streets in large numbers, and in particular the regime’s decision not to

confront the demonstration of October 9, 1989, in Leipzig, the pace of events,

the Blitzrevolution, overwhelmed the party and its apparatus. Citizens throughout the country became emboldened by the example of the Leipzigers. That

demonstrators were able to take to the streets in the fall of 1989 does not dem-

onstrate that the regime was not a totalitarian state, or point to a conspiratorial

Stasi, but rather it shows the inability of the party to interpret the deluge of

information that came to it. The work style of the Stasi, which tended toward

slow, plodding decomposition of enemies, would have had trouble adjusting

to the rapidly changing environment, but it was clear that there was no political

will for it to do so anyway.

Margaretha von Trotta’s 1995 fi lm Das Versprechen (The Promise) is a tragic,

if somewhat kitschy tale of Berlin lovers separated by the Wall. One scene takes

place on November 9, 1989, in which the sound of honking and commotion

in the streets causes the protagonist to step onto the balcony of his shabby

East Berlin apartment. When he inquires of his neighbor, also on a balcony,

about the reason for the jubilation below, the neighbor responds: “The Wall

is open!” Surveying the scene below him, the protagonist mutters under his

breath: “Which wall?” Trotta captured in this scene a common sentiment of East

Germans in the fall of 1989: that in spite of the year’s turbulence, no one imag-

ined the fi nal end of East Germany. That the Berlin Wall with its guard towers

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and mines, its barbed wire, its dogs, its shoot-to-kill orders, that this bristling

front of the Cold War that had been in place for twenty-eight years could, in

an instant, no longer be there was too fantastical to be believed. One Gransee

resident was at a stoplight when a radio bulletin announced that the Wall was

now open. His son turned to him and said that they had to drive immediately

to Berlin, to which the father laughed and told his son not to be so naïve, that

clearly they were listening to some sort of radio play. 118

C O N C L U S I O N

g y o r g y d a l o s ’ s d i e b a l a t o n - b r i g a d e , one of the most insight-ful novels about the Stasi, had the bad luck of appearing at roughly the same

time as von Donnersmarck’s movie The Lives of Others, and so did not make the

impression in public that it might have. Die Balaton-Brigade has a similar story line to the movie, yet one that is far more nuanced. The story is told through a

monologue delivered by the protagonist Joseph Klempner, a former Stasi offi -

cer, to his silent partner and the only one left in his life, his dog Hugo. Driven

by his desire for the plum posting to the Balaton Brigade, the Stasi outfi t that

monitored East Germans at the popular vacation grounds on the shores of Lake

Balaton in Hungary, Klempner obeys his superiors’ request and reports to the

Stasi on his own daughter’s relationship with a Chilean living in West Berlin.

Upon viewing her fi les after the collapse of East Germany, the daughter deter-

mines without much diffi culty that the informer “El Padre” was her father and

breaks off contact to him, in the process taking his only grandchild away. In

addition, his wife left him. All that remains in his life is his dachshund, Hugo,

but he too has a past. Klempner’s bosses in the Stasi had instructed him to give

the dog to his daughter as a peace offering after a fi ght they had had about her

Chilean lover—and thereby to continue the surveillance on her.

Unlike Gerd Wiesler, the fi ctional Stasi captain in The Lives of Others, who

has a crisis of conscience about the nature of his work (but not enough of one

to prevent him from working for the Stasi), Dalos’s character Klempner does

not agonize over his past. Just as he knows what he did was wrong, he also

knows that if the Stasi were still in place, he would serve it faithfully. And this is where Dalos is at his most brilliant. He does not ask the reader for sympathy for

Klempner, who has lost everything because of his Stasi actions—Klempner him-

self accepts responsibility and does not seek pity—nor does he paint Klempner

as the easy-to-despise villain. One reviewer has eloquently captured the essence

of the book: Dalos, he says, “is convinced that a system like that of the Stasi

would not have been possible without the participation of ordinary people.

But how was it at all possible for ordinary people to work for such an outfi t?

Klempner’s story offers an answer. That Dalos’s main character is neither a sadist

nor a fanatic, not even an evil person, does not make him more sinister, but

rather the state that Joseph Klempner wanted to serve so unconditionally.” 1

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There is no doubt that the GDR was maintained by the participation of ordi-

nary people in state and society. Even though the dictatorship was one of per-

vasive surveillance, denial of basic rights, and widespread suffering of regime

opponents, by no means were these all “bad” people. I would not categorize

even those involved in the repression apparatus whom I met as “sinister.” They

are not the kinds of characters who populate the novels of Arthur Koestler, Ayn

Rand, or Vassily Aksyonov. Indeed, the fact that they today for the most part

lead quiet, normal lives in pleasant surroundings, with a network of family and

friends, should lead our attention away from an inherent or unusual personality

trait that caused them to partake in repression, toward the nature of a system

that called on them to do so in the fi rst place.

Ordinary East Germans engaged in the GDR: they took vacations, they joined

neighborhood groups, they worked, and they participated in festivities. They

also petitioned the regime endlessly with a myriad of complaints. Yet, in spite

of committed socialists who wanted to reform the system, in spite of ordinary

citizens who approved of the idea of the GDR in principle if not in practice, in

spite of the millions of petitions that outlined the serious defi ciencies in the

GDR, there was no organized, public protest to reform the GDR until the fall of

1989, when it was far too late. Even in the factories, where workers and supervi-

sors came to many informal arrangements on the shop fl oor, there was still no

group effort to address the egregious defi ciencies in industry or to exert political

control. With the exception of 1953, the GDR never experienced strikes like those

that plagued the Communist Party in Poland throughout its postwar history,

especially in the early 1980s.2

Any explanation of the “unreformability” of the GDR must take into account

both the nature of the regime and the nature of participation. The very fact that

the secret police over time grew enormously and refi ned its methods is testi-

mony that the regime was determined to prevent the kind of public demand for

change that many East Germans expressed in private. The petitions ( Eingaben)

themselves, far from according East Germans “voice,” amounted to a way to

deny like-minded individuals from organizing protest, as was the case in the

petition systems of the monarchs of old.3 There was not a universal form of participation, but various kinds of it. For many, it was a pragmatic loyalty; for

others it was, as Joachim Gauck, a former Rostock pastor and fi rst federal com-

missioner for the Stasi fi les, phrases it, a “Fear-Accommodation-Syndrome.”4

With regard to the Stasi in particular, participation needs to be differentiated

along gender lines; there were hardly any female informants, and no female

operational offi cers to speak of. In contrast to Nazi Germany, which, as recent

literature suggests, experienced enthusiastic participation from its citizens, 5 it is

striking how little spontaneous adoration occurred in the GDR. May Day parades

were contrived; celebrations for the founding of the Republic rehearsed.

In the course of its history, millions of East Germans also participated in

the Stasi, whether as full-time workers, informants, contact persons, or irregular

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T H E F I R M

collaborators. In a secret police system that had expanded as massively as the

Stasi had, and whose political masters were determined to know everything

of importance in the country, it could not have happened otherwise. In the

course of its duties, even its more “ordinary” ones like vetting, the Stasi drew

East Germans into its purview. Vetting of informants, offi cers, applicants to emi-

grate, people who had applied to visit West Germany, and those who traveled

west in the line of work required the collaboration of thousands of ordinary

Germans. This is to say nothing of the targeted operations the Stasi conducted

that ran into the tens of thousands every year. This book explores the history of

two relatively small district offi ces of the Stasi. It is worth recalling that there

were 215 others.

I have written a book about the Stasi because it was East Germany’s most

important instrument for societal control, but it was not the only one. The

Communist Party could, and did, call upon a number of societal organizations

to monitor and guide the population, including the only sanctioned trade union

(FDGB), the Communist youth group (FDJ), the factory organizations of the

party (GO), the police (including police “informants” [ABV]), educators, semi-

formal, elected neighborhood governing bodies ( Hof- und Hausgemeinschaften),

newspapers (it was common practice for the editor of the regional newspaper

to be at party secretariat sittings),6 and, an organization often overlooked, the Agitation Commission of the Communist Party.7 This committee organized public talks on communism and party work in factories and elsewhere, often

with such awkward titles as “Joseph Stalin and the Soviet people were the best

friends of the German people during the years of Hitler’s tyranny and provided

support and generous assistance for the German people in the years after 1945,”8

staged local rallies, hung up banners in factories, broadcast the party message

over loudspeakers in factory canteens and at the exits, authored and published

brochures, and swept into factories and neighborhoods across the country

to exercise damage control following periods of unrest like the revolutionary

upheaval of June 17, 1953.9 In earlier years, it organized “countryside Sundays,”

when thousands of factory workers were forced to give up their one day off to

head into rural areas and convince farmers of the benefi ts of socialism. 10 These, too, contributed to totalitarianism in the GDR.

If ordinary people partaking in a repressive system led to the widespread

societal control that came to characterize East Germany, then there is an impor-

tant lesson in the East German experience for Western democracies. After all,

the Stasi was a legally instituted organ of state and worked within the param-

eters of the GDR’s constitution. If it was challenging, but not impossible, for

the GDR to monitor broad sections of society through “old-fashioned” infor-

mants, it has become much easier in the computer age where every mouse click,

Web page visit, and e-mail are easily recorded, and where people voluntarily

offer up personal details on social networking sites. Several high-ranking Stasi

offi cers have taken great pleasure in the turn of events in the West following

C O N C L U S I O N

| 185

September 11, pointing out how those who criticized East Germany for put-

ting security above individual freedoms are the very ones who now defend the

USA PATRIOT Act or surveillance cameras in public places. 11 Few question that surveillance cameras have become part of our daily existence, yet there is little

evidence that they keep us safer; they may help apprehend suspects, but they

do not appear to prevent the crime in the fi rst place, as the attacks on London’s

subways in 2005 and the most recent airline security breach in Amsterdam

made abundantly clear. It is diffi cult to imagine, though, that the cameras will

ever be taken down. There is in the United States an understandable desire to

know the identities of airline passengers entering the country, yet in demand-

ing the Passenger Name Records (PNR) from airlines prior to granting land-

ing rights, U.S. authorities obtain other information too, including passengers’

contact information, meal preferences, and disabilities. It is by no means clear

at what point this information will be deleted, if ever. 12 That the subway stations in Washington, D.C., are covered with posters asking riders that if they

“see something? say something!” does not necessarily lead us toward the sur-

veillance state that was East Germany, but we must be ever cautious of a system

that encourages ordinary people to partake in denunciation, repression, and

surveillance in no small part because it widens the scope of who is considered

an “enemy.” That phrase attributed to Mark Twain still rings true: “To a man

with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

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Notes

Introduction

1. Wolfgang Welsch, Widerstand und MfS im SED-Staat (Schwerin: Schmidt-Pohl, 1999), 95.

2. Interview with Dr. Jürgen Schmidt-Pohl, Warnemünde, September 25, 2005.

3. Jens Gieseke, Mielke-Konzern: Die Geschichte der Stasi (Stuttgart: DVA, 2001), 185.

4. Hubertus Knabe, Die Täter sind unter uns (Berlin: Propyläen Verlag, 2007), 113.

5. One earlier work discussed the role of the Stasi in the economy based on case studies of Stasi offi ces in chemical factories. Hans-Hermann Hertle and Franz-Otto Gilles, “Stasi in der Produktion,” in Aktenlage: Die Bedeutung der Unterlagen des Staatsicherheitsdienstes für die Zeitsgeschichtsforschung, ed. Klaus-Dietmar Henke and Roger Engelmann (Berlin: Links, 1995). Limited to 1989 is Günther Siegel, “Die Kreisdienststelle Mühlhausen des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit der DDR im Herbst 1989,” in Mühlhausen 1989 / 1990 : Die Wende in einer thüringischen Kreisstadt, ed. Josef Aldenhövel et al. (Münster: 1993).

Other studies of Stasi conduct at specifi c sites include Gerhard Kluge and Reinhard

Meinel, MfS und FSU: Das Wirken des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit an der Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena (Erfurt: Landesbeauftragter des Freistaats Thüringen für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der DDR, 1997); Frank Döbert, Mit dem Ernstfall konfrontiert: Die Stasi und der VEB Carl Zeiss (Geschichtswerkstatt Jena 3/96, 1996); Walter Schilling, “Die Bearbeitung der Landeskirche Thüringen durch das MfS,” in

Staatspartei und Staatssicherheit: Zum Verhältnis von SED und MfS, ed. Siegfried Suckut and Walter Süß (Berlin: Links, 1997), 211–66; and Steffen Reichert, Unter Kontrolle: Die Martin-Luther-Universität und das Ministerium für Staatssicherheit 1968 – 1989 (Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2007). Grit Löser’s paper on District Frieber has unfortunately not been published: “Die Stellung der Kreisdienststellen im Gefüge des MfS, dargestellt am Beispiel der Kreissdienststelle Freiberg und deren Bearbeitung als Bestand” (PhD diss., Fachhochschule Potsdam, 1995).

6. John Schmeidel, Stasi: Shield and Sword of the Party (New York: Routledge, 2008), 17, 21.

7. As quoted in Martin Debes, Durchdringen und Zersetzen:Die Bekämpfung der Opposition in Ostthüringen durch das MfS im Jahre 1989 (Manebach: Goldhelm Verlag, 1999), 12.

8. A useful overview of the Stasi fi les is found in Henke and Roger Engelmann,

eds., Aktenlage: die Bedeutung der Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes für die Zeitgeschichtsforschung (Berlin: Links, 1995).

9. For more on the controversy surrounding the Stasi Archive, see Gary Bruce, “Access to Secret Police Files, Justice and Vetting in East Germany since 1989,” German Politics and Society 25, no. 4 (2008): 82–111.

10. Egon Krenz’s claim after 1989 that the Stasi was a “state within a state” was primarily self-exculpatory. See Jens Gieseke’s contribution in Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Im Visier der Geheimpolizei: Der kommunistische Überwachungs-und Repressionsapparat 1945 – 1989 (Leipzig: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 2007), 28.

11. As quoted in Knabe, Die Täter, 15.

12. RTL, “Die DDR Show: Von Ampelmännchen bis Zentralkomitee,” Aug. 28, 2003, URL:

http://www.stern.de/unterhaltung/fi lm/512202.html?eid=512223.

13. Reichert, Unter Kontrolle, 87.

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N O T E S T O P A G E S 6 – 8

14. See for example the comments of Mary Beth Stein at the Apr. 30, 2007, Symposium held at the German Historical Institute, Washington DC; Steven Pfaff, “The Lives of Others: East Germany Revisited?” GHI Bulletin No. 41 (2007): 113.

15. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Das Leben der anderen: Filmbuch (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2006), 200–201.

16. Klaus-Dietmar Henke, “Zu Nutzung und Auswertung der Unterlagen des

Staatssicherheitsdienstes,” VfZ 41, no. 4 (1993): 575–87; Armin Mitter and Stefan Wolle, Untergang auf Raten (Munich: Bertelsmann, 1993).

17. Clemens Vollnhals, “Das Ministerium für Staatssicherheit: Ein Instrument totalitärer Herrschaftsausübung,” in Sozialgeschichte der DDR, ed. Hartmut Kaelble et al.

(Stuttgart:Oldenbourg, 1994), 514.

18. Ibid.

19. Sandra Pingel-Schliemann, Zersetzen: Strategie einer Diktatur (Berlin: Robert-Havemann-Gesellschaft, 2002), 16.

20. Hubertus Knabe, “Weiche Formen der Verfolgung in der DDR. Zum Wandel der

repressiven Strategien in der Ära Honecker,” DA 5 (1997): 709–19.

21. Thomas Lindenberger has criticized the Enquete-Commission for portraying the GDR

in terms of victims and perpetrators and suggests that most GDR citizens did not see

their own experience refl ected in those categories. See Thomas Lindenberger, “Everyday History: New Approaches to the History of the Post-War Germanies,” in The Divided

Past: Rewriting Post-War German History, ed. Christoph Klessmann ( New York: Berg,

2001), 53.

22. It bears remembering that totalitarianism was an accepted concept by not only the Right but also the Left. The initial postwar years of the Social Democratic Party of Germany were dominated in large part by anti-totalitarianism. See Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992). See also Mike Schmeitzner,

“Der Totalitarismusbegriff Kurt Schumachers,” in Totalitarismuskritik von links, ed. Mike Schmeitzner (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 249–82.

23. Klaus-Dietmar Henke, “Aufarbeitung verstärken, Gedenken vertiefen: Grundsätzliche Bemerkungen zum Gedenken an deutsche Diktaturen,” DA 40, no. 6 (2007): 1053.

See also Grieder, “In Defense of Totalitarianism Theory as a Tool of Historical

Scholarship,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 8, no. 3–4 (2007): 572–77.

An approach that holds promise for comparative work is that which focuses on the

practice of power. See for example Adelheid von Saldern, “Öffentlichkeiten in Diktaturen: Zu den Herrschaftspraktiken im Deutschland des 20. Jahrhunderts,” in Diktaturen in Deutschland- Vergleichsaspekte, ed. Günther Heydemann and Heinrich Oberreuter (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2003), 442–75.

24. Konrad Jarausch, “Care and Coercion: the GDR as Welfare Dictatorship,” in Dictatorship as Experience: Towards a Socio-Cultural History of the GDR, ed. Konrad Jarausch (New York: Berghahn Books, 2000); Ralf Dahrendorf, Der Moderne Soziale Konfl ikt (Munich: DTV

Verlag, 1994); Klaus Schroeder, Der SED-Staat: Partei, Staat und Gesellschaft 1949 – 1990

(Munich: Hanser, 1998); Alf Lüdtke, “Helden der Arbeit-Mühen beim Arbeitem,” in

Sozialgeschichte der DDR, ed. Hartmut Kaelblre et al. (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1994). See also Mary Fulbrook, “Jenseits der Totalitarismustheorie?” in German Monitor: The GDR and Its History: Rückblick und Revision, ed. Peter Baker (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), 36–42.

Schroeder’s criticisms are found in Klaus Schroeder, Die veränderte Republik: Deutschland nach der Wiedervereinigung (Munich: Ernst Vögel, 2006), 348–50.

25. Mary Fulbrook, The People’s State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 13.

26. A classic example of this approach is Richard Bessel and Ralph Jessen, eds., Die Grenzen der Diktatur: Staat und Gesellschaft in der DDR (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Rupprecht, 1996).

27. Martin Malia, “To the Stalin Mausoleum,” Daedalus 119 (Winter 1990): 295–344. John Connelly has suggested that, in the East German case, the motivation for totalitarian

control in the university sector was closely linked to the antifascist basis of the GDR:

N O T E S T O P A G E S 8 – 1 0

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“Rage born in the Nazi years combined with faith in state intervention and united antifascists with the partially nazifi ed SED apparatus in an attempt to control the thinking of colleagues and students.” Moreover, Connelly is correct to suggest that analyses of control in the GDR would do well to take into account the level of control in other East European states, rather than comparing East Germany solely to the abstract concept of

totalitarianism. See John Connelly, Captive University: The Sovietization of East German, Czech, and Polish Higher Education, 1945 – 1956 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 285.

28. Corey Ross writes of East Germans “not so much resisting or complying as extracting what they could from the circumstances.” Corey Ross, Constructing Socialism at the Grassroots (Houndmill: Palgrave, 2000), 3.

29. Jeannette Madarasz, Confl ict and Compromise in East Germany 1971 – 1989 : A Precarious Stability (New York: Palgrave, 2003), 195.

30. Fulbrook, People’s State, iix.

31. Madarasz, Confl ict and Compromise, 192.

32. Jens Gieseke, “Die Einheit von Wirtschafts-, Sozial- und Sicherheitspolitik: Militarisierung und Überwachung als Probleme einer DDR-Sozialgeschichte der Ära Honecker,”

Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 51, no. 11 (2003): 1011. An extremely thoughtful account of this phenomenon is Jan Palmowski, “Staatssicherheit und soziale Praxis,” in Staatssicherheit und Gesellschaft, ed. Jens Gieseke (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 253–72.

33. Thomas Lindenberger has explored the interrelation of Eigen-Sinn and Herrschaft in Lindenberger,“Everyday History,” 44–55.

34. Thomas Lindenberger, “SED-Herrschaft als soziale Praxis, Herrschaft und ‘Eigen-

Sinn’: Problemstellung und Begriffe,” in Staatssicherheit und Gesellschaff: Studien zum Herrschaftsalltag in der DDR, ed. Jens Gieseke (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 23–48. See also his Herrschaft und Eigen-Sinn in der Diktatur: Studien zur Gesellschaftsgeschichte der DDR (Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 1999), and Volkspolizei: Herrschaftspraxis und öffentliche Ordnung im SED-Staat 1952 – 1968 (Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2003).

35. Madarasz in Confl ict and Compromise examines the compromises with four segments of society: women, youth, church, and writers.

36. See Jeffrey Kopstein, The Politics of Economic Decline in East Germany (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997) and most recently Andrew Port, Confl ict and Stability in the German Democratic Republic (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

37. See especially Port, Confl ict and Stability and Madarasz, Confl ict and Compromise.

38. Mary Fulbrook, “Putting the People Back in: The Contentious State of GDR History,”

German History 24, no. 4 (2006): 609.

39. Peter Graf Kielmansegg, “Krise der Totalitarismustheorie?” in Totalitarismus im 20 .

Jahrhundert, ed. Eckhard Jesse (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1996), 286–304.

40. Peter Grieder has forcefully argued for the applicability of the term totalitarianism for the GDR. See Peter Grieder, “In Defense of Totalitarianism Theory as a Tool of Historical Scholarship,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 8, nos. 3–4 (Sept. 2007): 563–89.

41. See David Ensikat, Kleines Land, große Mauer: Die DDR für alle, die (nicht) dabei waren (Munich: Piper, 2007), 180–81, and the comments of Joachim Gauck, fi rst federal

commissioner for the Stasi fi les, in Opfer und Täter der SED-Herrschaft: Lebenswege in einer Diktatur (Leipzig: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 2005), 40.

42. A committee of experts on GDR history has recommended to the German Ministry of

Culture that it establish a History Cooperative “Dealing with the SED-Dictatorship,” the focus of which would be aspects currently neglected: (1) Political dominance, Society, Resistance, (2) Surveillance and Repression, (3) Border and Division. See Martin Sabrow et al., eds., Wohin treibt die DDR-Erinnerung? (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 41.

43. The surveys are summarized in Schroeder, Die veränderte Republik, 331–39.

44. Gieseke, Staatssicherheit, 13.

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N O T E S T O P A G E S 1 0 – 1 3

45. This translates into roughly one in fi fty East Germans between the ages of eighteen and eighty working for the Stasi in some capacity. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Im Visier der Geheimpolizei, 12.

46. As quoted in Mike Dennis, The Stasi: Myth and Reality (London: Longman, 2003), 90.

47. Reichert, Unter Kontrolle, 15.

48. CSIS statistics are available in the annual reports, online at www.csis-scrs.gc.ca.

49. Volodymyr Semystiaha, “The Role and Place of Secret Collaborators in the Informational Activity of the GPU-NKVD in the 1920s and 1930s,” Cahiers du monde russe 42, no. 2, 3, 4

(2001): 240.

50. Orlando Figes, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia (New York: Metropolitan, 2007), 258.

51. Fulbrook, “Jenseits,” 42.

52. Gieseke, Staatsicherheit.

53. Lindenberger, “SED-Herrschaft,” Hans-Hermann Hertle, Stefan Wolle, Damals in der DDR: der Alltag im Arbeiter- und Bauernstaat (München: Bertelsmann, 2004), 324. Emphasis added.

