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| Some three million Germans have visited the archives |
Twenty
years after Germany opened the former East Germany's secret police files, the
extent of the country's internal espionage is still astonishing. Some were
shocked by what they found, others relieved.
Around 1.6
million photos, slides and negatives augmented the files that filled 111
kilometers (69 miles) of shelves. Together with 15,500 bags of shredded spy
documents, the archives reveal just how extensively East Germany's secret
police, known as the Stasi, kept tabs on about six million people - more than a
third of the country's population when the government collapsed in 1990.
On January
2, 1992, in compliance with Germany's new Stasi Document Law, the Stasi
Archives in Berlin were officially opened to the public - especially to former
East Germans curious to see their files. The law also provided for background
checks on civil servants to determine the extent of their participation in the
regime.
In the
gazes of the Stasi
Author and
poet Lutz Rathenow, and state commissioner for Stasi documents in the state of
Saxony, was one of the first to visit the archives the day they opened. Due to
his criticism of the East German state, Rathenow was a target of Stasi
espionage for a long time. Rathenow was arrested for his critical remarks in
1976, and the next year, three months before he was to take his final exams in
German and history, Rathenow was thrown out of the University of Jena.
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| Poppe was amazed how often she had been spied on |
"I
waited fervently for that day, January 2, 1992, when the truth would finally
become public," Rathenow remembered. In the months leading to the archives'
opening, Rathenow and the expatriated East German musician Wolf Biermann were
heavily criticized in the media for doubting that author Sascha Anderson had
served as a Stasi informant.
From that
day, on the 59-year-old Rathenow says he felt a wave of relief. "Had that
day not come, many lives of former dissidents would have been destroyed because
the rumors or plots to destroy their reputation couldn't have been revealed as
such," said Rathenow, one of nearly three million citizens to have visited
the archives, along with numerous journalists and scholars.
Systematic
destruction
Civil
rights activist Ulrike Poppe was another former citizen who came on the opening
day to see her file. She remembers being amazed by the sheer immensity of the
files.
"They
put nearly 40 files in front of us in which I found detailed "reports,
surveillance logs and plans to tarnish [my] reputation," said Poppe, who
today serves the state of Brandenburg as commissioner for "coming to terms
with the effects of the communist dictatorship."
"There
were many more [informants] than I had suspected," she said. "The
frequency of the surveillance and the hundreds of logs amazed me."
Poppe
learned that a camera had been installed across the street from her house
"so that everyone who entered our house was recorded."
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| Demonstrators stormed the Stasi archives in 1990 |
Poppe also
read the Stasi's plans to destroy her. "For the first time, I saw how they
systematically discredited people's reputations, organized professional
failures and planned break-ins into people's apartments."
Tears and
laughter
Rathenow
vividly remembers the variety of reactions on that first day the archives were
opened.
"Tears
poured at one table," Rathenow remembers. At the table sat Vera Lengsfeld
- another opponent of the communist regime, today a politician in Chancellor
Angela Merkel's governing Christian Democrats. She had just learned that her
then-husband had been an informant against her.
At another
table, meanwhile, Rathenow heard laughter as those reading scoffed the poor
grammar of some of the Stasi's informants.
Rathenow
surprised himself by feeling sympathy with his own spies: "I noticed that
many of them sent out against me had qualms about it and didn't report back
everything to the Stasi," he said. "I actually forgave them as I
read."
Surprising
loyalty
Rathenow
was also relieved to find his close friends had not been informants. "That
was in itself a positive experience," he said. "I experienced these
files more as evidence that they hadn't betrayed me. Seeing the files even
cleared two or three people I had suspected."
Ulrike
Poppe's experience was similar. "In the previous months I had received
reports about which of my friends were Stasi informants. But I found even more
people had withstood pressure from the Stasi and said no."
Poppe said
that seeing her files did not make her more suspicious than before. "We
were always suspicious in the GDR in general. I knew how skilfully they
recruited informants," she said. "Today I am more trusting because I
know that that time is over."
'It can't
just be wiped away'
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| For Rathenow, the story is not quite over yet. |
Rathenow
thinks it will take another 20 years for Germans to process Stasi history
"The
files must remain open so that people can gain closure on the GDR chapter [of
Germany's history]," he said.
"It's
not a stain you can just wipe away," said Rathenow, who predicts that it