54. Thomas Lindenberger cancelled his subscription to Horch und Guck due to the review of Jens Gieseke, Staatssicherheit; Jochen Staadt, “Werkeln am Paradigmenwechsel: Die DDR

als ‘Konsensdiktatur’?” Horch und Guck 58, no. 2 (2007): 74–75.

55. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930 s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 14.

56. Yehuda Bauer, “Overall Explanations, German Society and the Jews: or Some

Thoughts about context,” in Probing the Depths of German Antisemitism: German Society and the Persecution of the Jews, 1933 – 1941 , ed. David Bankier (New York: Berghahn, 2000), 16.

57. As quoted in Pingel-Schliemann, Zersetzen, 50.

58. Pfaff, “The Lives of Others,” 114. David Ensikat echoes these sentiments: “For most others, the Stasi was not as big a deal as would be later claimed.” Ensikat, Kleines Land, große Mauer, 95.

59. Rainer Eckert, “Schuld und Zeitgeschichte: Zwölf Thesen zur Auseinandersetzung mit der deutschen Diktatur,” Deutschland Archiv 41, no. 1 (2008): 117.

60. Schroeder, Die veränderte Republik, 347.

61. An excellent introduction to the Historikerstreit is Peter Baldwin, Reworking the Past: Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Historians’ Debate (Boston: Beacon, 1990).

62. Very little has been written in English about the Stasi. Edward Peterson’s two books on the Stasi received universally negative reviews, The Secret Police and the Revolution (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2002) and The Limits of Secret Police Power: The Magdeburger Stasi 1953 – 1989 (New York: P. Lang, 2004). Both Anna Funder, Stasiland (London: Granta Books, 2003) and John Koehler, The Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police (Boulder: Westview, 1999) are loose, journalistic accounts. David Childs and Richard

Popplewell’s The Stasi: The East German Intelligence and Security Service (New York: New York University Press, 1996) did not make use of the Stasi archives. Dennis, Stasi: Myth and Reality is a helpful synthesis.

63. Katrin Dördelmann, “Aus einer gewissen Empörung hierüber habe ich Anzeige erstattet: Verhalten und Motive von Denunziantinnen,” in Zwischen Karriere und Verfolgung:

Handlungsräume von Grauen im nationalsozialistichen Deutschland, ed. Kristen Heinsohn, Birgit Vogel and Ulrike Weckel (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 1997), 190.

64. Sheila Fitzpatrick and Robert Gellately, “Introduction to the Practices of Denunciation in Modern European History,” in Accusatory Practices: Denunciation in Modern European History, 1789 – 1989, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick and Robert Gellately (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 1.

65. Stephanie Abke, Sichtbare Zeichen unsichtbarer Kräfte: Denunziationsmuter und Denunziationsverhalten 1933 – 1945 (Tübingen: Diskord, 2003).

66. Karl-Heinz Reuband, “Denunziation im Dritten Reich: Die Bedeutung von

Systemunterstützung und Gelegenheitsstrukturen,” Historical Social Research 26, no. 2/3

(2001): 219. Peter Fritzsche has demonstrated the many ways that Germans partook in

N O T E S T O P A G E S 1 3 – 2 2

| 191

the Nazi dictatorship. Peter Fritzsche, Life and Death in the Third Reich (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008).

67. Robert Gellately, “Denunciations in Twentieth Century Germany,” Journal of Modern History 68, no. 4 (1996): 933.

68. Robert Gellately, The Gestapo and German Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

69. See for example Vandana Joshi, Gender and Power in the Third Reich: Female Denouncers and the Gestapo 1933 – 1945 (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003). Stephanie Abke, Sichtbare Zeichen unsichtbarer Kräfte: Denunziationsmuter und Denunziationsverhalten 1933 – 1945

(Tübingen: Diskord, 2003).

70. Eric Johnson, Nazi Terror: The Gestapo, Jews, and Ordinary Germans (New York: Basic Books, 1999).

71. Gellately, “Denunciations,” 965.

72. Reuband, “Denunziation,” 223. In the Soviet Union during the Great Terror, petty

arguments and jealousies could often lead to denunciations. Figes, Whisperers, 264.

73. Fulbrook, People’s State, 241.

74. Opfer und Täter der SED-Herrschaft, 101.

75. Gerhard Paul, Staatlicher Terror und Gesellchaftliche Verrohung: Die Gestapo in Schleswig-Holstein (Hamburg: Ergebnisse Verlag, 1996), 11.

76. Gieseke, Mielke-Konzern, 70.

77. There were 3,228 employed in trade, 5,845 in transportation and telecommunication, and 6,753 in the “non-production” sector. The above statistics were gathered from

Statistischer Jahresbericht 1956 , Bezirke der DDR, Bezirk Schwerin (Berlin:VEB Deutscher Zentralverlag, 1957), and from the Statistisches Jahrbuch des Bezirkes Schwerin (Staatliche Zentralverwaltung für Statistik, Bezirkstelle Schwerin) for the years 1982 and 1990. This publication did not appear between 1982 and 1990.

78. Statistisches Jahrbuch 1990 : Bezirk Potsdam. (Statistisches Bezirksamt Potsdam, 1990), 21.

79. Annette Leo, “Das ist so’n zweischneidiges Schwert hier unser KZ . . .” Der Fürstenberg Alltag und das Frauenskonzentrationslager Ravensbrück (Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 2007), 32.

80. Ibid., 78.

81. Statistisches Bezirksamt Potsdam, Statistisches Jahrbuch Bezirk Potsdam 1990, 58–59.

Chapter 1

1. Laurenz Demps, “Die Provinz Brandenburg in der NS-Zeit,” in Brandenburgische

Geschichte, ed. Ingo Materna and Wolfgang Ribbe (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1995), 619.

2. Ulrike Kohl, “Quellen zur Geschichte der NSDAP und ihrer Gliederungen in Berlin-

Brandenburg,” in Jahrbuch für brandenburgische Landesgeschichte (1999): 198.

3. Kohl, “Quellen,” 202.

4. Dietrich Eichholtz, “Einleitung,” in Verfolgung, Alltag, Widerstand, ed. Dietrich Eichholtz (Berlin: Volk & Welt, 1999), 8; Kohl, “Quellen,” 207. These two works are the most important that have appeared since 1989 on the history of Brandenburg in the Nazi era.

Laurenz Demps’s chapter cited above is also an important contribution.

5. Demps, “Provinz Brandenburg,” 624–25; Dietrich Eicholtz, “Soziale Umbrüche in

Brandenburg 1943–1945,” in Terror, Herrschaft und Alltag im Nationalsozialismus: eine Sozialgeschichte des deutschen Faschismus, ed. Brigitte Berlekamp and Werner Röhr (Münster: Verlag Westfälisches Dampfboot, 1995), 123.

6. Eicholtz, “Soziale,”123.

7. Gary Bruce, Resistance with the People: Repression and Resistance in Eastern Germany, 1945 – 1955 (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2003), 187.

8. Eicholtz, “Soziale,” 123–24.

9. Werner Krause, “Die Entwicklung des Granseer Schulwesens/Teil 25,” Gransee Zeitung, June 29/30, 2002, 8.

10. Heinz Muchow, Hans-Joachim Eichel, Günter Rodegast, Chronik der Stadt Wittenberge 1933

bis 1944 (Wittenberge: Eigenverlag der Stadtverwaltung Wittenberge, 1997), 1–10.

11. On voting patterns in the Weimar Republic, see in particular Thomas Childers, The Nazi Voter (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983).

192 |

N O T E S T O P A G E S 2 2 – 2 7

12. Wittenberge: eine Chronik mit Bildern (Nordhorn: BVB-Verlag, 2000), 62.

13. Gerhard Thiede, “Granseer Chronik 1918 bis 1945,” unpublished manuscript, 360.

14. Muchow, Chronik, 1. Robert Gellately has argued that the concentration camps were well known to Germans, and that there was tacit support for their initial raison d’être. See in particular Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coersion in Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

15. Muchow, Chronik, 1.

16. Ibid.

17. Thiede, “Granseer Chronik,” 382.

18. Muchow, Chronik, 2.

19. Muchow, Chronik, 5.

20. Muchow, Chronik, 3.

21. Muchow, Chronik, 19.

22. Thiede, “Granseer Chronik,” 363–64.

23. Demper, “Provinz Brandenburg,” 630.

24. Ibid.

25. Richard Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (New York: Penguin, 2004), 238, 270–79.

26. Demper, “Provinz Brandenburg,” 638–39.

27. Sigrid Jacobeit and Lieselotte Thoms-Heinrich, Kreuzweg Ravensbrück: Lebensbilder antifaschistischer Widerstandskämpferinnen (Leipzig: Verlag für die Frau, 1989), 13.

28. Thomas Glöwen, “Zwangsarbeit im Beutelager: das KZ-Aussenlager Glöwen,” in

Havelberg: Kleine Stadt mit grosser Vergangenheit (Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1998), 169.

29. Fjodorovitch Karpenko, “Letter,” in Verschleppt nach Deutschland! Jugendliche Häftlinge des KZ Neuengamme aus der Sowjetunion erinnern sich, ed. Herbert Dierks, (Bremen: Edition Temmen, 2000).

30. Irene Diekmann, “Boykott–Entrechtung–Pogrom–Deportation,” in Verfolgung, Alltag, Widerstand, ed. Dietrich Eichhotlz (Berlin: Volk & Welt, 1993), 207.

31. Diekmann, “Boykott,” 209.

32. Yehuda Bauer, A History of the Holocaust (New York: Watts, 1982), 100.

33. Diekmann, “Boykott,” 209.

34. Diekmann, “Boykott,” 209–10.

35. Diekmann, “Boykott,” 214–15.

36. Muchow, Chronik, 4; Armin Feldmann, “Das Städtische Lyzeum zu Wittenberge—

Geschichte einer Schule,” Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der Prignitz 5 (Perleberg 2005), 113.

37. Almuth Püschel, . . . der Angeklagte ist Jude (Potsdam: Brandenburg Landeszentrale für politische Bildung, 1998), 9.

38. Krause, Chronik-Blätter, “Die Juden in Gransee und die faschistische Pogromnacht,”

Gransee Zeitung, n.d.

39. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1967), 23.

40. Thiede, “Granseer Chronik,” 390.

41. Krause, “Zum 60. Jahrestag der Reichspogromnacht vom 9. November 1938,” Gransee Zeitung, Nov. 7/8, 1998.

42. Krause, “War es Gottes Fügung oder nur ein seltsamer Zufall?” Gransee Zeitung, May 18, 1996.

43. Krause, “Die Zwangsberwirtschaftung während des Dritten Reiches” Gransee Zeitung, May 3/4, 1997

44. Demper, “Provinz Brandenburg,” 660.

45. Helmut Bräutigam, ed., Fremdarbeiter in Brandenburg in der NS-Zeit (Potsdam: RAA Brandenburg, 1996), 17–20.

46. Hermann Kaienburg, “Zwangsarbeit für das “deutsche Rohstoffwunder,” 1999 Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte des 20 . und 21 . Jahrhunderts (Köln: SfS, 1994), 13–21.

47. Kaienburg, “Zwangsarbeit,” 27.

48. Kaienburg, “Zwangsarbeit,” 19.

49. Ibid.

50. Muchow, Chronik, 18.

N O T E S T O P A G E S 2 7 – 3 3

| 193

51. Ibid.

52. Krause, “Die Entwicklung der Granseer Schulwesens” Teil 37. Gransee Zeitung, Sept. 21/22, 2002, 4.

53. Muchow, Chronik, 20.

54. “Disziplinierung durch Standrecht”: Aus dem Tagebuch von Albert Hoppe, Prignitz Kurier, Feb. 11, 1995.

55. Demper, “Provinz Brandenburg,” 665.

56. Muchow, Chronik, 21.

57. Thiede, “Granseer Chronik,” 417.

58. Thiede, “Granseer Chronik,” 418.

59. “Wagenburg auf dem Schulhof—der Flüchtlingsstrom wächst: Aus dem Tagebuch von

Albert Hoppe,” Prignitz Kurier, Feb. 9, 1995, 15.

60. “Heillose Verwirrung, Plünderung und kopfl ose Flucht: Aus dem Tagebuch von Albert Hoppe,” Prignitz Kurier. Mar. 11, 1995.

61. Olaf Groehler, “Der Luftkrieg gegen Brandenburg in den lezten Kriegsmonaten,” in

Brandenburg im Jahr 1945 , Werner Stang, ed. (Potsdam: Brandenburgische Landeszentrale für politische Bildung, 1995), 17–18.

62. Groehler, “Der Luftkrieg,” 13–14.

63. Muchow, Chronik, 10.

64. Heinz Muchow, Hans-Joachim Eichel, Günter Rodegast, Wittenberge im Jahre 1945 : Eine Chronologie (Wittenberge: Eigenverlag der Stadtverwaltung Wittenberge. 1998), 24.

65. Muchow, Wittenberge im Jahre 1945, 25–26.

66. Norman Naimark, “Die Sowjetische Militäradministration in Deutschland und die Frage des Stalinismus,” ZfG 43 (1995), 294. Further details of rape in eastern Germany by the Red Army are found in Naimark, The Russians in Germany (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995).

67. “Eine Pistolenmündung in Gesicht und Krieg gegen Frauen: Aus dem Tagebuch von

Albert Hoppe,” Prignitz Kurier, Mar. 25, 1995, 15.

68. Werner Krause, “Kinder waren die Helden von Gransee,” Gransee Zeitung, May 6/7, 2006.

69. Groehler, “Der Luftkrieg,” 32.

70. Krause, “Todesbotschaft zu Weihnachten,” Gransee Zeitung, Dec. 24, 1997.

71. Muchow, Wittenberge im Jahre 1945, 37.

Chapter 2

1. This is also a distinction for the Romanian secret police who, like the Stasi, were initially an instrument of terror before becoming, under Ceaus¸escu, an instrument of fear.

Dennis Deletant, “Romania,” in A Handbook of the Communist Security Apparatus in East Central Europe 1944 – 1989, ed. Krzysztok Persak and Lukasz Kaminsi (Warsaw: Institute of National Remembrance, 2005), 285. Stefan Wolle describes the ambivalent views of

the Stasi as follows: “You trembled before the Stasi at the same time you mocked them.”

Hans-Hermann Hertle and Stefan Wolle, Damals in der DDR: der Alltag im Arbeiter- und Bauernstaat (Munich: Bertelsmann, 2004), 320.

2. Jens Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter der Staatssicherheit (Berlin: Links, 2000), 12.

3. Some exceptions are Ariane Riecker, Annett Schwarz, and Dirk Schneider, Stasi intim: Gespräche mit ehemaligen MfS-Angehörigen (Leipzig: Forum Verlag, 1990); Gisela Karau, Stasiprotokolle: Gespräche mit ehemaligen Mitarbeitern des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit (Frankfurt: Dipa, 1992); Christina Wilkening, Staat im Staate (Berlin: Aufbau, 1990); and Anna Funder, Stasiland (London: Granta, 2003). An illuminating memoir is Reinhardt Hahn, Ausgedient: Ein Stasi-Major erzählt (Leipzig: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1990).

4. In 1952, the national average of workers/district offi ce was fourteen, with a distinct north-south divide. The south of the country had much larger district offi ces (Zittau had forty-four for example, Bautzen had thirty-one) than the north. District Gransee would not have been out of place in Region Schwerin, where the average number of workers in

the district offi ces was seven. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 85–89.

5. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 88.

194 |

N O T E S T O P A G E S 3 4 – 3 9

6. See Klaus-Dietmar Henke et al., Anatomie der Staatssicherheit: Geschichte, Struktur und Methoden (Berlin: BStU, 1996).

7. BStU-Potsdam, GVS PDM—193/89, June 27, 1989, Stellenplan der Bezirksverwaltung

Potsdam, KD Gransee.

8. On the forerunner to the Stasi in East Germany, see Monika Tantzscher, “ ‘In der Ostzone wird ein neuer Apparat aufgebaut’: Die Gründung des DDR-Staatssicherheitsdienstes,”

Deutschland Archiv 31 (1998): 48–56; and Monika Tantzscher, “Die Vorläufer des Staatssicherheitsdienstes in der Polizei der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone,” Jahrbuch für Historische Kommunismusforschung 7 (1998): 125–56.

9. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 124.

10. Even some works published after 1989 have continued the myth that the Stasi was the

“Red Gestapo.” See for example David Murphy, Sergei Kondrashev, and George Bailey,

Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 19. An early West German propaganda effort in this regard was Bernhard Sagolla, Die rote Gestapo (Berlin: Hansa Druck, 1952). Henry Leide’s book demonstrates in scathing fashion that the Stasi had much fewer reservations about using former Nazis as informants. Leide, NS-Verbrecher und Staatssicherheit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005).

11. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 111.

12. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 535.

13. BStU-Potsdam, K3774, Kurt Körner, 63, Mar. 28, 1963, Einschätzung.

14. BStU-Potsdam, K531, Hans-Jürgen Töpfer, 29, Feb. 20, 1967, Abschlussbericht der KD

Rathenow.

15. BStU-Potsdam, K531, Hans-Jürgen Töpfer, 82, Apr. 21, 1978, Beurteilung des Genossen Töpfer, gez. Verch.

16. BStU-Potsdam, K531, Hans-Jürgen Töpfer, 106, Aug. 12, 1985, Vorschlag zur Ernennung Töpfer zum Leiter der Kreisdienststelle Gransee mit Wirkung vom Nov. 1, 1985, 290. Nov.

18, 1980, Brief, KD Rathenow an VB Potsdam.

17. BStU-Potsdam, K3806 Eberhard Berndt, 29, Dec. 5, 1974, Einstellungsvorschlag, gez. Leiter der KD Luckenwalde.

18. BStU-Potsdam, K2503, Dietmar Hardt, 26, July 15, 1976, Vorschlag zur Einstellung, gez.

Leiter der KD Zossen.

19. BStU-Potsdam, K1085 Karin Kuhlmann, 21, July 10, 1976, Einstellungsvorschlag, gez. Tamme.

20. BStU-Potsdam, K1082 Dietmar Köhler, 33, June 15, 1987, Einstellungsvorschlag, gez. Töpfer.

21. BStU-Potsdam, K3251, 32, May 5, 1987, Einstellungsvorschlag, gez. Leiter der KD Kwuster.

22. BStU-Potsdam, K1085, 21, July 10, 1976, Einstellungsvorschlag, gez. Tamme.

23. BStU-Potsdam, K3774 Kurt Körner, 11, Zusammengefasste Auskünfte (summary of

information).

24. BStU-Potsdam, K198, Carsten Hoeltke, 34, May 8, 1989, Einstellungvorschlag, gez. Töpfer.

25. BStU-Potsdam, K1506, Hans-Jürgen Kämpfer.

26. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 267–68.

27. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 433.

28. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 338; and Henke et al., Anatomie, 48.

29. John Schmeidel, Stasi: Shield and Sword of the Party (New York: Routledge, 2008), 16.

30. BStU-Potsdam, K531 Hans-Jürgen Töpfer, 12. Undated Zusammengefasste Auskunft

(summary of information).

31. Henke et al., Anatomie, 34.

32. BStU-Potsdam, K2002 Lothar Schrader, 114, Oct. 15, 1984, Vorschlag zur Ernennung des Hauptmann Schrader, Lothar, zum Referatsleiter des Referates Industrie/Territorial der KD

Neuruppin.

33. Mike Dennis, The Stasi: Myth and Reality (London: Longman, 2003), 81.

34. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 421.

35. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 335.

36. BStU-Potsdam, K1082, Dietmar Köhler, 37, June 15, 1987, Einstellungsvorschlag, gez. Töpfer.

37. See for example BStU-Potsdam, K3392 Werner Oschim, and K1082 Dietmar Köhler.

38. Interview with Tenbrock, May 11, 2006.

39. BStU-Potsdam, K 3006–91, 98, Mar. 27, 1989, Brief.

N O T E S T O P A G E S 3 9 – 4 5

| 195

40. BStU-Potsdam, K2002, Lothar Schrader, 64, Feb. 9, 1977, Beurteilung, gez. Schlögel, KD

Neuruppin.

41. Interview with Müller, May 24, 2006.

42. BStU-Potsdam, K3251 Volker Ehmig, 91, Apr. 10, 1989, Aktenvermerk über eine

durchgeführte Aussprache mit Ehmig.

43. BStU-Potsdam, K 2503. Dietmar Hardt, 7, 11, Zusammengefasste Auskunft (summary of

information). Alcohol-related disciplinary issues at work amounted to about 25 percent of total offenses in the entire Stasi. Dennis, Stasi: Myth and Reality, 87.

44. BStU-Potsdam, K 1239 Lothar Strempel, 140, Apr. 12, 1985, Vorschlag zur Entbindung aus der Funktion Stellvertreter des Leiters einer KD, gez. Nikolaus.

45. Henke et al., Anatomie, 77.

46. Dennis, Stasi: Myth and Reality, 79.

47. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 537.

48. Armin Mitter and Stefan Wolle offer a different interpretation in Untergang auf Raten (Munich: Bertelsmann, 1993) of a secret police that continuously expanded from the

revolutionary scare of 1953, rather than the expansion in bursts that Gieseke suggests. Jens Gieseke, Mielke-Konzern: Die Geschichte der Stasi (Stuttgart: DVA, 2001), 69.

49. Gieseke, Mielke-Konzern, 70.

50. Henke et al., Anatomie, 43.

51. BStU, ZA, HA KuSch, Abt Plan. 105. Uncatalogued material.

52. Gaps in the archival record do not allow for a complete reconstruction of the directorship of the District Perleberg Stasi offi ce. As best as can be determined, Oberleutnant Mrowka led the offi ce from June 1953 to December 1954. Norbert Skerra was leader from at least 1955 to 1957, but it is unclear who led the offi ce until the appointment of Herbert Tilse in 1967. I am grateful to Herr Hoffmann of the Schwerin branch of the Stasi archive for piecing together this information based on a series of operational fi les, including AIM

8853, AIM 186/53, AIM 659/54, AOPK 952/88, AOPK 241/89, AOPK 298/89, AOPK 321/89,

AOPK 605/89, AOPK 778/89, AOPK 41/89, AOPK 103/89, AOPK 298/89, AOPK 319/89,

AOPK 745/89, AOPK 786/89, AOPK 795/89, AOPK 1026/89.

53. Interview with Herr Paupst, May 31, 2006.

54. Ibid.

55. Interview with Herr Piekert, May 23, 2006.

56. Interview with Frau Paupst, May 31, 2006.

57. Interview with Frau Müller, May 24, 2006.

58. BStU-Schwerin, Abt KuSch, 160, Werner Ryll, unpaginated. Nov. 10, 1967,

Einstellungsvorschlag.

59. BStU-Schwerin, Abt KuSch, 160, Werner Ryll, unpaginated. June 14, 1967, IM Bericht über Ryll.

60. BStU-Schwerin, Abt KuSch, 105, Joachim Abraham, unpaginated.

61. BStU-Schwerin, Abt KuSch, 1464 Christiane Bleß, unpaginated.

62. BStU-Schwerin, Abt KuSch, 1249. Aug. 15, 1977, Plan zur Einführung in die politisch-operative Arbeit im MfS, gez. Tilse.

63. BStU-Schwerin, Abt KuSch, 249, unpaginated.

64. Interview with Frau Klenk, May 23, 2006, Wittenberge.

65. BStU-Schwerin, Abt KuSch 1115, unpaginated.

66. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 348.

67. BStU-Schwerin, Abt. KuSch, 412. See also BStU-Schwerin, Abt. KuSch, 1249.

68. Dennis, Stasi: Myth and Reality, 88.

69. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 278.

70. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 279.

71. Edward Peterson’s account of the Stasi at a regional level does not discuss the careers or personalities of the Stasi offi cers in Region Magdeburg. Edward Peterson, The Limits of Secret Police Power: The Magedburger Stasi, 1953 – 1989 (New York: P. Lang, 2004). One of the fi rst accounts of the Stasi in English does not address the Stasi employees, although it does deal with the informants, David Childs and Richard Popplewell, The Stasi: The East German Intelligence and Security Service (New York: New York University Press, 1996).

196 |

N O T E S T O P A G E S 4 6 – 7 6

72. See in particular Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: Harper, 1992), 210.

73. Interviews took place Aug. 8, 2003 and May 11, 2006, in Häsen.

74. A brief description of the Barth case is available in Leide, NS-Verbrecher, 130–42.

75. Wilkening, Staat im Staate, 26–27, 155.

76. This is also a refrain in the interviews in Wilkening, Staat im Staate, 53–54.

77. Interview took place May 4, 2006, in Zehdenick.

78. BStU-Potsdam, K2986, 3.

79. Interview took place May 8, 2006, in Löwenberger Land.

80. The frustration with the party was not unique to the district level. See Childs and Popplewell, Stasi, 176.

81. See Bruce, “Wir haben den Kontakt,” 367.

82. Martin Malia, “To the Stalin Mausoleum.” Daedalus 119 (Winter 1990): 300–301.

83. Interview took place May 22, 2006.

84. Interview took place May 23, 2006, in Wittenberge.

85. Wilkening, Staat im Staate, 131.

86. Interview took place May 24, 2006, in Quitzow.

87. Interview took place May 23, 2006, in Wittenberge.

88. Wilkening, Staat im Staate, 69.

89. Interview took place May 31, 2006, in Wittenberge.

90. Interview took place May 31, 2006, in Perleberg.

91. Interview took place June 7, 2006, in Wittenberge.

92. One former Stasi offi cer in the Berlin evaluation branch ZAIG exaggerates when he claims that the Stasi would have led the revolution had the leadership been different.

Wilkening, Staat im Staate, 26–27. In both The Secret Police and the Revolution and The Limits of Secret Police Power Edward Peterson suggests that there were many Stasi who sympathized with the revolutionaries.

93. Interview took place June 8, 2006, in Wittenberge.

94. Interview took place Apr. 28, 2006, in Wittenberge.

95. Interview took place May 6, 2006, in Neuruppin.

96. Schmeidel, Stasi: Shield and Sword, 20.

97. Dennis, Stasi: Myth and Reality, 81.

98. Henke et al., Anatomie, 17.

99. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Das Leben der anderen: Filmbuch (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2006), 43.

100. Dennis, Stasi: Myth and Reality, 80.

101. Henke et al., Anatomie, 55.

102. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 268–69.

103. Donna Harsch, “Society, the State, and Abortion in East Germany, 1950–1972,” American Historical Review 102 (1997): 83.

104. Ina Merkel, “Leitbilder und Lebensweisen von Frauen in der DDR,” in Kaelble et al, Sozialgeschichte der DDR, 376–77.

105. Renate Ellmenreich, Frauen bei der Stasi: Am Beispiel der MfS-Bezirksverwaltung Gera (Erfurt: Landesbeauftragte des Freistaates Thüringens, 1999), 47.

106. Donna Harsch, “Squaring the Circle: The Dilemmas and Evolution of Women’s Policy,”

in The Workers’ and Peasants’ State, 151.

107. This is a refrain in several published interviews as well. See Riecker, Schwarz, and Schneider, Stasi intim, 12–13, 41; and Reinhard Grimmer et al., eds., Die Sicherheit: zur Abwehrarbeit des MfS, vol. 1 (Berlin: Edition Ost, 2002), 192–93.

108. Karau, Stasiprotokolle, 11.

109. Thomas Ammer and Hans-Joachim Memmler, Staatssicherheit in Rostock: Zielgruppen, Methoden, Aufl ösung (Cologne: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, 1991), 50–51.

110. Henke et al., Anatomie, 62.

111. Hahn, Ausgedient, 21.

112. Malia, “Stalin Mausoleum,”—300–301.

113. Hahn, Ausgedient, 34.

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114. Hahn, Ausgedient, 90. Order 2/85 of February 1985 called for the “preventive disruption, exposure, and struggle against the political underground.” Henke et al., Anatomie, 37.

115. Wilkening, Staat im Staate, 181.

116. Hahn, Ausgedient, 90; Wilkening, Staat im Staate 122–23.

117. Grimmer et al., Die Sicherheit, vol. 1, 327.

118. Grimmer et al., Die Sicherheit, vol. 1, 266.

119. In particular Eric Johnson, Nazi Terror: The Gestapo, Jews, and Ordinary Germans (New York: Basic Books, 1999).

120. The only published interview of a former Stasi offi cer to reveal similar deep regret is in Riecker, Schwarz, and Schneider, Stasi intim, 204. The offi cer said that he felt “guilty.

Morally guilty.”

121. Karau, Stasiprotokolle, 81.

122. Perhaps unsurprising, no high-ranking SED members styled themselves as “perpetrators”

after the fall of the Wall. See the important collection of interviews in Christian Jung, Geschichte der Verlierer: Historische Selbstrefl exion von hochrangigen Mitgliedern der SED

nach 1989 (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag, 2007).

123. See the discussion of the Bezirk party leaders in Mario Niemann, Die Sekretäre der SED-Bezirksleitungen 1952 – 1989 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2007).

124. Orlando Figes, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia (New York: Metropolitan, 2007), 472.

125. Hahn, Ausgedient, 15.

Chapter 3

1. An excellent overview of fi le access in Eastern Europe after 1989 is Lavinia Stan, ed., Transitional Justice in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union: Reckoning with the Communist Past (New York: Routledge, 2008). See also Lavinia Stan, “Spies, Files and Lies: Explaining the failure of access to Securitate Files,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 37 (2004): 341–59.

2. For an overview of debates surrounding fi le access and the Stasi Records Law, see Gary Bruce, “Access to Secret Police Files, Justice and Vetting in East Germany since 1989,”

German Politics and Society 26, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 82–111.

3. Jens Gieseke, “Referat,” in Im Visier der Geheimpolizei: Der kommunistische Überwachungs-und Repressionsapparat 1945 – 1989 (Leipzig: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 2007), 35.

4. Tätigkeitsbericht der Bundesbeauftragten für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (Berlin: BStU, 2001), 7.

5. Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk, “Was den Stasi-Unterlagen im Bundesarchiv droht,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Jan. 8, 2005.

6. Martin Debes, Durchdringen und Zersetzen: Die Bekämpfung der Opposition in Ostthüringen durch das MfS im Jahre 1989 (Manebach: Goldhelm Verlag, 1999).

7. Barbara Miller, Narratives of Guilt and Compliance in Unifi ed Germany: Stasi Informers and their Impact on Society (London: Routledge, 1999), 40.

8. More than half of all informants fell into the IMS category, the “classic” informant who was to report on a certain environment. The other categories represented more specialized tasks. See Jens Gieseke, Mielke-Konzern: Die Geschichte der Stasi (Stuttgart: DVA, 2001), 113.

On the development of the categories over time, see Helmut Müller-Enbergs, Inoffi zielle Mitarbeiter des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit (Berlin: Ch. Links, 2001), 1:62.

9. Interview with Rolf Schwegel, Wittenberge, May 31, 2006.

10. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 444/56. See the maps and diagrams following p. 10 in that report.

11. See Müller-Enbergs, Inoffi zielle Mitarbeiter, 3:53.

12. The following chart reveals the number of informants run by District Perleberg in several years in the 1980s for which data is available. The region of Schwerin, to which District Perleberg reported, also ran informants, some of whom were certainly present in District Perleberg. I estimated the number of regional informants in Perleberg by dividing the

regional informants equally among the eleven districts. We cannot determine the exact

numbers, but these may be considered a reasonable estimate:

198 |

N O T E S T O P A G E S 8 3 – 8 4

Year

Informants run

Approx. number of

Total Stasi

by District

Regional (BV) Informants

informants in

Perleberg

in District Perleberg

District Perleberg

1984

345

238

583

1985

376

238

614

1987

377

No data

1988

377

247

624

Source: BStU-Schwerin, KD Perleberg 10376, 10377. Untitled reports on Informants in KD Perleberg from Jan. 1

to Dec. 31, 1988, 1987, 1985, and 1984, and Helmut Müller-Enbergs, Inoffi zielle Mitarbeiter: Teil 3, 835

13. Ibid. A summary of the number of informants in the districts in neighboring Region Neubrandenburg is found in Andreas Niemann and Walter Süß, “Gegen das Volk kann

nichts mehr entschieden warden,” in MfS und SED im Bezirk Neubrandenburg BF informiert 12 (Berlin: BStU, 1996), 69.

14. BStU-Schwerin, KD Perleberg 10377; Statische Berichterstattung für den Zeitraum

1.1–31.3, 1985.

15. Interview with Matthias Piekert, Wittenberge, May 23, 2006. See chap. 2.

16. BStU-Schwerin, KD Perleberg 10377; Statische Berichterstattung für den Zeitraum 1.1–31.1, 1985.

17. This was in line with the overall Stasi. Gieseke, Mielke-Konzern, 113.

18. The number of informants in District Gransee may be summarized as follows:

Year

Informants run by

Approx. number

Total Stasi informants in

District Gransee

of Regional (BV)

District Gransee

Informants in District

Gransee

1978

227

No data

1983

223

208

431

1984

247

205

452

1985

229

217

446

1986

142

No data

1987

158

Insuffi cient data

1988

199

215

414

Notes: A word of caution is necessary about these statistics: The totals from 1983 to 1987 do not include the GMS informant category, so the number of total informants in those years would have been higher than what appears here. In 1988, for example, we know that there were thirty-fi ve GMS informants in the district.

The sharp drop in the number of informants between 1985 and 1986, was a result in large part to the loss of nearly half of the informant roster in 1986 alone when a new director took offi ce and “cleaned house.” It was common for the Stasi to lose a certain number of informants in any given year, but the drastic drop in 1986 was exceptional.

Source: BStU-Potsdam AKG 240, Jan. 8, 1979, Kontrollbericht, p. 2; Müller-Enbergs, Inoffi zielle Mitarbeiter: Teil 3, 791.

N O T E S T O P A G E S 8 4 – 8 8

| 199

19. See the statistics on informants contained in Lukasz Kaminski et al., eds., Handbuch der kommunistischen Geheimdienste in Osteuropa 1944 – 1991 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008).

20. Müller-Enbergs, Inoffi zielle Mitarbeiter, 1:59.

21. BStU-Potsdam, AKG 1335, 10.

22. BStU-Potsdam, AKG 10542, Sept. 3, 1986, Hinweise zur Kreisdienststelle Gransee, von BV

Potsdam, Auswertungs- und Kontrollgruppe.

23. Interview with Bernd Lohre, Wittenberge, June 7, 2006.

24. Roswitha Kaiser, “Stille Helden”: Eine empirische Untersuchung über Verweigerungen und Ablehnungsgründe zur inoffi ziellen Zusammenarbeit mit dem MfS am Beispiel der

Bezirksverwaltung Potsdam” (Diplomarbeit, Fachhochschule Potsdam, 1997), 44–50.

25. Steffen Reichert, Unter Kontrolle: Die Martin-Luther-Universität und das Ministerium für Staatssicherheit 1968 – 1989 (Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2007), 131.

26. BStU-ZA, Sept. 20, 1950, Richtlinien über die Erfassung der geheimen Mitarbeiter, der Informatoren und der Personen, die konspirative Wohnungen unterhalten. GVS 9–50.

This document is reprinted in Müller-Enbergs, Inoffi zielle Mitarbeiter, 1:159–63.

27. Müller-Enbergs, Inoffi zielle Mitarbeiter, 1:24–25.

28. Almost every instance of recruitment involved an assessment of the candidate by an offi cial source such as factory boss, or local member of the Communist Party. See for example BStU-Potsdam, AIM 1852/69, 17; 27 Nov. 1958, Einschätzung, gez Sekr der BPO.

29. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 1378/80, 35; Nov. 11, 1968, Werbungsvorschlag, gez Kleiss-Schmid.

30. In virtually all cases of informant recruitment, other informants provided an assessment of the candidate’s morality. See for example BStU-Schwerin, AIM 443/94, AIM 450/68, and AIM 247/73.

31. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 47/55; Mar. 4, 1950, letter.

32. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 47/55; June 22, 1950, Verpfl ichtung. Several informants were recruited even before the Stasi was offi cially founded. In those cases, the commitment does not refer to the Ministry for State Security, but contains vague phrasing about how the

informant agrees to fi ght all enemies of the GDR. See, for example, AIM 138/55; Jan, 12, 1950, Verpfl ichtung.

33. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 47/55; Dec. 20, 1954, Beschluss über das Abbrechen der Verbindung.

34. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 444/56; Feb. 19, 1953, Vorschlag zur Anwerbung, gez. Prochnow.

35. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 444/56; June 3, 1953, Verpfl ichtungsbericht, gez. Stein.

36. Richtlinie 21, Nov. 2, 1952, repr. in Müller-Enbergs, Inoffi zielle Mitarbeiter, 1:17. See also Miller, Narratives, 35.

37. Interview with Matthias Piekert, Wittenberge, May 23, 2006.

38. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 418/55; one of the few studies on this little-known group is

Kai-Uwe Merz, Kalter Krieg als antikommunistischer Widerstand: Die Kampfgruppe gegen Unmenschlichkeit, 1948 – 1959 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1987).

39. BStU-ZA, 2.9;1953, Dienstanweisung Nr. 30/53 über die Erweiterung des

Informatorennetzes und die Arbeit mit Hauptinformatoren.

40. Gerhard Ritter, “Der 17. Juni 1953,” in Volkserhebung gegen den SED-Staat: eine Bestandsaufnahme zum 17 . Juni 1953, ed. Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk and Roger Engelmann (Göttingen: Vabdenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005), 27. An outstanding work on the place

of June 17, 1953, in German history is Bernd Eisenfeld, Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk, and

Erhart Neubert, eds., Die verdrängte Revolution: der Platz des 17 . Juni 1953 in der deutschen Geschichte (Bremen: Edition Temmen, 2004). See also Gary Bruce, “The Prelude to Nationwide Surveillance in East Germany: Stasi Operations and Threat Perceptions,

1945–1953,” Journal of Cold War Studies 5, no. 2 (2003): 3–31.

41. Gary Bruce, Resistance with the People: Repression and Resistance in Eastern Germany, 1945 – 1955 (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2003), 234.

42. Müller-Enbergs, Inoffi zielle Mitarbeiter, 1:36.

43. Oct. 1, 1958, Richtlinie 1/58, repr. in Müller-Enbergs, Inoffi zielle Mitarbeiter, 1:212–13.

44. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 275/56; May 31, 1956; Beurteilung des GI Schulz, gez. Dannenberg.

45. Miller, Narratives, 44.

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N O T E S T O P A G E S 8 8 – 9 3

46. Reinhard Grimmer et al., eds., Die Sicherheit: zur Abwehrarbeit des MfS, vol. 1 (Berlin: Edition Ost, 2002), 353.

47. Matthias Piekert, Wittenberge, May 23, 2006.

48. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 586/56; vol. 2 contains many of Ram’s reports.

49. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 586/56; Jan. 20, 1954, Bericht, gez. Behr.

50. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 586/56.

51. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 586/56; Dec. 14, 1956, Bericht zum Abbrechen der Verbindung, gez.

Sternkopf.

52. BStU-Potsdam, AKG 240, Jan. 8, 1979, Kontrollbericht, 3.

53. Müller-Enbergs, Inoffi zielle Mitarbeiter, 1:57.

54. BStU-Potsdam, AKG 240, Dec. 20, 1979, Schlussfolgerungen und Massnahmen der im

Ergebnis durch die AKG durchgeführte Nachkontrolle.

55. Miller, Narratives, 15.

56. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 215/56. See the reports: Nov. 4, 1952, Vorschlag zum Informatoren, gez. Greulich; Jan. 3, 1956, Beurteilung des GI Siebert, gez. Prochnow; Feb. 7, 1956,

Aktenvermerk gez. Prochnow.

57. Nov. 20, 1952, Richtlinie 21/52, reprinted in Müller-Enbergs, Inoffi zielle Mitarbeiter, 1:174.

58. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 410/94; Apr. 16, 1975, Beschluss über das Anlegen eines IM Vorganges.

59. Miller, Narratives, 22.

60. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 410/94. See the reports by informants evaluating her character

contained in this signature. See also BStU-Schwerin, AIM247/73; Mar. 28, 1973,

Aktenvermerk, gez. Hohm.

61. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 1087/78, 12; Oct. 9, 1978, Verpfl ichtung.

62. BStU-Potsdam, AKG 1054, June 16, 1988, Bericht an BV Potsdam.

63. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 2682/80, 103–7; June 25, 1976, Einsatz- und

Entwicklungskonzeptionen FIM Reini, gez. Oschim.

64. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 2682/80’ June 6, 1978, Vorschlag.

65. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 2682/80, 483; Nov. 21, 1980, Abschlussbericht zum FIM-Vorgang

Reini, gez. Oschim.

66. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 2682/80, 128; Mar. 17, 1967, Brief KD Gransee an BV Potsdam, Abt. 18, gez. Hoffmann.

67. Interview with Reinhard Kuhlow, Wittenberge, May 22, 2006.

68. BStU-Potsdam, AIM 2682/80, 113; Dec. 21, 1976, Schulungsplan.

69. Müller-Enbergs, Inoffi zielle Mitarbeiter, 1:30.

70. Grimmer et al., Die Sicherheit, 1:264.

71. Roger Engelmann, “Eine Regionalstudie zu Herrschaft und Alltag im Staatssozialismus,”

in Staatssicherheit und Gesellschafft: Studien zum Herrschaftsalltag in der DDR, ed. Jens Gieseke (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 175.

72. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 215/56. See the reports: Nov. 4, 1952, Vorschlag zum Informatoren, gez. Greulich; Jan. 3, 1956, Beurteilung des GI Siebert, gez. Prochnow; Feb 7, 1956,

Aktenvermerk gez. Prochnow.

73. BStU-Potsdam, AGMS 885/85, 31–32; Apr. 2, 1974, Ermittlungsbericht zu Max Steinbach, gez. Mandel.

74. BStU-Potsdam, AIM 591/71, 32; Jan. 10, 1963, Vorschlag zur Anwerbung der Person Max Steinbach, gez. Schmidt.

75. BStU-Potsdam, AIM 591/71, 16; Sept. 20, 1963, Bericht.

76. BStU-Potsdam, AIM 591/71, 96;Nov. 6, 1965, Bericht.

77. BStU-Potsdam, AIM 591/71, 80; Mar. 10, 1966, Bericht.

78. Ibid.

79. BStU-Potsdam, AGMS 885/85, 169; Nov. 30, 1976, Treffbericht, and 189–90, May 16, 1977, Bericht über beabsichtigte Republikfl ucht von 4 Jugendlichen.

80. BStU-Potsdam, AGMS 885–85, 277. Abschlussbericht zur Archivierung des GMS Peter Reg.

Nr. IV 1280/80.

81. BStU-Potsdam, KD GS 7, 64; Aug. 23, 1968, Treffbericht.

82. BStU-Potsdam, KD GS 7, 329; Jan. 13, 1977, Treffbericht.

N O T E S T O P A G E S 9 3 – 9 8

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83. BStU-Potsdam, KD GS 7, 48; Sept. 8, 1977, Treffbericht.

84. BStU-Potsdam, AKG 392, 5; June 10, 1985, Bericht über Ergebnisse der Untersuchungen zur Wirksamkeit der Arbeit mit IM/GMS bei der Durchdringung ausgewählter

Schwerpunktbereiche und Zielgruppen des Gegners in den KD Gransee, Nauen,

Oranienuburg, Potsdam und Rathenow, gez. Schweiger und Hielscher.

85. BStU-Potsdam, AIM 712/71, 65; June 22, 1960, Einschätzung der Zusammenarbeit des GI Paul, gez. Utln Lippert.

86. BStU-Potsdam, AIM 712/71, 66; Jan. 13, 1965, Einschätzung der Zusammenarbeit mit dem IM Paul, gez. Ultn Birkholtz.

87. BStU-Potsdam, AIM 712/71, 74; June 11, 1971, Abschlussberichte.

88. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 403/94; Feb. 17, 1982, Einschätzung des IMS Magnolie.

89. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 10/85; Apr. 26, 1972, Vorschlag zur Verpfl ichtung eines Kandidaten, gez. Doppert.

90. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 305/56.

91. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 444/56; Jan. 23, 1956, Bericht, gez. Pfeufer.

92. Ibid.

93. BstU-Schwerin, AIM 444/56; June 5, 1956, Aktenvermerk, gez. Pfeufer.

94. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 444/56; Jan. 7, 1956, Beurteilung des Kuschel.

95. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 598/56; Nov. 6, 1956, Bericht, gez. Schulz.

96. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 410/94; May 20, 1980, Begründung für die Ruckstufung des IMV

Carmen in die Kategorie IMS, gez. Tilse See also the case of an informant hired to monitor a train station but who was then transferred to a military base BStU-Potsdam, AIM 293/58, 19; Aug. 20, 1958, Schlussbericht, gez. Ultn Wallert and Ultn. Schölzel, leader of the district.

97. BStU-Potsdam, 1321/89, vol. 3, 322; Jan. 19, 1982, Abschrift, gez. Silvana.

98. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 374/94; Jan. 13, 1971, Bericht über Bekanntwerden, gez. Schmidt.

99. BStU-Schwerin AIM 374/94; Jan. 13, 1971, Bericht über durchgeführte Neuverpfl ichtung, gez. Schmidt.

100. Ibid.

101. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 374/94; May 30, 1983, Konzeption zur Überprüfung des Patrioten Walter, gez. Futterlieb.

102. BStU-Potsdam, 1855/69, 19; Oct. 22, 1955, Betr. Vorschlag zum Geheimen Informator.

103. This was the era of a concentrated Stasi campaign against Western intelligence agencies and their associated groups. See in particular Karl Wilhelm Fricke and Roger Engelmann, Konzentrierte Schläge: Staatssicherheitsaktionen und politische Prozesse in der DDR 1953 – 1956

(Berlin: Ch Links, 1998).

104. BStU-Potsdam, 1855/69, 25; Nov. 21, 1955, Durchgeführte Werbung, gez. Zörner,

Drewnick, und Willkommen.

105. BStU-Potsdam, 1855/69, 43; Apr. 12, 1956, Auskunftsbericht.

106. BStU-Potsdam, 1855/69, 47; May 17, 1956, Perspektivplan, gez. Drewnick.

107. BStU-Potsdam, 1855/69, 70; Dec. 7, 1961, Vorschlag zur Umregistrierung des GI Udo zum GHI, gez. Hoffmann.

108. BStU-Potsdam, 1855/69, 103; Oct. 3, 1967, Auskunftsbericht gez. Hoffmann.

109. BStU-Potsdam, 1855/69, 80; Oct. 29, 1965, Treffbericht, gez. Reini.

110. BStU-Potsdam, 1855/69, 92; Feb. 11, 1966, Treffbericht gez. Reini.

111. BStU-Potsdam, 1855/69, 146; Mar. 19, 1969, Zusammenfassender Bericht über die

Ereignisse an der EOS-Zehdenick und die damit im Zusammenhang stehende fristlose

Entlassung der Lehrer (blacked out) aus dem Schuldienst, gez. Reini.

112. BStU-Potsdam, KD GS 64, 13; Apr. 28, 1986, Treffbericht, gez. Gerhardt.

113. BStU-Potsdam, KD GS 64, 120; Jan. 7, 1972, Bericht über den EOS-Schüler (blacked out), gez. Udo.

114. BStU-Potsdam, KD GS 64, 195–96; Oct. 4, 1976, Bericht über ideologisches Fehlverhalten des EOS-Schülers (blacked out) Information, gez. Udo.

115. Interview with Florian Tenbrock. Häsen, Aug. 8, 2003.

116. BStU-Potsdam, AIM 192/86, 63; Aug. 5, 1975, Ermittlung zur Person Herr Dr. Schiefer, gez.

Oschim.

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N O T E S T O P A G E S 9 8 – 1 0 3

117. BStU-Potsdam, AIM 192/86, 167; Sept. 1, 1975, Vorschlag zur Verpfl ichtung Rolf Schiefer, gez. Oschim.

118. BStU-Potsdam, AIM 192/86, 176–78; Nov. 8, 1975, Bericht über die durchgeführte

Verpfl ichtung, gez. Oschim.

119. BStU-Potsdam, AIM 192/86, 116; Apr. 17, 1979, Information zur OPK Polyp gez. J. Nöcker, taken down by Gaeth.

120. BStU-Potsdam, AIM 192/86, 353; July 27, 1981, Information zum Oradour.

121. BStU-Potsdam, AIM 192/86, 16; Dec. 1, 1978, Einschätzung der inoffi ziellen

Zusammenarbeit mit dem IMV Josef Nöcker, gez. Gaeth.

122. See also BStU-Potsdam, AIM 192/86, 101; Dec. 19, 1980, Brief, Leiter der Abt. 20, BV

Potsdam an KD Gransee.

123. BStU-Potsdam, AIM 192/86, 118; Mar. 18, 1982, Einschätzung der inoffi ziellen

Zusammenarbeit mit dem IMS Josef Nöcker, gez. Gaeth.

124. BStU-Potsdam, AIM 192/86, 153; June 8, 1983, Brief, KD Gransee Leiter Tamme an HA II/3

in Berlin.

125. BStU-Potsdam, AIM 192/86, 271; Jan. 3, 1986, Abschlussbericht IMS Josef Nöcker, gez.

Töpfer and Bracklow.

126. See in particular Robert Gellately, The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy 1933 – 1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). Eric Johnson has suggested that the Gestapo was more proactive than in Gellately’s model, especially in the Catholic milieu. Eric

Johnson, Nazi Terror: The Gestapo, Jews, and Ordinary Germans (New York: Basic Books, 1999).

127. Interview with Florian Tenbrock, in Häsen, Aug. 8, 2003.

128. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 275/56; July 25, 1955, Aktenvermerk gez. Behr; July 26, 1955,

Ermittlung gez. Behr.

129. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 275/56; Aug. 18, 1955, Verpfl ichtungsbericht, gez. Behr.

130. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 275/56; May 31, 1956, Beurteilung des GI Schulz, gez. Dannenberg.

131. Stasi employment of former SS and war criminals is explored in Henry Leide, NS-Verbrecher und Staatssicherheit: die Geheime Vergangenheitspolitik der DDR (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005).

132. Interview with Florian Tenbrock, in Häsen, Aug. 8, 2003.

133. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 19/56; Dec. 29, 1955, Abbrechen der Verbindung.

134. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 511/55; Jan. 4, 1955, Beurteilung des GI Kirsch, gez. Leutnant Bachmann.

135. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 707/55; July 11, 1955, Beurteilung, gez. Berndt.

136. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 707/55; Aug. 1, 1955, handwritten note by Sugar.

137. BStU-Potsdam, AIM 26/79, 59; Dec. 12, 1978, Einschätzung.

138. Grimmer et al., Die Sicherheit, 363.

139. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 62/55; July 15, 1954, Bericht, gez. Prochnow; AIM 791/52. July 8, 1950, Verpfl ichtung. See also BStU-Schwerin, AIM 1087/78, 12; Oct. 9, 1970, Verpfl ichtung.

140. BStU-Potsdam, 687/94, .71; Aug. 28, 1988, Aktenvermerk zum IM-Vorlauf des Gen. Oltn.

Besenbiel.

141. BStU-Potsdam, KD GS 7, 21; Nov. 30, 1966, Bericht über durchgeführte Werbung, gez. Lt.

Hoffmann.

142. BStU-Potsdam, KD GS 7, 21; Nov. 30, 1966, Bericht über durchgeführte Werbung, gez. Lt.

Hoffmann; and Nov. 29, 1966, Verpfl ichtung.

143. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 421/56; Mar. 12, 1956, Bericht, gez. Prochnow.

144. BStU-Potsdam, AIM 1852/69, 30; Jan. 29, 1969, Vorschlag zur Umgruppierung and Oct.

26, 1967, Auskunftsbericht.

145. BStU-Potsdam, AIM 26/79, 58; Dec.12, 1978, Einschätzung.

146. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 766/55, 12–13; Nov. 30, 1954, Beurteilung, gez. Bachmann; Jan. 6, 1954, Vorschlag als Hauptinformator, gez. Bachmann.

147. BStU-Potsdam, AIM 26/79, 57; Apr. 30, 1974, Einschätzung.

148. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 766/55. See the set of reports following p. 77 in that fi le.

149. Grimmer et al., Die Sicherheit, 73.

150. Miller, Narratives, 55.

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151. Jörg Doll, Marc Damitz, “Zur Bedeutung des wichtigsten inoffi ziellen Mitarbeiters für die Bewältigung der Bespitzelung durch das MfS der DDR,” in Politisch motivierte Verfolgung, eds. Ulrich Baumann and Helmut Kury (Freiburg: Edition iuscrim, 1998), 249.

152. Peter Holquist has remarked along similar lines for Bolshevik surveillance. See

“ ‘Information is the Alpha and Omega of our work’: Bolshevik surveillance in its pan-

European context,” Journal of Modern History 69 (Sept. 1997): 449.

153. Interview with Florian Tenbrock, Aug. 8, 2003.

154. Miller, Narratives, 53.

155. BStU-Potsdam, AIM 2326/80, 100; Oct. 3, 1980, Abschlussbericht gez. Kessel.

156. Interview with Matthias Piekert, Wittenberge, May 23, 2006; interview with Bernd Lohre, Wittenberge, June 7, 2006.

157. BStU-Potsdam, 173/88, 147; diagram (date unclear).

Chapter 4

1. Names were blacked out in the documents; therefore all names related to this operation who are not Stasi are pseudonyms.

2. BStU-Schwerin, AOP 774/82, 175; May 26, 1982, Schlussbericht.

3. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 473/94, vol. 1, 37; Feb. 5, 1981, Bericht, gez. Major Kunzmann, HA Kader und Schulung, bestätigt von Erich Mielke.

4. Ibid.

5. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 473/94, vol. 1, 94; Apr. 24, 1981, Vorschlag zur Verpfl ichtung.

6. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 473/94, vol. 1, 17; Aug. 4, 1981, Bericht, gez. Axel.

7. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 473/94, vol. 1, 20; Nov. 20, 1981, Bericht, gez. Axel.

8. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 473/94, vol. 1, 25; Dec. 9, 1981, Bericht, gez. Axel.

9. A very similar escape attempt to the one fi ctionalized by Klaus Kordon is detailed in Anke Jauch, Die Stasi packt zu: Freiheitsberaubung 1980 (Frankfurt: August von Goethe Literaturverlag, 2007).

10. BStU-Schwerin, KD Perleberg 10627; Apr. 14, 1989, Einleitungsbericht zur OPK Vater, gez.

Kramp, bestätigt von Ryll.

11. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 473/94, vol. 1, 6–8; Dec. 13, 1981, Einleitungsbericht zur OPK Ballon, gez. Ultn. Giese, bestätigt von Tilse.

12. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 473/94, vol. 1, 34–35; Dec. 29, 1981, Bericht, gez. Axel.

13. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 473/94, vol. 1, 55; Jan. 28, 1982, Operativplan zum OV Ballon, gez.

Wolgast, bestätigt von Tilse.

14. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 473/94, vol. 1, 93; Mar. 18, 1982, Ermittlungen, gez. Giese.

15. Reinhard Grimmer et al., eds., Die Sicherheit: zur Abwehrarbeit des MfS, vol. 1 (Berlin: Edition Ost, 2002), 373.

16. Mike Dennis, The Stasi: Myth and Reality (London: Longman, 2003), 64–65.

17. Reinhadt Hahn, Ausgedient: Ein Stasi-Major erzählt (Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1990), 44. Hahn calls the protection of the informant the “highest commandment.”

18. Interview with Matthias Pickert, May 23, 2006.

19. This tactic was also used in OV Idol against a twenty-three-year-old student at the Martin Luther University in Wittenberg. Steffen Reichert, Unter Kontrolle: Die Martin-Luther-Universität und das Ministerium für Staatssicherheit 1968 – 1989 (Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2007), 386.

20. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 473/94, vol. 1, 115; Apr. 1, 1982, Vermerk.

21. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 473/94, vol. 1, 100; Mar. 26, 1982, Bericht, gez. Loth, Abt. VIII.

22. BStU-Schwerin, AIM 473/94, vol. 1, 145; May 20, 1982, Vermerk, gez. Wolgast.

23. Interview with Matthias Piekert, May 23, 2006.

24. Interview with Christian Klenk, May 23, 2006.

25. Grimmer et al., Die Sicherheit, 282–89.

26. Klaus Schroeder, Die veränderte Republik:Deutschland nach der Wiedervereinigung (Munich: Ernst Vögel, 2006), 358.

27. Interview with Bernd Lohre, June 7, 2006.

28. Dennis, Stasi: Myth and Reality, 65, 113–14.

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N O T E S T O P A G E S 111 – 11 8

29. BStU-Schwerin, BdL Nr. 002600, 4. Jan. 1971, Richtlinie 1/71 über die operative

Personenkontrolle (OPK).

30. Ibid., 9.

31. Ibid., 10.

32. See for example Theo Mechtenberg, 30 Jahre Zielperson des MfS (Halle: Landesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatsicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen DDR in Sachsen-Anhalt, 2001).

33. Directive 1/81 is reprinted in David Gill and Ulrich Schröter, Das Ministerium für Staatssicherheit: Anatomie des Mielke-Imperiums (Berlin: Rowohlt, 1991), 323–24.

34. Directive 1/81 in Gill and Schröter, Ministerium, 331.

35. Ibid.

36. Gill and Schröter, Ministerium, 128.

37. Directive 1/76 is reprinted in Gill and Schröter, Ministerium, 354–55.

38. Gill and Schröter, Ministerium, 132.

39. Martin Debes, Durchdringen und Zersetzen: Die Bekämpfung der Opposition in Ostthüringen durch das MfS im Jahre 1989 (Manebach: Goldhelm Verlag, 1999), 20.

40. Directive 1/76 in Gill and Schröter, Ministerium, 378.

41. See BStU-Schwerin, KD Perleberg, 10468.

42. See the many operations in signature BStU-Schwerin, KD Perleberg, 10445, vols. 1 and 2.

43. BStU-Schwerin, KD Perleberg, 10445, 8; Mar. 30, 1988, Bericht, gez. IME Ulrich.

44. Interview with Klaus-Peter Schmid, Neuruppin, May 6, 2006.

45. Jens Gieseke, Mielke-Konzern: Die Geschichte der Stasi (Stuttgart: DVA, 2001), 54.

46. Mary Fulbrook, in promoting a history of the GDR that does not focus solely on

repression, has written: “If we turn our attention away from the repression apparatus, then not everything looks so evil.” Mary Fulbrook, “Jenseits der Totalitarismustheorie?”

in German Monitor: The GDR and Its History: Rückblick und Revision, ed. Peter Baker (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), 42.

47. BStU-Potsdam, AOV 62/59, 25; Mar. 20, 1957, Vermerk, BDVP Potsdam an VPKA Gransee.

48. BStU-Potsdam, AOV 62/59, 33–36; Mar. 15, 1958, Sachstandsbericht über das operative Material über den Pferdezuchtverein in Falkenthal, gez. Meyer, bestätigt von Oltn.

Meuschke, Dienststellenleiter.

49. BStU-Potsdam, AOV 62/59, 84; Apr. 14, 1958, Schlussbericht, gez. Meyer and Meuschke.

50. BStU-Potsdam, AOV 62/59, 104–7; Jan. 8, 1959, Operativplan zum ÜV 89–58 gez. Lippert.

51. BStU-Potsdam, AOV 62/59, 116; Mar. 26, 1959, Schlussbericht zum ÜV 89–58, gez. Lippert und Meuschke.

52. Gieseke, Mielke-Konzern, 50.

53. BStU-Potsdam, AOV 455/65, 31; Dec. 1, 1956, Ermittlungsauftrag.

54. BStU-Potsdam, AOV 455/65, 167; May 13, 1957, Sachstandsbericht zum Operativvorgang Wahrheit, gez. Ultn. Lüdecke.

55. BStU-Potsdam, AOV 455/65, 172; May 14, 1957, Operativvorgang für den Operativvorgang Wahrheit, gez. Lüdecke.

56. BStU-Potsdam, AOV 455/65, 260; Dec. 15, 1964, Schlussbericht zum OV Wahrheit.

57. BStU-Potsdam, AOV 8/59, 7; May 21, 1958, Bericht, gez. Singer, Hauptsachbearbeiter.

58. BStU-Potsdam, AOV 8/59, 89; Jan. 7, 1959, Schlussbericht zum ÜV 14–58, gez. Schölzel und Meuschke.

59. BStU-Potsdam, AOV 22/59, 6; Feb. 14, 1957, Beschluss für das Anlegen eines

Überprüfungsvorganges.

60. BStU-Potsdam, AOV 22/59, 54; Feb. 5, 1959, Schlussbericht, gez. Wallert and Meuschke.

61. Gieseke, Mielke-Konzern, 122.

62. BStU-Schwerin, AOV 1068/68, 180; Aug. 24, 1968, Einschätzung zum OV Maler, gez. Pippig.

63. BStU-Schwerin, AOP 866/62, unpaginated; June 15, 1962, Beschluss über Einstellen eines OV, gez. Pippig.

64. BStU-Schwerin, see AOP 89/61.

65. BStU-Potsdam, AOV 898/79, 29–30; Oct. 28, 1977, Eröffnungsbericht zur Anlage des

operativen Vorganges “Student” nach 213 StGB, gez. Gaeth.

66. BStU-Potsdam, AOV 898/79, 33; Aug. 20, 1976, Bericht über postalischen Kontakt zu einem inhaftierten BRD-Bürger, gez. Gaeth.

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67. BStU-Potsdam, AOV 898/79, 56; Sept. 26, 1977, Zwischenstand der OPK Fischer, gez.

Gaeth.

68. BStU-Potsdam, AOV 898/79, 58; Sept. 26, 1977, Zwischenstand der OPK Fischer, gez.

Gaeth.

69. BStU-Potsdam, AOV 898/79, 219; Mar. 14, 1978, Bericht über durchgeführtes

Vorbeugungsgespräch mit (blacked out), gez. Gaeth.

70. BStU-Potsdam, AOV 898/79, 93;Feb. 26, 1979, Vorschlag zum Abschluss des OV Student.

71. BStU-Potsdam, AOV 898/79, 83; May 13, 1978, Bericht über durchgeführtes

Vorbeugungsgespräch mit (blacked out), gez. Gaeth.

72. Grimmer et al, Die Sicherheit, 359.

73. Bernd Eisenfeld, “Die Ausreisebewegung—eine Erscheingungsform widerständigen

Verhaltens,” in Zwischen Selbtsbehauptung und Anpassung, ed. Ulrike Poppe et al. (Berlin: Links, 1995), 202.

74. BStU-Schwerin, AOPK 243/89, 18; Feb. 9, 1984, Massnahmeplan zur OPK Zahn gez.

Wolgast, bestätigt von Tilse.

75. BStU-Schwerin, AOPK 243/89, 72; Feb. 21, 1984, Bericht from IMS Pluto.

76. Ibid.

77. BStU-Schwerin, AOPK 243/89, 203; July 29, 1985, Bericht gez. GMS Andrea.

78. BStU-Schwerin, AOPK 243/89, 224; Jan. 31, 1986, Sachstandsbericht zur OPK Zahn, gez.

Major Bless.

79. BStU-Schwerin, AOPK 243/89, 138; Sept. 19, 1984, Bericht from IMS Pluto.

80. BStU-Schwerin, AOPK 243/89, 252; Apr. 13, 1986, letter to Staatsratsvorsitzender der DDR.

See also 302, 307 for letters of Aug. 25, 1987, and Dec. 1, 1987, to Honecker.

81. BStU-Schwerin, AOPK 243/89, 339; Mar. 1, 1988,Vernehmungsprotokoll.

82. BStU-Schwerin, AOPK 243/89, 379; Mar. 2, 1988, Schlussbericht, gez. Untersuchungsführer Klüssendorf.

83. BStU-Schwerin, AOPK 41/89; Apr. 11, 1988, Einleitungsbericht zur OPK Transport, gez.

Major Rosenbaum.

84. BStU-Schwerin, AOPK 41/89; Dec. 12, 1988, Abschlussbericht zur OPK Transport, gez.

Major Rosenbaum.

85. See for example BStU-Potsdam, AOPK 619/84, 205; Nov. 3, 1983, Durchführung eines

erneuten Gespräches mit der Mutter über die Zielperson der OPK Sänger, gez. Käpernick.

86. BStU-Potsdam, AOV 420/83, 55; Aug. 24, 1981, Eröffnungsbericht über die Anlage eines OV

zu dem Bürger (blacked out), gez. Kessel and Ribbecke.

87. See BStU-Potsdam, AOPK 783–86, vol. 1, 6–182.

88. BStU-Potsdam, AOPK 2283/89, 14; July 29, 1987, Einleitungsbericht zur OPK Observant, gez. Käpernick, Töpfer, and Zachow.

89. BStU-Potsdam, AOPK 2283/89, 15; July 29, 1987, Einleitungsbericht zur OPK Observant, gez. Käpernick, Töpfer, and Zachow.

90. BStU-Potsdam, AOPK 2283/89, 251; Apr. 21, 1989, Abschlussbericht zur OPK Observant, gez. Zachow, Mehlmann, and Töpfer.

91. BStU-Potsdam, AOPK 2283/89, 88–88a; undated telegram from the Kreis police offi ce in Gransee.

92. BStU-Potsdam, AOPK 2283/89, 127; June 16, 1987, Information zum Stand der

Untersuchung, gez. Major Kasche of Department IX/7.

93. BStU-Potsdam, AOPK 2283/89, 223; June 17, 1987, Massnahmeplan, gez. Generalmajor

Schickart, Leiter BV Potsdam.

94. BStU-Potsdam, AOPK 2283/89, 116; June 15, 1987, Information zum Vorkommnis am

Objekt der GSSD Drögen, gez. Töpfer.

95. BStU-Potsdam, AOPK 2153/89, 69; July 28, 1987, Schlussbericht.

96. Volker Koop was the fi rst to discuss this case in Deckname ‘Vergeltung’: Die Stasi und der Tod der Brüder Baer (Bonn: Bouvier, 1997). The events are also mentioned in Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk and Stefan Wolle, Roter Stern über Deutschland: Sowjetische Truppen in der DDR

(Berlin: Links, 2001). An interview with the father appears in Annette Leo, “Schmerzhafte Erinnerungen,” in Fürstenberg-Drogen. Schichten eines verlassenen Ortes, eds. Florian Buttlar et al. (Berlin: Hentrich, 1994)

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N O T E S T O P A G E S 1 2 4 – 1 31

97. BStU-Potsdam, AOPK 2283/89, 148–49; June 17, 1987, Treffbericht IMS Eigenheim, gez.

Oltn Wünsch.

98. BStU-Potsdam, AOPK 2283/89, 176–77; undated Information über die Beisetzung der

durch Anwendung der Schusswaffe, gez. Oberst Weissbach.

99. BStU-Potsdam, KD GS 112, 92; Oct. 29, 1986, Bericht, gez. Töpfer.

100. Annette Leo, Das ist so, 170.

101. BStU-Potsdam, AOPK 2283/89, 98; June 12, 1987, telegram, Töpfer an BV Potsdam.

102. BStU-Potsdam, AOPK 2283/89, 16–19; Massnahmeplan zur OPK Vergeltung, Aug. 14,

1987, gez. Leiter KD Gransee, Oberstleutnant Töpfer.

103. BStU-Potsdam, AOPK 1983/88, 5; Aug. 14, 1987, Übersichtsbogen zur OPK Vergeltung.

104. BStU-Potsdam, AOPK 2283/89, 78–81; Telegram, Aug. 5, 1987. Töpfer an BV Potsdam,

Oberst Hauck.

105. BStU-Potsdam, AOPK 2283/89, 368–71; Aug. 8, 1988, Abschluss bericht zur OPK

Vergeltung, gez. Töpfer.

106. Interview with Matthias Piekert, May 23, 2006; Interview with Klaus-Peter Schmid, May 6, 2005.

107. Interview with Klaus-Peter Schmid, May 6, 2005.

108. Gieseke, Mielke-Konzern, 87.

109. Helmut Müller-Enbergs, Inoffi zielle Mitarbeiter des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit (Berlin: Links, 2001), 86.

110. Grimmer et al, Die Sicherheit, 352.

111. Gieseke, Mielke-Konzern, 113.

112. BStU-Potsdam, AOPK 1618/88, 21–23; Dec. 11, 1981, Aktenvermerk zu einer Information, die der Gen. (blacked out), Direktor der POS (blacked out), am Dec. 11, 1981, in der

DE über den Schüler (blacked out), Schüler der 9. Klasse der POS vorgetragen hat, gez.

Oberleutnant Lindenberg.

113. BStU-Potsdam, AOPK 1618/88, 24–26; Jan. 12, 1982, Bericht, gez. Oschim.

114. BStU-Potsdam, AOPK 1618/88, 71; July 10, 1987, Bericht über Kontaktgespräch.

115. BStU-Potsdam, AOPK 1618/88, 197; Mar. 7, 1988, Vorschlag zur Umregistrierung IMS

Frank, gez. Bracklow.

116. BStU-Potsdam, AOPK 1618/88, 234–36; May 12, 1988, Abschlussbericht IMB Frank.

117. BStU-Potsdam, AOPK 619/84, 205; Nov. 3, 1983, Durchführung eines erneuten

Gespräches mit der Mutter über die Zielperson der OPK Sänger, gez. Käpernick.

118. BStU-Potsdam, AOPK 619/84, 211; Mar. 8, 1984, Abschlussbericht zur OPK Sänger, gez.

Tamme und Käpernick.

119. BStU-Potsdam, AOPK 619/84, 109; Nov. 16, 1979, Aktenvermerk über das Gespräch mit Genn. Dr. (blacked out), Kaderleiter VEB Grüneberger.

120. BStU-Potsdam, AOV 420/83, 55; Aug. 24, 1981, Eröffnungsbericht über die Anlage eines OV zu dem Bürger (blacked out), gez. Kessel und Ribbecke.

121. BStU-Potsdam, AOV 420/83, 114; Aug. 28, 1981, Aktenvermerk zum Einsatz einer KP der KD Lübz zur Aufklärung der Absichten und Vorbereitungshandlungen zum UGÜ des

(blacked out).

122. BStU-Potsdam, AOV 420/83, 167; June 8, 1982, Vernehmungsprotokoll des Beschuldigten.

123. BStU-Potsdam, AOV 420/83, 16; Dec. 14, 1982, Beschluss über die Archivierung des

umseitig genannten Vorganges.

124. This is a suggestion in Andrew Port’s fi ne study, Confl ict and Stability in the German Democratic Republic (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 107.

125. An outstanding work on this strategy which covers a range of Zersetzen examples is Sandra Pingel-Schliemann, Zerseten: Strategie einer Diktatur (Berlin: Robert-Havemann-Gesellschaft, 2002), 13.

126. Jürgen Gottschalk, Druckstellen: Die Zerstörung einer Künstler-Biographie durch die Stasi (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2006), 9.

127. Jens Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter der Staatssicherheit (Berlin: Links, 2000), 312.

128. Gieseke, Mielke-Konzern, 186.

129. Dennis, Stasi: Myth and Reality, 112.

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130. In Backing Hitler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), Robert Gellately convincingly argues that Nazi concentration camps were well known to the German population, and

in many cases supported.

131. Hubertus Knabe, “Strafen ohne Strafrecht, Zum Wandel repressiver Strategien in

der Ära Honecker,” in Die DDR: Recht und Justiz als politisches Instrument, ed. Heiner Timmermann (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 2000), 94.

132. Clemens Vollnhals, “Das Ministerium für Staatssicherheit. Ein Instrument totalitärer Herrschaftsausübung,” in Sozialgeschichte der DDR, ed. Hartmut Kaelble et al. (Stuttgart: Oldenbourg, 1994), 514.

133. BStU-Schwerin, KD Perleberg, 10521, unpaginated; Sept. 20, 1976, telegram Tilse an Schwarz.

134. BStU-Schwerin, KD Perleberg, 10521, unpaginated; May 23, 1977, Bericht, gez. Robert.

135. Interview with Dr. Woronowicz, Spandau. May 29, 2006.

136. Gieseke, Mielke-Konzern, 185.

137. Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter, 451

138. For more on the environmental movement, see Ehrhart Neubert, Geschichte der

Opposition in der DDR 1949 – 1989 (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2000), 744–52.

139. BStU-Potsdam, KD Gransee 147, 20; Mar. 9, 1988, Stellungnahme zu der durch die KD

Gransee vorgeschlagenen Anglage des OV Anarchist, gez. Oberstleutnant Kleine, Leiter

Abteilung XX in Potsdam.

140. BStU-Potsdam, KD Gransee 147, 236; May 26, 1988, Zwischenbericht zum OV Anarchist, gez. Captain Bracklow.

141. BStU-Potsdam, KD Gransee 147, 272; Aug. 30, 1988, Einschätzung des

Bearbeitungsstandes OV Anarchist, gez. Captain Bracklow.

142. Ibid.,275.

143. BStU-Potsdam, KD Gransee 147, 561; Oct. 8, 1989, Aktenvermerk zum OV Anarchist, gez.

Captain Bracklow.

144. Ibid.

145. BStU-Schwerin, AOP 75/67.

146. BStU-Schwerin, AOP 013/88, unpaginated; Oct. 27, 1987, Abschlusseinschätzung, gez.

Bloßfeld.

147. Interview with Bernd Lohre, June 7, 2006.

148. Ibid.

149. BStU-Schwerin, AOPK 243/89, 266; Abschlussbericht zum OPK Meister.

150. BStU-Schwerin, AOP 452/71, unpaginated; Aug. 12, 1970, Bericht, gez. Pippig.

151. BStU-Potsdam, 2140/83, 47–48; Sept. 21, 1981, Eröffnungsbericht über die

Wiederaufnahme der Bearbeitung des archivierten OV Impressionist.

152. BStU-Potsdam, 2140/83, 48; Sept. 21, 1981, Eröffnungsbericht über die Wiederaufnahme der Bearbeitung des archivierten OV Impressionist.

153. BStU-Potsdam, 2140/83, vol. 2, 19–20; May 20, 1982, Bericht über die durchgeführte konspirative Durchsuchung der Wohnung des (blacked out), gez. Fischer und Keil.

154. BStU-Potsdam, 2140/83, 143; Dec. 17, 1981, Brief Unrath an KD Gransee.

155. BStU-Potsdam, 2140/83, vol. 2, 192–93; Aug. 2, 1982, Abschlussbericht, gez. Hauptmann Rügen.

156. BStU-Potsdam, 2140/83, vol. 2, 373–75; Oct. 20, 1983, Abschlussbericht, gez. Oschim und Oberstleutnant Tamme.

157. BStU-Schwerin, ZMA 739–1; Jan. 20, 1987, Eröffnungsbericht zum OV Schreiber, gez.

Major Kleiss-Schmid, bestätigt von Ryll.

158. BStU-Schwerin, ZMA 739–1; July 30, 1987, Bericht der Abt. 32.

159. BStU-Potsdam, A/S 9.60, vol. 2, 10; July 26, 1958, Bericht der Arbeitsgruppe für Anleitung und Kontrolle über den Einsatz in der BV Potsdam in der Zeit vom June 23 bis zum July

23, 1958, gez. Major Kairies.

160. BStU-Schwerin, KD Perleberg 10586; July 8, 1987, Bestandsaufnahme, gez. Hauptmann Hummel, Referat A/I, bestätigt von Ryll.

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N O T E S T O P A G E S 1 3 9 – 1 5 3

161. BStU-Potsdam, AKG 1335, 255; Dienstversammlung—KD Gransee. Ansprache des Leiters

BV Nov. 1, 1985.

162. Ibid., 256.

163. Robert Service, Comrades: A World History of Communism (London: MacMillan, 2007), 481.

164. BStU-Schwerin, KD Perleberg 10586; July 8, 1987, Bestandsaufnahme, gez. Hauptmann Hummel, Referat A/I, bestätigt von Ryll.

165. As quoted in Debes, Durchdringen und Zersetzen, 97.

166. See also Grimmer et al., Die Sicherheit, vol.1, 62.

167. Interview with Tenbrock, May 11, 2006.

168. As quoted in Grieder, “In Defence,” 576.

Chapter 5

1. Jens Gieseke, Die hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter der Staatssicherheit (Berlin: Ch. Links, 2000), 442; Mike Dennis, The Stasi: Myth and Reality (London: Longman, 2003), 83–84.

2. BStU-Schwerin, Abt. Kader und Schulung, 105, Joachim Abraham.

3. Francesca Weil, Zielgruppe Ärtzeschaft: Ärtze als inoffi zielle Mitarbeiter des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit (Göttingen:Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), 14.

4. Interview with Rolf Schwegel, May 31, 2006, in Wittenberge.

5. Weil, Zielgruppe Ärtzeschaft, 294.

6. Based on interview with physician, Wittenberge, June 30, 2006.

7. Jens Gieseke, “Staatssicherheit und Gesellschaft—Plädoyer für einen Brückenschlag,” in Staatssicherheit und Gesellschaft: Studien zum Herrschaftsalltag in der DDR, ed. Jens Gieseke (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 14.

8. Gary Bruce, “Access to Secret Police Files, Justice, and Vetting in East Germany since 1989,” German Politics and Society 26, no.1 (Spring 2008): 95.

9. Babett Bauer, Kontrolle und Repression: Individuelle Erfahrungen in der DDR ( 1971 – 1989.

(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006) 142.

10. Interview with Lutheran minister, Bad Wilsnack, May 2, 2006.

11. Interview with resident of Perleberg, May 23, 2006.

12. Interview with physician in Wittenberge, Wittenberge, June 30, 2006. Interview with Fürstenberg physician, May 9, 2006.

13. Interview with resident of Perleberg, Apr. 26, 2006.

14. Interview with physician, Fürstenberg, May 9, 2006.

15. Interview with grocery clerk, Fürstenberg, May 5, 2006.

16. Interview with inn owner, Zehdenick, May 19, 2006.

17. Interview with grocery clerk, Fürstenberg, May 5, 2006.

18. Interview with former Gransee resident, Kitchener, Ont., Aug. 9, 2006.

19. Interview with architect, Gransee, Apr. 25, 2006.

20. Interview with kindergarten teacher, Gransee, May 17, 2006.

21. Interview with teacher, Wittenberge, May 15, 2006.

22. Interview with physician, Fürstenberg, May 9, 2006.

23. Interview with inn keeper, Zehdenick, May 19, 2006.

24. Merrilyn Thomas, “The Evangelical Church in the GDR,” in The Workers’ and Peasants’

State: Communism and Society under Ulbricht, 1945 – 1971, ed. Patrick Major and Jonathan Osmond (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 212.

25. Thomas, “Evangelical Church,” 211, 224.

26. Klaus Behnke, “Zersetzungsmassnahmen,” in Politisch motivierte Verfolgung: Opfer von SED-Unrecht, ed. Ulrich Baumann and Helmut Kury (Freiburg: Edition iuscrim, 1990), 389.

27. Interview with Dr. Woronowicz, Spandau, May 29, 2006.

28. Interview with Herr Heiser, Bad Wilsnack, May 2, 2006.

29. Timothy Garten Ash, The File: A Personal History (New York: Random House, 1997).

30. Barbara Miller, Narratives of Guilt and Compliance in Unifi ed Germany: Stasi Informers and their Impact on Society (London: Routledge, 1999), 59.

31. Interview with Herr Jung, Bad Wilsnack, May 12, 2006.

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32. Siegfried Grundmann, “Der DDR-Alltag im Jahre 1987,” in Die DDR: Analyse eines aufgegebenen Staates, ed. Heiner Timmermann (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2001), 144.

33. Bernd Eisenfeld, “Flucht und Ausreise, Macht und Ohnmacht,” in Die SED-Herrschaft und ihr Zussamenbruch, ed. Eberhard Kuhrt (Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 1996), 383–96. Mary Fulbrook correctly points out that an important aspect of the Helsinki Final Act was that the East German government had publicly committed itself to human rights. See Fulbrook,

“Popular Discontent and Political Activism in the GDR,” Contemporary European History 2, no. 3 (Nov. 1993): 277.

34. Bernd Eisenfeld, “Die Ausreisebewegung–eine Erscheinungsform widerständigen

Verhaltens,” in Zwischen Selbtsbehauptung und Anpassung, ed. Ulrike Poppe et al. (Berlin: Ch. Links, 1995), 202.

35. Eisenfeld, “Die Ausreisebewegung,” 203.

36. Interview with teacher, Wittenberge, May 31, 2006.

37. Interview with kindergarten teacher, Gransee, May 17, 2006.

38. Interview with grocery clerk, Fürstenberg, May 5, 2006.

39. Siegfried Kuntsche, “Das Bauerndorf in der Nachkriegszeit. Lebenslagen und Alltag,” in Befremdlich anders: Leben in der DDR, ed. Evemarie Badstübner (Berlin: Dietz, 2000), 90.

40. Interview with Gustrow resident, Gustrow, May 1, 2006.

41. Günter Fromm, “Eisenhüttenstadt, sein Störsender und die verbotenen Antennen,” in Badstübner, Befremdlich, 219.

42. Fromm, “Eisenhüttenstadt,” 227.

43. Interview with Perleberg resident, May 23, 2006.

44. Interview with teacher, Wittenberge, May 31, 2006.

45. Interview with local historian, Gransee, May 8, 2006.

46. Fromm, “Eisenhüttenstadt,” 226.

47. As quoted in Sandra Pingel-Schliemann, Zersetzen: Strategie einer Diktatur (Berlin: Robert-Havemann-Gesellschaft, 2002), 50.

48. Interview with Perleberg resident, Apr. 26, 2006.

49. Interview with owner of wood-product factory, Wittenberge, May 22, 2006; interview with teacher, Wittenberge, May 31, 2006.

50. Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind, trans. Jane Zielonko (New York: Vintage, 1981), 54.

51. Johannes Huinink et al., eds., Kollektiv und Eigensinn: Lebensverläufe in der DDR und danach (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1995), 373.

52. Stefan Wolle, “Sehnsucht nach der Diktatur? Die heile Welt des Sozialismus als

Erinnerung und Wirklichkeit,” in Der Schein der Normalität: Alltag und Herrschaft in der SED-Diktatur, ed. Clemens Vollnhals and Jürgen Weber (Munich: Olzog, 2002), 17–21.

53. Joachim Gauck’s address in Opfer und Täter der SED-Herrschaft: Lebenswege in einer Diktatur. XVI. Bautzen-Forum der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (Leipzig: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 2005), 37. See also Ehrhart Neubert, “Opfer in strafrechtlichen nicht faßbaren Bereich,”

in Politisch motivierte Verfolgung: Opfer von SED-Unrecht, ed. Ulrich Baumann and Helmut Kury (Freiburg: Edition iuscrim, 1998), 295.

54. Interview with physician, Fürstenberg, May 9, 2006.

55. Interview with former Gransee resident, Kitchener, Ont., Aug. 9, 2006.

56. On the nature of fear see B. Bauer, Kontrolle und Repression, 362.

57. Johannes Raschke, Zwischen Überwachung und Repression: Politische Verfolgung in der DDR

1971 bis 1989 (Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 2001), 30.

58. Renate Hürtgen, “Stasi in die Produktion,” in Gieseke, Staatssicherheit und Gesellschaft, 316.

59. Hannelore Kleinschmid, “Der Mut zum Nein,” Deutschland Archiv 8 (1995): 348.

60. B. Bauer, Kontrolle und Repression, 445.

61. B. Bauer, Kontrolle und Repression, 13.

62. Ulrike Helwerth, “kann man in hoyerswerda küssen?” in Das kollektiv bin ich: Utopie und Alltag in der DDR, ed. Franziska Becker et al., (Weimar: Böhlau, 2000), 33–34.

63. See in particular Stefan Bollinger and Fritz Vilmer, eds., Die DDR war anders: Kritische Würdigung ihrer wichtigen sozialkulturellen Einrichtungen (Berlin: Edition Ost, 2002), 8.

64. Bollinger and Vilmer, Die DDR war anders, 19.

65. Robert Proctor, The Nazi War on Cancer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).

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N O T E S T O P A G E S 1 5 9 – 1 6 4

66. Linde Wagner, “Polikliniken—ein gesundheitspoltisches Modell,” in Bollinger and

Vilmer, Die DDR war anders, 229–230.

67. Interview with physician, Wittenberge, June 30, 2006.

68. Ulrich Mielke, Das Bezirkskrankenhaus Magdeburg-Altstadt (Magdeburg: Bürgerkomitee Sachsen-Anhalt, 2007), 9.

69. Weil, Zielgruppe Ärtzeschaft, 281.

70. Weil, Zielgruppe Ärtzeschaft, 283.

71. Weil, Zielgruppe Ärtzeschaft, 291.

72. Orlando Figes, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia (New York: Metropolitan, 2007), 180.

73. Figes, Whisperers, 122–26.

Chapter 6

1. Between August 1989 and April 1990, demonstrations took place in 522 locations in East Germany, but very few of these have been the subject of scholarly investigation. See Uwe Schwabe, “Der Herbst ‘89 in Zahlen,” in Die SED-Herrschaft und ihr Zusammenbruch, ed.

Eberhard Kuhrt (Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 1996), 719–35.

2. These elections dealt with local governing bodies like district councils and mayorships.

These were not elections to the national parliament. See Karl Wilhelm Fricke, “Die DDR-Kommunalwahlen ‘88 als Zäsur für das Umschlagen von Opposition in Revolution,” in

Kuhrt, Die SED-Herrschaft, 467.

3. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, KD Perleberg 10556 (unpaginated), “Symbol 89” Lagefi lm.

4. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin AKG, KD Perleberg 10410 (unpaginated), “Zum Ergebnis der Kommunalwahlen am 7 Mai 1989,” Ryll an BV Schwerin, May 16, 1989.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. “Hinweise über ausgewählte bedeutsame Probleme in Zusammenhang mit den

Ergebnissen der Kommunalwahlen am 7. Mai 1989.” Document from BStU Central

Archive, ZAIG 5352 as printed in Armin Mitter and Stefan Wolle, Ich liebe euch doch Alle!: Befehle und Lageberichte des MfS Januar-November 1989 (Berlin: Basisdruck, 1990). See also the discussion of opposition to the election results in Ehrhart Neubert, Geschichte der Opposition in der DDR 1949 – 1989 (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2000), 813.

8. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin AKG 06b, 6, Feb. 3, 1989, “Zu beachtenden Probleme in

Vorbereitung der Kommunalwahlen 1989.”

9. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, KD Perleberg 10471 (unpaginated). Mar. 16, 1989. “Zu

beachtenden Probleme in Vorbereitung der Kommunalwahlen 1989.”

10. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, AKG 01b, 158, Mar. 21, 1989, “Information über

sicherheitspolitische Aspekte sowie weitere Reaktionen der Bevölkerung im

Zusammenhang mit der Vorbereitung und Durchführung der Kommunalwahlen am 7

Mai 1989.”

11. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin AKG 46b, 74, Aug. 18, 1989, “Information über einige

bedeutsame Aspekte der Versorgung der Bevölkerung mit Konsumgütern und

Dienstleistungen im Kreis Perleberg.”

12. Ibid., 76.

13. Ibid., 77.

14. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin AKG 46b, 73, Aug. 3, 1989, “Information über weitere Reaktionen der Bevölkerung des Bezirkes Schwerin,” BV Schwerin an ZAIG. See also BStU-Schwerin,

BV Schwerin AKG 46b, 74, Aug. 18, 1989, “Information über einige bedeutsame Aspekte der Versorgung der Bevölkerung mit Konsumgütern und Dienstleistungen im Kreis Perleberg.”

15. Walter Süß, “Die Durchdringung der Gesellschaft mittels des MfS—Fallbeispiel Jena im Jahre 1989,” in Kuhrt, Die SED-Herrschaft, 241–46.

16. BLHA Rep. 531, Gransee 1489, Oct. 19, 1989, Vorlage für das Sekretariat der KL der SED

Gransee,

17. BLHA Rep. 531, Gransee 1498, May 30, 1989, Information über die Realisierung

eingegangener Verpfl ichtungen zur gezielten Überbeitung des Planes.

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18. BStU-Potsdam, AKG 1054, 362; Referat Leiter BV zur DV in der KD Gse am Aug. 30, 1989.

19. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, KD Perleberg 10471 (unpaginated), July 31, 1989,

“Information über die Nichtrückkehr eines NSW-Reisekaders aus Österreich,” KD

Perleberg an BV Schwerin.

20. Although Hungary cut away, to great fanfare, the barbed wire on its border with Austria, other border defenses remained intact. More than four thousand people were arrested

at this border between May and the full opening of the border in August. Karsten

Timmer, Vom Aufbruch zum Umbruch: Die Bürgerbewegung in der DDR 1989 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000), 99.

21. Ilse Spittmann and Gisela Helwig, Chronik der Ereignisse in der DDR (Cologne: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, 1989), 2–3; Timmer, Vom Aufbruch zum Umbruch, 101.

22. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, Leiter, 16, 198–99. Memorandum of Aug. 25, 1989, from Korth to all KD leaders.

23. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin AKG46b, 116, Sept. 5, 1989, “Information über weitere

Reaktionen der Bevölkerung auf erpresserische Botschaftsbesetzungen sowie das

ungesetzliche Verlassen der DDR über die Ungarische Volksrepublik.”

24. Bernd Eisenfeld, “Flucht und Ausreise, Macht und Ohnmacht,” in Kuhrt, Die SED-Herrschaft, 360.

25. A continuation of former policy does not always translate into “paralysis,” a label some have applied to the East German government in face of the exodus. See Damon

Terrill, “Tolerance Lost: Disaffection, Dissent and Revolution in the German Democratic Republic,” East European Quarterly 28, no. 3 (Sept. 1994): 366. Similarly, Jonathan Grix argues that the GDR leadership “did not respond” to this crisis. Jonathan Grix, The Role of the Masses in the Collapse of the GDR (New York: St. Martin’s, 2000), 97.

26. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, KD Perleberg 10471 (unpaginated), Aug. 16, 1989, “Aktuelle Lageschwerpunkte in Vorbereitung der 750-Jahr Feier der Stadt Perleberg.”

27. Mitter and Wolle, Ich liebe euch doch Alle, 151.

28. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin AKG 06b, 58, June 2, 1989,“Information über die Lage auf dem Gebiet der Antragstellung auf ständige Ausreise nach nichtsozialistischen Staaten

und Westberlin sowie bei Privat-und Touristenreisen und damit im Zusammenhang

stehende feindlich-negative Handlungen im Kreis Perleberg.” (This date is likely wrong since “June 20” is referred to in the document).

29. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin AKG 03a, 138, June 15, 1989, “Information über die Lage auf dem Gebiet der Antragstellung auf ständige Ausreise nach nichtsozialistischen Staaten

und Westberlin sowie damit im Zusammenhang stehende feindlich-negative Handlungen

im Bezirk Schwerin.”

30. Ibid., 143.

31. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, KD Perleberg, 10556 (unpaginated), “Zur op. Kontrolle vom OV und OPK Personen am 7 Mai 1989.” See also chap. 3 and chap. 4 respectively for a

fuller explanation of OV and OPK.

32. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin KD Perleberg 10376, 10377, series of reports on OPKs 1985–

1989. “Darstellung der politisch-operativen Lage der KD Perleberg,” by Hauptman Giese.

he percentage of OPKs dealing with applicants to emigrate was also similar to years past.

In 1987, nineteen of forty-six OPKs dealt with applicants to emigrate. See BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, KD Perleberg 10586, unpaginated, July 8, 1987, “OPK Bestandsaufnahme.”

33. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, KD Perleberg 10586 (unpaginated), July 8, 1987, “OPK

Bestandsaufnahme.”

34. BLHA Rep. 531, Gransee 1493, Apr. 20, 1989, Monatsinformation (monthly report).

35. BLHA, Rep. 531, Gransee 1498, Apr. 3, 1989, Bericht über die inhaltliche und

organisatorische Vorbereitung der Kommunalwahlen.

36. BLHA, Rep. 531, Gransee 1493, Sept. 20, 1989, Monatsinformation.

37. BLHA, Rep. 531, Gransee 1493, Aug. 20, 1989, Monatsinformation.

38. BStU-Potsdam, BVfS Potsdam, AKG 1054, 374–75. Referat Leiter BV zur

Dienstversammlung in der KD Gransee am Aug. 30, 1989.

39. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin 573/94 (unpaginated), July 11, 1984. “Vorschlag zur

Verpfl ichtung des Kandidaten,” gez. Leutnant Besenbiel.

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N O T E S T O P A G E S 1 6 8 – 1 7 2

40. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin 573/94 (unpaginated), Jan. 13, 1986, “Leistungseinschätzung des IMB Robert,” gez. Besenbiel.

41. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, 573/94 (unpaginated), Feb. 14, 1989, “Einsatz und

Entwicklungskonzeption für den IMB Robert,” gez. Besenbiel.

42. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, AOPK 414/90, (unpaginated), Apr. 23, 1987,

“Eröffnungsbericht zum OV Tendenz,” gez. Besenbiel und Ryll.

43. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, AKG 06b, 36–37, Apr. 10, 1989, “Zum Stand der Beziehungen Staat-Kirche im Kreis Perleberg,” gez. Ryll.

44. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, AOPK 414/90 (unpaginated), Mar. 20, 1989,

“Sachbestandsbericht zum OV Tendenz,” gez. Besenbiel und Ryll.

45. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, AOPK 414/90, Apr. 5, 1989, “Aktennotiz,” gez. Major Fenster.

46. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, AKG 03a, 182, 180, June 15, 1989, “Information über einige Aspekte des aktuellen Wirksamwerdens innerer feindlicher, oppositioneller und anderer

negativer Kräfte in personellen Zusammenschlüsse im Bezirk Schwerin.”

47. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, Oct. 24, 1989. Report by Robert.

48. BStU-Potsdam, KD Gransee 147, 219. Apr. 7, 1988, Befragungsprotokoll.

49. BStU-Potsdam, AKG 1612, 37. Dec. 23, 1988, Jahresplan 1989.

50. BStU-Potsdam, AKG 1054, 362–63. Referat Leiter BV zur DV in der KD GSE am Aug. 30, 1989.

51. BStU-Potsdam, KD GS 112, IM Vorgang IV 1117/86, 175.,Nov. 5, 1986, Verpfl ichtung,.

52. See the records contained in KD GS 112, IM Vorgang IV 1117/86.

53. BStU-Schwerin, KD Perleberg, 10441, 240, “Entschluss des Leiters der VPKA Perleberg,” by Laskeweitz, July 3, 1989.

54. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, AKG 27b, 5–13, “Abschlussbericht zur Aktion “Stadtjubiläum 89,” by Lieutenant Colonel Ryll, Aug. 28, 1989.

55. BStU-Schwerin, KD Perleberg 10441, 17, “Massnahmeplan zur politisch-operativen

Sicherung der Vorbereitung und Durchführung der Veranstaltungen anlässlich der 750-

Jahrfeier der Stadt Perleberg,” by Fluch, July 7, 1989.

56. Ibid. 6–9.

57. BStU-Schwerin, KD Perleberg 10441, 83 “IM-Einsatz Stadtjubliäum 89,” Aug. 4, 1989.

58. BStU Schwerin, KD Perleberg 10441, 85 “Einsatz der IM zum Stadtjubliäum 89,” Aug. 10, 1989.

59. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, AKG 27b, 8, “Abschlussbericht zur Aktion “Stadtjubiläum 89,” by Lieutenant Colonel Ryll, Aug. 28, 1989.

60. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, AKG 27b, 82, Memorandum of Aug. 31, 1989, from Ryll.

61. BStU-Schwerin, KD Perleberg 10441, 8, “Abschlussbericht zur Aktion “Stadtjubiläum 89,”

by Lieutenant Colonel Ryll.

62. Neubert, Geschichte der Opposition, 830, 851.

63. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, KD Perleberg 10471, 134, “Die am 20 Oktober 1989

stattgefundene Veranstaltung in der evangelischen Kirche in Wittenberge,” Oct. 22, 1989.

None of the other fl edgling organizations like Demokratie Jetzt or Demokratischer Aufbruch had a presence in Perleberg. For more on these groups, see Neubert, Geschichte der Opposition, 856–63.

64. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, KD Perleberg 10471, 136, “Aktivitäten oppositioneller Kräfte im Kreis Perleberg,” Oct. 25, 1989.

65. Grix, Role of the Masses, 113.

66. Stefan Wolle, Die heile Welt der Diktatur: Alltag und Herrschaft in der DDR 1971 – 1989

(Berlin: Links, 1998), 324.

67. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin KD Perleberg 10471, 136, “Aktivitäten oppositioneller Kräfte im Kreis Perleberg,” Oct. 25, 1989. See also BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, KD Perleberg, 10471, 145–48, “Aktivitäten antisozialistischer Kräfte im Kreis Perleberg,” Oct. 30, 1989.

68. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, Leiter 2a, 33, “Information über das Wirken des Neuen Forums, weiterer Sammlungsbewegungen und damit im Zusammenhang stehende

beachtenswerte Probleme,” Nov. 7, 1989.

69. BLHA, Rep. 531, Gransee 1493, Monatsinformation zum Oct. 20, 1989.

70. BStU-Potsdam, KD Gransee, Sach 254, Oct. 18, 1989, Schreiben BV Leiter an KD Leiter.

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71. BStU-Potsdam, KD Gransee, Sach 254; Oct. 31, 1989, Bericht zur Veranstaltung im

Jugendklubhaus Zehdenick am Oct. 30, 1989.

72. Interview with Zehdenick innkeeper, May 19, 2006.

73. Ibid.; and interview with Perleberg resident, May 23, 2006.

74. An excellent discussion of the role of Intershops in creating disenchantment is found in Jonathan Zatlin, The Currency of Socialism: Money and Political Culture in East Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

75. BLHA, Rep. 531, Gransee 1490, Protokoll der Sitzung des Sekretariats der Kreisleitung am Nov. 8, 1989.

76. BStU-Potsdam, KD Gransee, Sach 254, Oct. 30, 1989, Schreiben BV Leiter an KD Leiter.

77. Andreas Niemann and Walter Süß, Gegen das Volk kann nichts mehr entschieden werden, 37.(Berlin: BStU, 1996).

78. BStU-Schwerin, KD Perleberg, 10610, Nov. 28, 1989, telegram.

79. Interview with Perleberg physician, Perleberg, May 27, 2006.

80. Gareth Dale, The East German Revolution (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 154.

81. See Edward Peterson’s conclusion in The Secret Police and the Revolution (Westport: Praeger, 2002). Ross’s discussion of the standard of living is somewhat cursory, considering the depth of the rest of his work. Corey Ross, The East German Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of the GDR (London: Arnold, 2002), 136.

82. Gale Stokes, The Walls Came Tumbling Down: The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 138.

83. Konrad Jarausch, The Rush to German Unity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 24.

84. Daniel Chirot, “What happened in Eastern Europe in 1989?” in The Revolutions of 1989, ed.

Vladimir Tismaneanu (London: Routledge, 1999), 38.

85. See Charles Maier, Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 124; and Dietrich Staritz, “Ursachen und Konsequenzen einer deutschen Revolution,” in Der Fischer Weltalmanach (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1990), 15.

86. Rainer Eckert, “Die Aktivitäten kleiner oppositioneller Gruppen” in Kuhrt, Die SED-Herrschaft, 696.

87. See for example BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin AKG 46b, 57–73, “Information über erste Reaktionen der Bevölkerung des Bezirkes Schwerin zur 8.Tagung des ZK der SED,”

AKG Schwerin to ZAIG Berlin, June 29, 1989; “Information über die Reaktion der

Bevölkerung des Bezirkes Schwerin im Zusammenhang mit den Entwicklungstendenzen

in den sozialistischen Staaten sowie weitere aktuell-politische Ereignisse,” AKG

Schwerin to ZAIG Berlin, July 20, 1989; “Information über weitere Reaktionen der

Bevölkerung des Bezirkes Schwerin auf gegenwärtige Entwicklungstendenzen in

den sozialistischen Staaten sowie damit im Zusammenhang stehende Probleme der

weiteren Ausgestaltung der entwickelten sozialistischen Gesellschaft,” AKG Schwerin to ZAIG Berlin, Aug. 3, 1989.

88. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, AKG46b, 113, “Information über weitere Reaktionen der Bevölkerung auf erpresserische Botschaftsbesetzungen sowie das ungesetzliche Verlassen der DDR über die Ungarische Volksrepublik,” May 5, 1989.

89. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, AKG 46b, 111, “Information über weitere Reaktionen der Bevölkerung auf erpresserische Botschaftsbesetzungen sowie das ungesetzliche Verlassen der DDR über die Ungarische Volksrepublik,” BV Schwerin to ZAIG, Sept. 5, 1989.

90. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, AKG 46b, 120, “Information über die Reaktion der Bürger des Bezirkes Schwerin auf die illegale Nacht-und-Nebel-Aktion zur Abwerbung in Ungarn

befi ndlicher DDR-Bürger,” AKG BV Schwerin to ZAIG, Sept. 12, 1989.

91. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, AKG 46b, 124, “Information über die Reaktion der

Bürger des Bezirkes Schwerin auf die zeitweilige Aussetzung des pass-und visafreien

Reiseverkehrs zwischen der DDR und der CSSR,” AKG BV Schwerin to ZAIG, Oct. 5, 1989.

92. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, AKG 46b, 151, “Information über weitere Reaktion der

Bevölkerung auf die Erklärung des Politbüros des ZK der SED vom 11 Oktober 1989,” AKG

BV Schwerin to ZAIG, Oct. 13, 1989.

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93. Ross accurately points out that the balance of these elements (rather than the denial of the importance of one or the other) is what separates historians. Ross’s account suggests priority for the changing international situation in providing the framework for demise.

Ross, East German Dictatorship, 135.

94. Grix, Role of the Masses, 138.

95. Interview with Wittenberge factory owner, May 22, 2006.

96. Timmer, Vom Aufbruch zum Umbruch, 189.

97. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, KD Perleberg, 10590, 26–42, “Zuarbeit für den Plan 1990,”

signed by Ryll, Sept. 20, 1989. Karsten Timmer argues that illegal exodus was the “critical event” in the fall of the regime, although the evidence presented here suggests that

the exodus did not affect the GDR uniformly and, accordingly, different districts had

different priorities. Timmer, Vom Aufbruch zum Umbruch, 103.

98. Madarasz believes that the Stasi was a key institution for keeping the Party informed of popular developments, although she downplays the accuracy of the information given

its ideological blinders. See Jeannette Madarasz, Confl ict and Compromise in East Germany 1971 – 1989 : A Precarious Stability (New York: Palgrave, 2003).

99. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, AKG 46 b (unpaginated), “Information über einige

bedeutsame Aspekte der Versorgung der Bevölkerung,” Aug. 18, 1989.

100. Madarasz, Confl ict and Compromise, 157.

101. Peterson, Secret Police, 268. Several historians have gone so far as to call Stasi offi cers conspirators. The discovery immediately following the revolution of key oppositional

fi gures having links to the Stasi—Minister President Lothar de Maziere, the lawyer

Wolfgang Schnur, and the speaker for the newly formed Social Democratic Party,

Ibrahim Böhme—led in part to this conspiracy theory, formulated initially by the

journalist Henryk Broder. See Armin Mitter and Stefan Wolle, Untergang auf Raten

(Munich: Bertelsmann, 1993), 530–33; and reiterated in Wolle, Die heile Welt, 338.

Mitter and Wolle point, however, to a lack of evidence to support the theory of a Stasi conspiracy to overthrow the East German regime. The conspiracy theory has also been

dismantled in Walter Süß, “Selbstblockierung der Macht,” in Weg in den Untergang:

Der Innere Zerfall der DDR, ed. Konrad Jarausch and Martin Sabrow (Göttingen:

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999). Mike Dennis’s The Stasi: Myth and Reality (London: Longman, 2003), 231, calls the conspiracy theory “unsatisfactory.” Jens Gieseke is

adamant that Stasi offi cers were not in any way democratic reformers: Jens Gieseke, Die Hauptamtlichen Mitarbeiter der Staatssicherheit (Berlin: Links, 2000), 471.

102. BStU-Potsdam, KD Gransee, Sach 254, 358, Referat Leiter BV zur DV in der KD GSE am Aug. 30, 1989.

103. Hans-Hermann Hertle, Der Fall der Mauer: Die Unbeabsichtigte Selbstaufl ösung des SED-Staates (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1996), 115. Karsten Timmer also argues this point of view. Timmer, Vom Aufbruch zum Umbruch, 185.

104. BStU-Potsdam, BV Potsdam, KD Gransee, SACH 264, 40–42, “Gewährleistung der

Sicherheit der Dienstobjekte,” from head of BV,Schickart, to KD leaders, Oct. 30, 1989.

105. Landeshauptarchiv Schwerin, 10–20–10–22 F10, Bericht des Sekretariats an die KL am May 17, 1989.

106. BLHA, Rep. 531, Gransee 1498, Aug. 23, 1989, Bericht über die politische Lage, die Stimmung und Meinungen der Werktätigen zu aktuellen innen- und aussenpolitischen

Fragen.

107. Ibid.

108. BLHA, Rep. 531, Gransee 1493, Monatsinformation zum Aug. 20, 1989.

109. BLHA, Rep.531, Nr. 1498, Sept. 21, 1989, Bericht über die politische Lage, die Stimmung und Meinungen der Werktätigen zu aktuellen innen- und aussenpolitischen Fragen.

110. The minutes of these meetings are found in BLHA, Rep. 531, Gransee, Nr. 1481, 1487, 1488, 1489, 1490.

111. BLHA, Rep. 531, Gransee 1488, Protokoll der Sitzung des Sekretariats der Kreisleitung am Oct. 11, 1989.

112. BLHA, Rep. 531, Gransee 1493, Monatsinformation zum Oct. 20, 1989.

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113. Landeshauptarchiv Schwerin, 10–20–10–22 F11, Nov. 11, 1989, KL Sitzung.

114. Udo Grashoff, “In einem Anfall von Depression …”: Selbsttötungen in der DDR (Berlin: Links, 2006), 243.

115. Richard Popplewell has argued a similar conclusion for the Stasi at the leadership level, based on documents in Mitter and Wolle Ich liebe euch doch Alle! . See Richard Popplewell, “The Stasi and the East German Revolution of 1989,” Contemporary European History 1, no. 1 (1992): 56.

116. Popplewell, “The Stasi,” 56.

117. BStU-Schwerin, BV Schwerin, KD Perleberg, 10471 (unpaginated), “Die Lage im Kreis Perleberg und damit im Zusammenhang stehende feindlich-negative Handlung,” Oct.

12, 1989.

118. Interview with Zehdenick innkeeper, May 19, 2006.

Conclusion

1. Hubert Spiegel, “Das wahre Gesicht des Joseph Klempner,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 17 May 2006, 33.

2. Thomas Reichel, “Die ‘durchherrschte’ Arbeitergesellschaft,” in Der Schein der Stabilität: DDR-Betriebsalltag in der Ära Honecker, eds. Renate Hürtgen and Thomas Reichel (Berlin: Metropol, 2001), 109–10.

3. Jonathan Zatlin, The Currency of Socialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 318.

4. See Gauck’s address in Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Opfer und Täter der SED-Herrschaft: Lebenswege in einer Diktatur, vol. 16, Bautzen-Forum der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (Leipzig: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 2005), 37.

5. In particular Götz Aly, Hitler’s Benefi ciaries (New York: Metropolitan, 2005) and Peter Fritzsche, Life and Death in the Third Reich (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).

6. Landeshauptarchiv Schwerin, IV/4/08/95x96, 27.10.1953, Bericht “Entfaltung einer

offensiven Agitationsarbeit unter den Massen.”

7. Landeshauptarchiv Schwerin, IV/4/09/93X94, 12.6.1953, Direktive des Sekretariats der Bezirksleitung vom 12.6.1953.

8. Landeshauptarchiv Schwerin, IV/4/08/99, Protokoll der Sekretariatssitzungen nr. 2 der SED-KL Perleberg am 3.3.1954.

9. Landeshauptarchiv Schwerin, IV/4/09/93X94, 25.6.1953, Beschlussvorlage der SED KL

Perleberg Agitationskommisison; Protokoll der Sekretariatssitzungen am 2.7.1953.

10. Landeshauptarchiv Schwerin, IV/4/08/110x111, 21.9.1955, Erfahrungen der

Kreisparteiorganisation Perleberg bei der Durchführung von Landsonntagen.

11. Reinhard Grimmer et al., Die Sicherheit: zur Abwehrarbeit des MfS, 2 vols. (Berlin: Edition Ost, 2002). vol. 1, 63.

12. Peter Schaar, Das Ende der Privatsphäre (Munich: Bertelsmann, 2007), 61–63, 140–44.

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B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Interviews with Residents of Districts Gransee and Perleberg

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Anne Klenk, Wittenberge, May 23, 2006

Antje Müller, Quitzow, May 24, 2006

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Index

1950 East German elections, 115

Bauer, Yehuda, 12

1953 uprising, 21, 88, 103, 162, 180, 183

Bautzen prison, 101

1973 Basic Treaty, 41

BBC, 118

1989 communal elections, 162–64, 167, 178,

Beater, Bruno, 44

180

Begünstigste (those advantaged by Stasi), 78

1989 revolution (E. Germany), 4, 10, 50, 51, Behr (Stasi offi cer), 100

53, 58, 61, 63, 65, 67, 68, 154, 171, 173–79;

Beil, Johannes, 95, 96

reasons for, 173–76

Belzig (Stasi foreign intelligence center), 37, 84

1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe, 80, 110,

Beneke, Dietmar (Stasi offi cer, “Axel”), 107, 108

173

Bernau, 151

Berndt (Stasi offi cer), 101

Abitur (university qualifi cation), 37, 42, 47, 150

Besenbiel, Lt. Bernd (Stasi offi cer), 167, 169

Abraham, Maj. Joachim (Stasi offi cer), 143

Bessel, Richard, 8

ABV (police informants), 184

Berlin, 1, 9, 15, 18, 19, 21, 24, 25, 28, 30, 33, 38, Agitation Commission of the Communist

46–48, 57, 69, 85, 88, 99, 118, 125, 133,

Party, 184

141, 162, 168, 175, 180; Russian advance agricultural collective, Mellen, 102

on, 27, 28

Ahrensfeld (Stasi college), 37

Berlin Dynamo (football team), 128

Aksyonov, Vassily, 183

Berlin HQ (Stasi headquarters), 33, 38, 43,

Alexanderplatz, Berlin, 9, 143

44, 49, 69, 70, 103, 117, 134, 135, 175

anonymity for Stasi victims, 32

Berlin regional Stasi offi ce, 120

anonymous letters, 134–38

Berlin Wall, 2, 5, 9, 11, 15, 47, 62, 63, 92, 97,

anti-1989-revolution attitudes, 174, 175

117, 118, 142, 147, 153–55, 178, 180, 181;

Arado aircraft factory, 24

fall of, 3, 6, 18, 50, 51, 56, 57, 60–63, 65,

Arendt, Hannah, 9

76, 91, 92, 105, 131–34, 140, 144, 150, 151, Ark Green Ecological Network, 168, 169, 174,

166, 169, 172, 173, 176–80

176, 177

Berlin-Aldershof, 88

Ash, Timothy Garten, 152

Berlin-Hamburg Chaussee, 30

AstA (applicant to emigrate), xiii, 119

Betroffene (“the affected ones,” Stasi victims),

Auschwitz extermination camp, 25, 92

32, 78

Austria, 167, 174

Beuster, Werner (pseud.), 54–57, 76, 103

Austria-Hungary border, 165, 174, 176

Bildzeitung, 65, 125

Bindig, Paul (“Schulz”), 100

Babelsberg, 21

Binz, Dorothea, 19

Bad Wilsnack, 15, 17, 18, 65, 142, 172

Bitterfeld, 174

Baers’ shooting death, 123–27, 170

Black Sea, 142

Bahro, Rudolf, 137

Black SS Knighthood, 114

Die Balaton-Brigade, 182

blanket surveillance, 7, 8, 45, 50, 55, 58–60,

Baltic Sea, 28, 109, 147, 153

63, 65, 68, 76, 83, 86, 91–93, 99, 114, 126,

Barnes, Julian, 140, 141

127, 139, 140, 145, 152; aspiration to, 58,

Barth, Heinz, 48, 55, 98

60, 76, 99

Bauer, Babett, 158

Blitzrevolution, 180

228 |

INDEX

border (German-German), 39, 63, 68, 69,

Communist Party of Germany (KPD), xiii,

106; border troops, 39, 66; deaths at,

16, 22, 52, 54, 85, 86, 98, 117, 142, 143,

153

160, 164, 178, 179, 184; fusion with

Bormann, Martin, 29

Social Democratic Party, xiii; middle-

Bracklow, Maj. (Stasi offi cer), 129, 133, 134

class fear of, 24; in Nazi era, 22, 23, 85;

Brandenburg (city), 21, 24, 27, 28, 157

revamped, 81. See also SED (Socialist

Brandenburg (province), 16, 20, 81; Berliners

Unity Party)

fl ee to in 1944, 28; Länder archives in,

concentration camps, 19, 22, 24, 26, 131, 138;

4; Nazi administrative units in, 24; in

in District Gransee, 19

Nazi era and WW II, 21, 23–30

consequences for Stasi targets, victims.

Brandenburg (Stasi district), 33

See Stasi: “affectors of lives”

Brandt, Willy, 3

conspiratorial dwellings, 82, 85, 114

breaking down opponents. See Zersetzen

contact person (“casual employee,” KP,

Bronze Medal for Honorable Service to the

Kontaktperson), xiii, xiv, 77, 91, 122,

National People’s Army, 107

125–28, 138, 139

Brosk, Heinz, 34

Cottbus, 1, 54, 121

Browning, Christopher, 46

criminal prosecutions by Stasi, 109, 110, 112,

Bucharest, 143

1 21, 130, 137, 153, 155; of a minor, 135

Budapest, 165

Czech-East German border, 130, 147

Bulgaria, 93, 95; secret police of, 80

Czechoslovakia, 15, 98, 117, 166, 167,

Bützow (Stasi district), 41

175; security service (StB) in, 139;

surveillance ratio in, 11; Czech POWs in

Canada, 10, 95, 146

Wittenberge, 26

Canadian Security and Intelligence Service

(CSIS), 10

Dachau concentration camp, 22, 26

card catalogue system, 11, 55, 56, 59, 76, 126,

Dachs, Otto, 155

140, 141; mosaic of information on

Dalos, Gyorgy, 182

individuals, 55, 56, 59, 76, 103, 152

Dammsmühle (Stasi language college), 37

“card corpses” (KP, Karteileichen), 49, 55, 62

Dannenwalde, 136

Catholic Center party, 23

debate on E. German history, 2, 4, 5, 11, 12

“casual employees.” See contact person

Delillo, Don, 131

casual contacts with Stasi, 14, 77, 104, 126,

Demmlerplatz prison, 143, 151

138

Denmark, 153

censorship, 93. See also self-censorship

denunciation in dictatorships, 12–14; in Nazi

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 10

Germany, 13, 99; for personal gain, 103.

Citizens’ Movement, 80

See also tips

City (rock band), 5

Department for the Protection of the

City of Gransee (restaurant), 92

Constitution, Saxony-Anhalt, 10

Checkpoint Charlie Museum, 108

Dessau, 130

Chekists (Russian secret police), 38

Deutsche Nationale Volkspartei, 23

China, Chinese regime, 16, 73

Die DDR-Show, 5

church in the GDR, 67, 172, 174; oppositional

Diestel, Peter Michael, 80

activity of, 129, 132, 133, 150, 151, 167,

Diplomjurist (JHS diploma), 37

169, 174, 176; monitoring of, 92, 139,

Domaschk, Matthias, 132

149, 162, 163, 169; monitoring of in

Donbass, 11

Gransee and Perleber g, 139, 151, 152,

Dördelmann, Katrin, 12, 13

170; role in revolution in Gransee and

Dr. Richard Sorge Banner, 111

Perleber g, 176; in West Germany, 152.

Dresden, 9, 15, 171, 175

See also Lutheran church; Protestant

Dubcek, Alexander, 117

church

Dzerzhinski, Feliks, 52

Cold War, 15, 40, 41, 62, 70, 123, 181

College of Law, JHS (“Stasi university”), xiii,

East Berlin, 1, 9, 15, 39, 66, 78, 88, 118, 120,

6, 34, 37

123, 132, 133, 143, 169, 171, 172, 180

Columbiahaus (Nazi prison), 85

East European states, 78, 80, 84, 156

Communism, Communists, 27, 85, 86, 91,

East Europeans, 141; E. European slave labor

98, 177

under Nazis, 26

I N D E X

| 229

East German military bases in Gransee, 18

Eisenhüttenstadt, 154, 155

East German National People’s Army

Elbe River, 15–17, 26, 106, 109, 113, 134, 151

( Nationale Volksarmee, NVA), xiv, 4, 37,

emigration, travel to West (legal), xiii, 1, 41,

50, 69, 72, 169; medals of, 43 44, 107;

51, 59, 77, 92, 97, 98, 119–21, 129, 148,

members recruited by Stasi, 38, 39

150, 152, 165, 167; numbers, 153. See also East German regime, 2, 5, 6, 9, 141, 149,

travel restrictions

173; comparison with Stalinism, 160,

emigration to West (illegal), 39, 66, 96, 97,

161; comparison with Nazi regime, 7,

106–9, 108, 112, 118, 121, 129, 130, 134,

13, 14, 77, 99, 116, 140, 159; relations

143, 145, 148, 150, 153, 165, 166, 171,

with Protestant church, 149. See also

174–76, 178 ; from Perleberg, 165, 175;

totalitarian control; totalitarian model

via Hungary, 165

East Germany, xiii, 1–5, 11, 14–16, 18, 20, 22,

environmental groups. See oppositional

31, 44, 47, 50, 54, 57–59, 61, 62, 64, 65,

environmental groups

75–77, 84, 90–92, 118, 119, 138, 140, 155

Eppelman, Rainer, 132

collapse of, 15, 40, 50, 51, 53, 58, 61, 96, 97,

Erfurt, 172

131, 138, 146–48, 150, 151, 162, 173–76,

Essen, 14

178–80

“exodus” to West in 1980s, 70, 77, 153, 165–67,

constitution of, 1, 184

175, 176

daycare, 73, 149

easing of restrictions in, 89, 153

Facherarbeiter (specialized worker), 163

economy, 66, 143, 149

Falkehagen, 21

education, 147

Falkenthal, 105

emigration ( see emigration, travel to West

Der Fall der Mauer, 177

[legal])

Farben poison gas factory, 21

environmental degradation in, 113, 163,

FC Union (football team), 128

169, 174

FDGB (trade union), 184

fl ight from ( see emigration to West

fear-accommodation syndrome, 183

[illegal])

federal archives, 20, 81

“forced-through society” ( vermachtete

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 10

Gesellschaft), 7

Federal Commission for the Documents of

good will toward, 131

the State Security Service of the Former

health care system, 65, 114, 142, 144, 147,

GDR, 4, 78

149, 159, 160, 172

Federal Republic of Germany, 50, 60, 140,

housing, 49, 51, 67, 72, 86, 87, 92, 157, 175

153. See also West Germany

leaders, 65, 121 ( see Honecker, Krenz)

Federation of Anarchist Communists, 133

legal code of, 109, 112, 133

Feliks Dzerzhinski guard regiment, 38, 39,

life before and after 1990, 157, 160

43, 69, 107

improved relations with W. Germany, 89,

Figes, Orlando, 160

90, 153

Fighting Group against Inhumanity, xiii, 87

military service in, 38, 133

FIM (informant category), 82

parliament, 80, 81

die Firma (“ The Firm,” name for Stasi), 47,

population, 10, 13

51, 78, 113, 176

positive perceptions of, 71, 114, 147, 148,

Fischer, August, 23, 24

157–60

Fitzpatrick, Sheila, 11–13, 145

shortages in, 108, 163, 164, 172, 173, 175, 176

fl ächendeckend. See blanket surveillance

two-tier access to goods, 172, 175

Fluch, Lt. Col. (Stasi offi cer), 170

“welfare dictatorship” ( Fürsorgediktatur), 7

Flucht (fl ight). See emigration to West (illegal)

women’s role, 73

Fontane, Theodore, 18

youth in, 87

Forgiveness in Truth (org.), 150

East Prussia, 28

Forst, 30

Eberswalde (Stasi college), 37

“Fortune Two Thousand,” 73

Effi Briest, 18

France, 98; French POWs in Wittenberge,

Ehmann, Karl, 85, 86

26

Ehmig, Volkher, 36

Frankfurt/Oder, 21, 30, 133

Eigen-Sinn (sense of self), 8

Franziska Linkerhand, 159

Eingaben (petitions), 164, 183

Frederick the Great, 23

230 |

INDEX

Free German Youth (FDJ, Freie Deutsche

closely linked to Nazi power, 20

Jugend), xiii, 35, 36, 96, 97, 151, 179

District Council Offi ce, 48, 164

Friday Club, 118

East German military bases in, 18, 33

Fukuyama, Francis, 7

environmental groups in, 174, 177

Fulbrook, Mary, 7–9

evolution of Stasi in, 116–19

Funk, Werner, 2

frustration with SED propaganda in, 174

Fürstenburg, 18, 19, 29, 95, 124–27, 142;

hospital, 98, 99

Soviet presence in, 18; Ravensbrück

housing, 49, 51, 164

camp in, 19

industrial activity in Nazi era, 21

from Nazi era to entry of Russians, 19–30

Gaeth, Lt. Ralf-Dieter (Stasi offi cer), 93, 118,

petitions and complaints in 1989, 164

119, 128

police, 114, 123

Gauck, Joachim (fi rst federal commissioner

population characteristics, 19

for Stasi fi les), 146, 157, 175, 183

quietness, beauty of, 3, 15, 18

GDR, German Democratic Republic, xiii.

SED fi les in, 4

See also East Germany

SED leader in, 136

Gellately, Robert, 13, 99

SED headquarters in, 137

Gera (Stasi region), 180

Soviet military installations in, 3, 18, 33,

German parliament, 22, 81

47, 52, 54, 90, 93, 115, 122–25, 139

German-Polish border, 28

visit by Hitler, 19

German Railway Company, 115

vote against SED in 1989 election

German-Soviet Friendship Society, 42

workers’ and farmers’ district, 19

Germany, 5, 9, 20, 21

Gransee Stasi district offi ce, 33, 40, 54, 57, 65,

Gerth, Rudy, 90, 91

90, 92, 96, 100, 116, 124, 129

Gestapo: comparison with Stasi in size,

ineffi ciency of surveillance, 84

proactive or reactive, 13, 14, 34, 77,

leaders and staff, 34, 35, 52, 54, 74, 89, 124,

99, 116; democratization of terror, 14;

125, 139, 177

offi cers, 13, 94; use of torture by, 2, 131;

offi cers overworked, 53, 55, 56, 74

in Wittenberge, 23

offi cers younger, less educated than in

GHI, Geheimer Hauptinformator (secret lead

Perleberg, 37, 42, 45

informant), xiii, 88

personnel fi les of, 35, 40

Giese, Dieter (Stasi offi cer), 109

refl ected essence of Stasi, 37, 72, 116

Gieseke, Jens, 62, 73, 145

relations with party, 178

Glowen, 92

sections of, 34

GMS, Gesellschaftlicher Mitarbeither für

smallness of, 33, 73, 184

Sicherheit (societal co-worker for

stability of employees in, 39, 43

security), xiii, 82, 89, 94

Gransee Kurier, 145, 146

GO (factory organization of SED), 184

Gransee Zeitung, 20

Goebbels, Joseph, 19, 25

Grass, Günter: Crab Walk, 28; Too Far Afi eld,

Goldenhagen, Daniel, 46

179

The Good Soldier Švejk, 5

Great Terror, 11

Goodbye Lenin! 5

Greenpeace, 169

Göring, Hermann, 19

Greifswald, 98

Graf Zeppelin (airship), 16

Groß Breese, Wittenberge, 29, 151

graffi ti, 50, 113, 134, 140

Grüneberg, 172

Grand Coalition, 89

Guillaume, Gunter, 3

Gransee (city), 50, 52, 55, 97, 98

Güstrow, 163

demonstration (1989) in, 173, 175

Gysi, Gregor, 81, 85

medieval historical aspect, 18, 19

quiet during 1989 elections, 162, 163

de Haas, Gottfried, and family, 167–69, 171,

Stasi offi cers in, 32, 46, 47

173

Gransee (Stasi district), 3, 105, 119, 124,

Hagenow (Stasi district), 41

126–28, 130, 131, 133, 136, 137, 140, 141,

Halle (city), 81, 30

148, 157, 173

Halle (Stasi region), 6, 10, 174

agricultural collectives in, 94, 179

Hamburg, 15, 33, 107

archives, 4

Hamburg-Berlin railway line, 16, 26

I N D E X

| 231

handwriting, graffi ti forensics, 50, 67, 75, 113, cover names, 81, 85

135–39

defending themselves, 152

Hagenow (Stasi district), 41

false expectations among, 87, 90

Hasek, Jan, 5

fi les of, 4, 104

Häsen, 46

gender, 83

Hauptabteilung (main Stasi directorate), xiii, 33

huge increase in, 88, 91

Havelburg, 103

IMK (“passive” category), 82, 84,

Havelburg-Wilsnack church district, 132

incessant demand for, 71, 74, 75, 92, 93,

Heinkel aircraft factories, 21

104

Heiser, Jurgen, 150–152

inept informants, 93, 94

Helsinki Final Act (human rights), 109, 131,

informants monitoring informants, 90,

153

103

Henckel von Donnersmarck, Florian, 5, 72,

informants running informants, 41, 46,

181

49, 88, 89, 91, 103

Henke, Klaus-Dietmar, 6, 7

irregular collaborators, 126–28, 130, 148

Hennigsdorf steel production facility, 21

limitations of, 104, 109

Heringsdorf, 98

meetings with Stasi offi cers, 39, 49, 82, 83,

Herodotus, 46

88, 90, 95, 104

Herrschaft (dominance), 8

motivations of, 14

Hertle, Hans-Hermann, 177

number per population, case, 11, 82, 84,

H.F. Werk, Köpenick, 88

132, 139, 152

Hilberg, Raul, 78

numbers of, 1, 2, 10, 11, 81, 83, 84, 88, 89,

HIM (“full-time unoffi cial worker,”

91, 116, 126–28

informant category), xiii

numbers in Gransee, 197, 198n12

Himmler, Heinrich, 29

numbers in Perleberg, 198n18

Hirsch, Ralf, 132

overburdened, stressed, 89, 101, 103

Hitler, Adolf, 22–24, 26, 29, 97, 99, 135, 139,

from party (SED), 89

160, 184; visit to Gransee, 19

pensions for, 91

Hochschule für Politik, 96

promotion of, 89

Hoeltke, Carsten, 36

protected by Stasi, 88, 105, 110

Hoffmann (Stasi offi cer), 96, 97, 102, 136

release of, 76, 86, 89, 92–96, 99, 102, 104,

Hoffmann, Klaus, 105

129

Hoffmann, Dr. Werner, 142–45, 157, 160

reports by, 95–97, 119, 132, 152; inaccuracy

Hof- und Hausgemeinschaften (neighborhood

of, 152; motives in, 152

governing bodies), 184

secrecy among, 86, 90, 95

Hohenschönhausen: Stasi prison, 1; Stasi

signed engagements by, 85, 86, 90, 91, 98,

memorial, 2

100, 102

Hohenzieritz, 18

training of, 91, 104, 116

Holocaust. See Jews in Germany; Polish Jews

unwieldiness of system, 53, 56, 61–63

Honecker, Erich, 65, 93, 121, 151, 160, 169;

used Stasi for personal ends, 102, 103, 105,

removal of, 171, 175

115, 116

Horst Wessel Square, Wittenberge, 27, 28

V-Men ( V-Männer, “trusted men”), 85

hostile-negative groups, 170, 171

venues of, 70, 92, 93

House of German-Soviet Friendship, 88

vetting of, 85

Human Trade (propaganda broadcast), 178

See also “card corpses”; recruitment; Stasi

Humboldt University, 57, 99, 137, 142

guidelines on informants; surveillance

Hungary, 165–67, 174, 176, 178, 180, 182

Insider-Komitee (organization of former

Stasi offi cers), 33, 76, 149

identifi cation cards, 135

Interfl ug, 123

IM. See informants

Internal Affairs Department (city council),

informants, IM, 82, 128, 139

129

ages, 83, 84; minors, 83, 97, 102

internalization of Stasi presence, 12, 145, 148,

categories of, xiii, 77, 82, 84, 85, 88, 89,

153, 155–58, 161

91, 94, 113, 122, 126–28, 138, 139, 146,

International Women’s Day, 170

148, 183

Intershops, 172

coercion to retain, 94

Investigative Committee of Free Jurists, 100

232 |

INDEX

Iron Curtain, 165

Lindendorf (restaurant, Gransee), 92

Italian state police ( Carabinieri), 31

Linz, Austria, 164

Literary Circle, 159

Jahn, Günther, 179

Litzmann, Karl, 19

Jarausch, Konrad, 174

The Lives of Others, 5, 6, 72, 73, 75, 182

Jehovah’s Witnesses: repression by Nazis, 13,

Lohre, Bernd (pseudonym), 67–70, 135, 136

26; Stasi targets, 115, 130, 131, 173

Lübz (Stasi district), 4; archives, 4

Jews in Germany, 24, 88; and Holocaust,

Ludwigsfelde, 88

7, 12, 26, 27, 46, 60, 140; in Mark

Luftwaffe, 27

Brandenburg, 25–27

Luther, Martin, 17

JHS ( Juristische Hochschule des MfS). See

Lutheran church: rallying point in 1989

College of Law

revolution, 132, 162, 176; relations with

John Paul II, 80

regime, 149; in Wittenberge, 162, 171, 172

Johnson, Eric, 13, 77

Lutheran ministers, Lutherans, 151, 166.

Jugendweihe (secular confi rmation), 149

See also OV examples in Gransee and

Jung, Detlef, 150–53

Perleberg : OV Brille; OV Tendenz

justice department, 90, 98

Luxemberg, Rosa, 140

justice for Stasi victims, 2, 140

machine-lending stations, 86, 92

Kaienberg, Herbert, 27

Magdeburg, 172; Stasi regional

Kalyuzhny, Victor, 29

administration, 10

Karkov, 11

Magdeburg-Alstadt regional hospital, 160

Karl-Marx University, 98, 165

mail monitoring. See monitoring; Stasi

Karstadt dept. store, Gransee, 25

departments

Karteileichen. See “card corpses”

Malia, Martin, 8, 56, 76

KGB, 85

Mansfeld, 88

Kielmansegg, Peter Graf, 9

Marienthal, 105

Klenk, Anne (pseud.), 43, 44, 58–60, 61, 73, 74

Mark Brandenburg. See Brandenburg

Knabe, Hubertus, 2, 12, 131, 132, 155

(province)

Koestler, Arthur, 183

Märkische Allgemeine Zeitung, 145, 146

Kontaktperson, KP (informant category).

Martin Andersen Nexö Library, 106

See contact person

Mecklenburg, 4, 30, 123; Länder archives of, 4

Kordon, Klaus, 108

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (province), 1

KP ( Kontaktperson). See contact person

medical personnel, Stasi preventing

KPD (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands).

emigration of, 144, 160. See also

See Communist Party; SED

monitoring

Krause, Werner, 19, 20, 23, 27

Meineke, Karola, 170

Kreisdienstellen, 3. See Stasi, district offi ces

Melkers, Dieter, 34

Krenz, Egon, 171

Menschlichkeit, 157

Kristallnacht, 26

Menz, 47, 169, 170

Krokodil in Nacken, 108

Mesekow, 107, 110

Kuhlow, Reinhard (pseud.), 57, 58, 75, 77, 79

Meuss, 106

Kupke, Christian (“Udo”), 96, 97, 104

Meyer (Stasi offi cer), 114

Küstrin, 30

MfS, Ministerium für Staatssicherheit.

Kyritz (Stasi region), 28, 71, 84

See Stasi

Michaelis, Raphael, 26

Lake Balaton, 182

Mielke, Erich, 3, 44, 68, 73, 88, 89, 93, 111–13,

Landjahr, 142, 147

127, 130, 131, 133, 165, 173, 180

Landkreis Ruppen, 20

military bases. See Gransee (Stasi district)

Lauta, 21

Milosz, Czeslaw, 156

Lehmann, Franz, 128, 129

Ministry of the Interior: present-day, 10; of

Leipzig, 15, 41, 98, 165; 1989 demonstrations GDR, 77

in, 171, 175–77, 179, 180

Minkowski, Oskar, 142

Leuna Werk Walter Ulbricht, 88

Mitter, Armin, 6, 7

Lichtenberg, 103

moles, 38

Lindenberger, Thomas, 8, 11

Monday demonstrators, Leipzig, 176

I N D E X

| 233

monitoring by Stasi offi cers and informants,

Neues Deutschland, 134

1–4, 39, 70, 109, 114

Neues Forum (New Forum, oppositional

of applicants to emigrate, 50, 65, 68, 119–

movement), 172, 179

22, 129, 130, 138, 144, 145, 163, 165, 166,

Niemann, Herr, 149

171; in Gransee, 177; in Perleberg, 176

NKVD (Soviet security force), 11

collective monitoring, 117, 120, 121

(s ee also secondary individuals)

Oder River, 30

of elections, 151, 162, 163

Offi ce for National Security, 140, 152, 173

of individuals ( see OPK; OV)

Offi ce for the Protection of the Constitution

of library loans, 109

(W. Germany), 10

of mail, 6, 36, 43, 73, 109, 111, 120, 122, 124,

Operation “City Jubilee,” Perleberg, 170

127, 130, 139, 152

Operation “Symbol 89,” 162

of medical schools, medical personnel,

operational offi cer, 43; typical tasks of, 69

95, 97–99, 139, 160

OPK, Operative Personnenkontrolle

of mood of the population, 49, 57, 113, 164

(personal surveillance operation),

observation posts, 109, 120

xiv, 4, 35, 108, 109, 126, 127; all-

of police, 127

encompassing nature of, 112; length of,

of Protestant church ministers, 169

103, 104; many informants per case, 11,

( see also church in the GDR)

112, 127, 132, 139, 152; justifi cation for, of restaurants, bars, 92, 93

115; numbers of, 111; preliminary nature

of societal discontent, 94, 163

of, 112, 113; recruiting informants

of telephone calls, 109, 111, 120, 127, 151

within, 111, 112

of television reception, viewing, 93, 155

OPK examples in Gransee and Perleberg:

of travelers to West, 44, 48, 59, 60, 74, 96,

OPK Balloon, 108, 109; OPK Observant,

113, 118–20, 127, 140, 148, 149, 151, 153,

122, 123; OPK Meister, 127; OPK Sänger,

154, 165

129; OPK Storm, 114, 115; OPK Transport,

untargeted nature of, 114, 119

121, 122; OPK Zahn, 120, 121, 127

of visitors from the West, 113, 123, 125, 148

oppositional behavior, 132, 135, 137, 150–52,

of youth, 68, 90, 92, 93, 97, 128, 129, 133,

154, 155

135, 139, 152, 167–69, 171

among environmental groups, 129, 133,

Morozov, Pavel (cult of), 160, 161

167–69, 177, 180

Moscow, 11, 20, 65

among youth, 128, 129

Muhe, Ulrich, 5, 6

in general population, 53, 67, 77, 86, 172

Müller, Antje (pseud.), 44, 60–62, 73, 77

organized activity, xiii, 41, 75, 87, 88, 91, Müller-Enbergs, Helmut, 10

100, 112, 113, 115, 117, 119, 129, 133, 140,

The Murderers Are Among Us, 2

167–72, 177; based in West Germany, 87,

88, 99, 100, 101

Nazi archives (destruction of), 20

Stasi offensive against, 130–32, 169, 171,

Nazi Germany, 7, 12, 20, 78, 85, 95, 99,

177

116, 131, 162; administrative units See also church in the GDR

(Ortzgruppen) in, 20; invasion of

oral history, 9, 55, 146; sources, 4, 32, 33

Russia, 48; measures against Jews, 25,

Oranienburg, 21, 24, 133; Stasi district, 34;

26; Nazi Party, 22, 23, 86, 114; Nazi

deaths in WW II in, 27

racial ideas, 12, 25, 140, 159; recruitment

Ore Mountains, 15

of Weimar-era police, 34; slave labor

Orwell, George, 1984, 131

under, 26. See also Stasi: Nazi-hunting

Oschim, Lt. Werner (Stasi offi cer), 98, 128,

function

137

Nazi regime contrasted with GDR,

Ostalgie, 9

12–14, 77, 99, 116, 120, 138, 140, 159; OV, Operative Vorgang (operational case;

willing participation of citizens, 13;

in-depth personal surveillance), xiv, 4,

spontaneous denunciation, 14

109, 112, 113, 120, 126, 127, 131; active,

NDP (neo-Nazi party), 135

invasive nature of, 113; arising from

Neubert, Ehrhart, 154

tips, 116, 126; justifi cation for, 115;

Neuengamme concentration camp, 24, 27

length of, 103, 104; numbers of, 111

Neuglobsow, 19, 154, 169

OV examples in Gransee and Perleberg:

Neuruppin (Stasi district), 23, 39

Operation Polyp, 98; OV Anarchist,

234 |

INDEX

OV examples in Gransee and Perleberg

strategic position of, 15

( continued)

tractor-lending station in, 85, 86

133, 134; OV Brille, 132, 149, 166; OV

in World War II, 26–30

Impressionist, 136, 137; OV Maler, 117;

“workers’ and farmers’ state,” 15

OV Schreiber, 137, 138; OV Stoma, 166;

Perleberg Stasi district offi ce, 33, 59, 60, 66,

OV Student, 117–19; OV Taxi, 166; OV

67, 91, 110, 135

Taüscher, 166; OV Tendenz, 166–69,

larger than Gransee’s, 40, 73

171; OV Treffpunkt, 122, 129, 130; OV

leaders, 195n52 ( see also Ryll, Werner;

Vergeltung, 124–28, 139, OV Vertreter, Tamme, Siegfried; Tilse, Herbert)

170; OV Wachs, 134–36, 139

mirror of larger Stasi, 72, 116

more a “family affair” than Gransee’s, 43

Palast der Republik, 132

offi cers overburdened at, 42, 49, 59, 66,

participation of ordinary citizens in

67, 74

repression, 127, 148, 182–84;

sections of, 34, 59, 61, 62, 70

forced participation, 14; of media

stability of staff, 43

and educators, 184; measured by

staff better educated and older than

denunciations, 12–14; “participatory

Gransee’s, 42, 73

dictatorship” concept, 7, 8, 14

substation in Wittenberge, 57, 58

Paul, Gerhard, 14

women offi cers, employees, 43, 44, 73, 74

Paupst, Herr and Frau (pseud.), 41, 65–67

personal surveillance operation. See OPK

People’s Police ( Volkspolizei), 34, 39, 55, 56,

Pielack, Alfred, 57

90; Barracked People’s Police, 98

Piekert, Matthias (pseud.), 62–64, 67, 75,

People’s Solidarity Club, 137

83, 87

Perleberg (city):

Pippig (Stasi offi cer), 117, 136

citizens’ meeting with Stasi, 173

Plattdeutsch, 151

complaints to city council 163

Pleß, Frank, 167

hospital, 65, 67

Plenzdorf, Ulrich, 5

population of, 15

PLO, Stasi support for, 80

quiet in 1989 elections, 162–64

PM-12 card ( Pass- und Meldewesen), 119

750th anniversary of, 170, 171, 177

Poland, 60, 154, 174; citizen monitoring in, 11;

St. Jacob’s church, 17, 167, 171, 172

Communist Party in, 183; Polish Jews,

white-collar composition of, 16

27; POWs under Nazis, 26; Solidarity

Perleberg (Stasi district), 3, 64, 71, 76, 81, 104,

movement, 136

110, 126, 131, 137, 139, 140, 165, 167, 177

police, 103, 110, 114, 115, 123, 127, 157, 165, 178,

Ark Green branch in, 168, 169

179, 184; recruited as Stasi offi cers, 39, 72

bread shortage in , 163, 164

Police Battalion 101, 78

demonstrations in 1989, 169, 171, 172, 175

political police division (K-5), 34

elections, 162, 163

political prisoners, 132

environmental damage by Soviet troop

Polytechnische Oberschule (EOS), 96

movements, 169

The Porcupine, 141

environmental groups in, 168, 169, 174

Post–Cold War triumphalism, 7

evolution of Stasi in, 116, 117, 119

Potsdam (city), 4, 6, 23, 30, 34, 37, 51, 82, 91,

“exodus” to West in 1980s, 164–67, 175

96, 107, 135, 137

frustration with SED propaganda in, 174

Potsdam (Stasi region), 21, 33–35, 48, 82, 84,

housing issues, 67, 70, 121, 155

93, 129, 137, 179

links to Nazi regime, 20

Potsdam-Eiche, xiii, 6

mass postwar exodus from, 15

POZW, Partner des Operativen

in Nazi era, 22–30

Zusammenwirkens (Collaborative

Neues Forum in, 172

operational partner), xiv, 127

party fi les in, 4

Prague, 166; Prague Spring, 93, 117

quiet, remote character, 3

Preetz, 171

Soviet garrison in, 62, 70

Prignitz, 15, 20

standard of living issues in 1989, 163

Pritzwalk (Stasi district), 71, 84

Stasi fi les in, 4

Protestant church, 149, 150. See also church in Stasi move against underground activity

the GDR; Lutheran church

in, 176

Protestant Youth Group ( Junge Gemeinde), 167

I N D E X

| 235

Die Puhdys (rock band), 5

Roosevelt, Franklin, 139

Putzke family, 107, 110

Rostock, 97, 172, 183

RTL (TV station), 5

Rand, Ayn, 183

Russia and Russians, 124, 135; Russian cars,

Rathenow (Stasi district), 34, 35; in World

66; Russian language courses for Stasi

War II, 27

offi cers, 37; in World War II, 17, 26–30.

Ravensbrück concentration camp, 19, 24, 115;

See also Chekists; KGB; NKVD; Soviet

memorial site, 95, 104

Union; Soviets

Reckenzin, 163

Ryll, Werner, 33, 45, 58, 66, 67, 74, 165, 167,

recruitment of full-time Stasi workers,

169, 176; personal characteristics of,

offi cers, 36–38

41, 42

from army, 38, 39, 43, 69, 107

desirable qualifi cations, 35–38, 42, 72

SA, Sturmabteilung (Nazi storm troopers),

diffi culty of, 69

22–26, 114, 138

in early years, 34

Sachakten (Stasi administrative fi les), 4

exclusion of former Nazis, 34

Sachsenhausen concentration camp, 24, 26,

from among informants, 39, 43

100

methods, 48, 54, 57, 59, 69, 70, 74

SAT-1 (TV show), 5

next generation of, 44, 69, 70, 74

“Sauer, Horst” (pseud.), 69

from police, 39, 72

Saxony, 10, 130, 179

See also Stasi guidelines

scent rags, 11, 34

recruitment of informants, 4, 67, 68

Schiefer, Rolf (“Joseph Nöcker”), 48, 49,

coercion, blackmail in, 85, 87, 99, 100, 129,

96–99, 104, 160

130, 140, 144, 149, 159, 167

Schinkel, Karl Friedrich, 18

“conviction, not coercion,” 88, 89

Schinkel Square, Gransee, 26

diffi culty of, 53, 63, 67–69, 75, 77, 84, 85,

Schleswig-Holstein, 14

93, 94

Schmid, Klaus-Peter, Lt. Col. (pseud.), 70–72,

during OPKs, 11, 112

78, 113, 114, 126

in medical schools, 160

Schmidt (Stasi offi cer), 95

methods, 67–71, 74, 81, 84, 86, 87, 89, 90,

Schmidt-Pohl, Jürgen, 1, 2

96, 107

Schönefeld airport (East Berlin), 123, 143

from among minors, 83, 90, 97, 102, 148

Schrader, Lothar, 39

pressure to increase numbers, 83

Schram, Marcus (pseud.), 51–54, 123

from among prisoners, 107

Schroeder, Klaus, 7

reluctance to become, 84, 99, 100

Schubert, Wiethold, 23

targeted, untargeted recruitment, 86, 87,

Schultz, Dieter, 179

89, 90

Schultz, Horst, 179

vetting, 105

Schulz, Axel, 5

See also Stasi guidelines

Schulz, Kurt Werner, 165

Red Army, 7, 27–30

Schulze, Rudolf (pseud.), 44, 60, 69, 70

regime resistants. See oppositional activity

Schwanitz, Wolfgang, 140

Reichstag, 139; burning of, 22, 23

Schwedt, 30

Reimann, Brigitte, 159

Schwegel, Rolf (pseud.), 64, 82

removal of rights, 1

Schwerin (Stasi region), 15, 41–43, 111, 163,

Renault factory, 60

165, 166

repression apparatus, 2, 45, 61, 63, 104, 126,

Schwerin (town), 61, 138, 142, 143, 151, 169;

128, 146, 148, 158, 159, 183

demonstrations in, 172

Restaurant Koym, Wittenberge, 92

Schweriner Volkszeitung, 137

revisionism, 5–9; in popular culture, 5, 6

screening cases (earlier name of OPKs),

Reuband, Karl-Heinz, 13

114–16

ROBOTRON 3000, 95, 96

“secondary individuals” (collateral Stasi

Rockhaus (rock band), 171

targets, by chance, Zufallsprodukt),

Roman Catholic opponents to Nazism, 13

55, 117, 121, 126, 127, 139, 140. See also Romania, 108, 143, 144; revolution in, monitoring, collective

173; sterilization of opponents by

secret police, 126, 140, 145, 152, 158; ratio per

Securitate, 80

inhabitant, 11, 140

236 |

INDEX

SED, Socialistische Einheitspartei

SS, Schutztaffel, 22, 24, 29, 88, 100; female

Deutschlands (Socialist Unity Party

guards at Ravensbrück, 19; in Gransee, 26

of Germany, or Communist Party),

St. Nicholas church, Leipzig , 176

xiv, 4, 6–9, 36, 42, 45, 72, 89, 99, 113,

Stalin, Stalinism, 11, 30, 88, 155, 160, 184

136–38, 140, 142–44, 147, 151, 160, 172,

Stalin City (Eisenhüttenstadt), 155

173, 178, 179, 180

Stante, Wolfgang , 2

control of population, 184

Stasi, Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, MfS

fusion of KPD and SDP in 1946, xiii

(Minstry for State Security), xiii, xiv, 1,

ineptitude of, 76, 77

33, 35, 38, 60, 68, 76, 86, 90, 95, 96, 99,

make-work projects of, 132

111, 143

media control by, 172, 184

active intervention in operational cases,

morality, 45

109, 110, 113, 115, 117–20, 122, 125, 128,

paralysis of, 49–51, 65, 70, 76

129, 132–34, 136, 149, 150, 155, 165, 169,

oblivious to developments in 1989, 178,

176

180

“affectors of lives,” 32, 78, 97, 104, 118, 119,

party congresses, 93

145, 148–52, 155, 158, 160

party members, 137, 142, 143, 151, 155, 165,

all-encompassing nature of, 139

178, 179; assisting Stasi, 104; distrust

anger toward, 176

of own party, 100; used by Stasi, 109,

areas of priority ( Schwerpunkte), 68, 75,

128, 129

76, 93, 139

policies regarding women, 73

awards, 111, 107, 169

Politburo members, 155

ballooning expansion of, 34, 40, 41, 76,

popular frustration with, 174, 175

89, 114, 116, 183

propaganda by, 162–64, 171, 172, 174, 175,

blackmail, use of, 2, 63, 85, 100

177, 178

breaking down opponents ( see Zersetzen)

relations with Stasi, 49, 50, 55, 65, 70, 75,

Chekist model, 38, 42, 45, 74, 177

89

coercive methods, 2, 75, 78, 117–19, 122,

unresponsive to members, 179

124, 125, 129, 130

Seifert, Gaby, 92

colleges in districts, 37, 91 ( see also College self-censorship, 156, 158. See also

of Law)

internalization

Communist loyalties in, 35, 36, 52–54, 98

Service, Robert, 139

Communist old guard as Stasi leaders, 34

Die Sicherheit (book by former Stasi offi cers),

comparison with Gestapo ( see Gestapo)

76, 119, 127, 128

damage control, 123–26

Singer Sewing Machine Company, 16

demise of, 3, 32, 35, 41, 50, 51, 61, 64, 111,

Slovak POWs, slave laborers, 26

152, 173

Social Democratic Party, xiii, 16; loss to Nazis

district offi ces ( see Stasi district offi ces)

in Mark Brandenburg, 22; persecution

extraordinary duties, 50, 59, 63, 74, 75, 77,

of deputies by Nazis, 22; fusion with

116, 148, 171

Communist Party, xiii, 22

failures of, 134

Society for Sport and Technology, 36

family affair, 36, 38, 43, 69, 72

Sonnenallee, 5

fear of population in 1989, 173

Soviet Army Group North, Gransee, 18

foreign espionage by, 3, 4, 48

Soviet Bloc, 166, 167

headquarters ( see Berlin HQ)

Soviet Union, 16, 111, 133, 154, 160; health care

impact on mental health of population,

in, 48, 147; everyday life in, 11, 12; gulag,

150 ( see also internalization of Stasi

161; ratio of secret police to citizens, 11;

presence)

secret police in, 52, 61

importance of meetings with informants,

Soviets, 101, 111, 125, 126, 170; garrison in

39, 49

Perleberg, 62, 70; military presence in

increasing sophistication of, 115–17, 119,

Fürstenberg (bad relations), 18; Soviet

131, 134, 135, 156

press in East Germany, 155; take Nazi

information gathering apparatus, 11, 88,

archives to Moscow, 20; Soviet tanks,

113, 120, 127 ( see also informants; card

70, 162; in World War II, 28–30, 48. See catalogue system)

also Gransee (district): Soviet military

lack of results, 50, 54, 57, 58, 62, 63, 110,

installations in; Baers’ shooting deaths

114, 115, 122, 123, 134

I N D E X

| 237

male-dominated workplace, 36, 44, 59,

including agriculture), 34, 42; Dept.

61, 73

XX (opposition), 169, 176; Dept. XX/2,

methods of control, 2, 14, 138

137; Dept. M (mail monitoring), 6;

military ranks in ( see Stasi military ranks)

OTS, Operative-technische Sector

morality concerns, 36, 45, 85, 92, 109

(responsible for crime labs, securing

Nazi-hunting function, 48, 50, 55, 56, 78,

Stasi installations), xiv, 13; Dept. OTS-

98, 100, 114–16

Abt 32 (special forensic laboratory,

obsession with Cold War, security, 40,

Berlin), 135; Dept. of Personnel and

63, 139

Training, 44, 57, 72

obsession with recruiting informants, 71,

Stasi district offi ces ( Kreisdienstellen), 3, 177;

74, 92, 93, 104

camaraderie in, 52, 61, 75, 76; citizens’

offi cers (full-time workers) ( see Stasi

access to, 49; evaluation branch, 59, 61;

offi cers)

importance of, 3; insular, 74; number

paperwork, excess of, 69, 71, 78, 83, 114

of, 33; rareness of transfers, promotions

planned murders of regime opponents,

in, 39, 40, 43, 72; place in Stasi

2, 132

structure, 33, 34; representative of Stasi

post-1989 defense of, 78, 114, 128

structure, 33, 34, 72, 116; technological

power in social interactions, 9, 38, 44, 48,

defi cit, 61; working-class character of,

57, 72, 73, 78, 89, 91, 97, 99, 104, 114, 118,

37, 72

119, 124, 125, 130, 133, 136, 148, 152, 153,

Stasi guidelines on informants, 84, 85, 91,

165, 169

105, 127; 1950 guidelines, 85; 1953

preoccupation with emigration in 1980s,

guidelines, 90; revised guidelines of

119–22, 129, 130, 138, 144, 165–67, 171

1958, 88; guideline of 1968, 89; OPK

pressure to perform, 49, 53, 55, 62, 111, 114

Directive 1/71, 111, 112; OPK guidelines

Priority Principle, 70, 139

of 1981, 112; OV directive of 1976, 112;

protective of informants, 88, 105, 110

guideline 1/76, 131; 1979 guidelines,

psychological intimidation by, 2, 14, 144

90, 93, 103; Order 2/85, 76; guidelines

public perception of, 31, 64, 148, 149; fear

concerning offi cers’ tasks:1959 Directive

of, 31, 63, 148, 173

on Recruitment, 72

quasi-criminal measures, 140

Stasi fi les and archives, 3, 4, 6, 7, 80, 82, 102,

relations with party at district level, 4, 49,

103, 110, 116, 118, 131, 134, 147, 156; access

50, 55, 65, 75, 89

to, 10, 32, 80, 81, 147; cadre fi les, 4;

reliance on collaboration of ordinary

prevention of destruction by citizens, 3,

citizens, 13, 14, 124–27, 129, 136, 139,

10, 51, 80, 173; fi les, 64, 78, 81, 104, 140,

148 ( see also participation of ordinary

146, 147, 183; operational fi les, 4; partial

citizens)

destruction of, 3, 4, 51, 56, 58, 61, 64,

role of ideology, 38, 42, 52, 54, 59, 66, 70,

81, 105; personnel fi les, 31, 32, 35, 40;

71, 74, 75, 78, 79, 98, 113, 114, 159, 176, 177

quantity of, 3, 11

salaries and bonuses, 39, 52, 58, 59, 70, 74,

Stasi Files Law, 32, 51, 68; limitations of, 127

75, 89, 91, 101, 102, 107, 111, 129, 143, 170

Stasi military ranks, 39, 40; Feldwebel

size of, 10, 34, 114

(sergeant), 39; Hauptmann (captain),

spy-hunting function, 78

39; Leutnant, 39, 43; Major, 39;

structure, 33, 34

Oberfeldwebel (Sgt. Maj.), 39;

support staff, 60, 61, 65, 66; post-1989

Oberleutnant (1st Lt.), 39; Oberstleutnant

repercussions for, 61, 67

(Lt. Col., highest Stasi rank), 39, 40,

territorial organization of, 33, 34, 90

42, 70

threats by, 155

Stasi offi cers/full-time employees, 2, 5, 6, 78,

treatment of prisoners, 1, 2

90, 183

violent acts by, 132, 151

ages of, 34, 37, 42, 72

unaware of impending revolution, 180

contacts between former offi cers, 64, 65,

women in ( see women full-time Stasi

69, 79

employees)

disillusionment among, 54, 68, 74, 78, 79

working class identity of, 37

dismissal of, 40

Stasi departments, 33, 34; Dept. II

locating former Stasi offi cers and staff,

(counterespionage), 70; Dept. IX,

32, 33

137; Dept. XVIII (the economy,

motivations to join, 60, 61, 74

238 |

INDEX

Stasi offi cers/full-time employees ( continued)

55, 65, 72, 73, 112, 114, 126, 129, 135, 139,

movement through ranks, 39, 42, 48, 59,

145, 156, 160, 163, 184

61, 73

totalitarian model of GDR, 6–9, 76

numbers of, 10, 11, 13, 14

Trabant (car), 5, 66

overworked, 42, 49, 50, 53, 55, 56, 59, 60,

trade qualifi cation, 37, 42

66, 67, 73–75

travel restrictions, 47, 70, 71, 108, 119, 128, 129,

post-1989 repercussions for, 2, 31, 51,

130, 139, 153, 154, 165, 166, 172, 175

56–58, 60, 61, 63, 64, 67, 68, 71, 80, 127,

Treptow (Stasi district), 78

145, 146

Twain, Mark, 185

recruitment ( see recruitment of full-time

Stasi workers)

Uhe, Gerhard, 179

remorse among former offi cers, 46, 56,

Ukraine, 11; Ukrainian POWs, slave laborers,

58, 77

26

reports by, 83, 89

Ulbricht, Walter, 45, 52, 92

rewards for high activity level, 111

Die Ultimative Ost Show, 5

similar type, 77, 78

Umweltbibliothek (environmental library), 169

training, xiii, 37, 43, 61 ( see also College unifi cation (1990), 9, 16, 20, 31, 50, 56, 145

of Law)

United States, 185

Stasi structure, 33, 34, 90; departments in

University of Rostock, 97

main directorate and regions, 33;

unoffi cial co-worker ( Inoffi zieller Mitarbeiter,

sections in district offi ces, 34, 59, 61. See

IM, informant category), xiii, 82, 88,

also Stasi departments

128, 138, 139, 146

Staudte, Wolfgang, 2

Untergang auf Raten (Decline in Stages), 6, 7

Stokes, Gale, 174

USA PATRIOT Act, 185

Stolpe, Manfred, 81

Strempel, Lothar, 40

van der Lubbe, Martin, 22

surveillance (societal, by Stasi), 1–3, 10,

VEB Microelektronik, Zehdenick, 18, 52, 54,

69, 72, 75, 89, 93, 95, 99, 103, 111, 114,

139

147, 152, 155; increase in, 74; methods

Verch (Stasi district leader, Gransee), 34

of, 6, 109, 111, 114, 120, 127; mutual

Veritas sewing machines, 16

surveillance, 160; not passive, 104;

Das Versprechen (fi lm), 180

pervasive nature of, 9–14, 55, 140, 155,

Viadrina University, 146

184; in public places, 92, 93; out of

victims of Stasi. See OPK; OV; Stasi: “affectors

control, 140; targeted, 91; untargeted,

of lives”

93, 112. See also blanket surveillance; Viskose Basement Pub, Wittenberge, 86

card catalogue system; informants;

Vitamin B (connections), 157

monitoring; OPK; OV

Vogelsang, 54

Straussberg (Stasi district), 133

Vogt, Kristina, 154

Sweden, 32, 48, 62, 153

Volkspolizei. See People’s Police

Switzerland, 33

Volksturm, 29

Vollnhall, Clemens, 7, 131

Tamme, Siegfried, 33–35, 48, 52, 54, 58, 139

von Brentano, Margherita, 140

Tenbrock, Florian (pseud.) 46–51, 48, 65, 72,

von Bülow, Heinrich, 17

78, 79, 100, 140

von Hindenberg, Paul, 22, 23

Teterow (Stasi college), 37

von Trotta, Margaretha, 180

Theresienstadt concentration camp, 26

Third Reich, 12, 20, 21, 27, 30, 74, 100, 116,

Wartburg (car), 66

120, 131, 140

Warsaw, 166

Tiananmen Square, 173, 174

Warsaw Pact, 122

Tilse, Herbert, 33, 41, 42, 58, 66, 69, 71, 83

Washington, D.C., 185

tips, 14, 115, 116, 138; importance of for Stasi,

Wehrmacht, 12, 35, 88, 115

139

Weimar (Stasi district), 119

Töpfer, Hans-Jürgen, 33, 35, 40, 53, 74,

Weimar Republic, 21, 23; constitution, 22;

123–125, 139

police in, 24, 34

totalitarian control of GDR: aspirations to,

the West, 35, 46, 49, 59, 60, 78, 87, 155, 165,

76, 99, 105; extent of, 7–11, 45, 46, 50,

174 ; fl ight to, 33, 120, 95, 98, 101, 102,

I N D E X

| 239

106–9, 114, 115, 153; relatives in, 39; legal

sewing machine factory, 16, 17, 57, 92, 95,

travel to, 59, 74, 92

113, 179

West Berlin, xiii, 3, 48, 63, 87, 95, 99–102,

Stasi substation 57, 58

138, 171

in WW II, 27–29

West German embassy representatives, 47

Wittenberger Chroniken, 20

West German media, 92, 93, 107, 108, 128,

Wittkowski, Paul, 88, 89

154–56, 171, 174

Wittstock (Stasi region), 84

West German secret service, 64

Wolf, Christa, 81

West Germany, 2, 3, 16, 20, 35, 39, 44, 46,

Wolf, Marcus, 4, 48

48, 63, 64, 66, 87, 88, 98, 118, 125, 126;

Wolle, Stefan, 6, 7, 11, 157

détente with E. Germany, 89, 131;

Wollschlager, Kurt, 86, 87

Stasi activity in, 112; travel to. See also

Wollweber, Ernst, 88

emigration, travel to West

women’s role in post-war Germany

Westprignitz, 20, 21

( Trümmerfrauen), 154

The Whisperers, 160

women as full-time Stasi employees, 43,

White Noise, 131

44, 73, 74, 183; concentrated in postal

Wilhelm Gustloff (ship), 28

control, 36, 73; percentages, 36, 73;

Witt, Katarina, 5

discriminatory promotion criteria, 73;

Wittenberge, 15, 20, 21, 34, 44, 57, 68, 86, 88,

wives of Stasi offi cers, 36

90, 92, 101, 102, 106, 107, 117, 121, 136,

World War I, 19

142, 151, 153, 156, 162–64, 166, 171, 172,

World War II, 15–17, 20, 21, 26–30, 88, 98,

175, 177, 179

142, 154; Allied invasion, 20, 29

cellulose/rayon factory, 16, 17, 26, 27,

Woronowicz, Dr. Ulrich, 64, 132, 133

57, 68, 70, 86, 107, 113, 117, 134,

164, 176

Young Pioneers (Communist youth

Gymnasium, 25, 123, 135, 136;

group), 5

hospital, 65, 101, 121, 143, 144

in Nazi era, 22–26

Zehdenick, Gransee, 18, 51–54, 96, 102,

oilseed plant, 16, 17, 89, 100, 117, 164

1 16, 124, 149, 169, 172; MBZ factory

population characteristics of, 15, 16,

complex at, 148; electronic plant in,

21, 34

139

port, 86, 94

Zersetzen (breaking down opponents), 78,

rivalry with Perleberg, 15, 16

130–34, 140, 150

T H E O X F O R D O R A L H I S T O R Y S E R I E S

J . TO D D M OY E (University of North Texas), K AT H R Y N N A S S T RO M (University of San Francisco), and RO B E R T P E R K S (The British Library Sound Archive), Series Editors D O N A L D A . R I TC H I E , Senior Advisor

Doing Oral History, Second Edition Donald A. Ritchie

Approaching an Auschwitz Survivor: Holocaust Testimony and Its

Transformations Edited by Jürgen Matthäus

A Guide to Oral History and the Law John A. Neuenschwander

Freedom Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen of World War II J. Todd Moye

Singing Out: An Oral History of America’s Folk Music Revivals

David K. Dunaway and Molly Beer

The Wonder of Their Voices: The Holocaust Interviews of David Boder

Alan Rosen

Launching the War on Poverty, Second Edition Michael L. Gillette

The Firm: The Inside Story of the Stasi Gary Bruce

Document Outline

- Contents

- Acknowledgments

- Abbreviations

- INTRODUCTION

- 1 DISTRICTS GRANSEE AND PERLEBERG UNDER THE NAZIS

- 2 IN THE SERVICE OF THE FIRM: The Full-time Stasi Employees

- 3 THE CANDIDATE: Stasi Informants

- 4 IN THE LINE OF SIGHT: Targeted by the Stasi

- 5 THE STASI IN EVERYDAY LIFE

- 6 THE DOWNFALL

- CONCLUSION

- Notes

- Bibliography

- Index

- A

- B

- C

- D

- E

- F

- G

- H

- I

- J

- K

- L

- M

- N

- O

- P

- R

- S

- T

- U

- V

- W

- Y

- Z

- Maps and photographs

Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

INTRODUCTION

1 DISTRICTS GRANSEE AND PERLEBERG UNDER THE NAZIS

2 IN THE SERVICE OF THE FIRM: The Full-time Stasi Employees

3 THE CANDIDATE: Stasi Informants

4 IN THE LINE OF SIGHT: Targeted by the Stasi

5 THE STASI IN EVERYDAY LIFE

6 THE DOWNFALL

CONCLUSION

Notes

Bibliography

Index

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

R

S

T

U

V

W

Y

Z

Maps and photographs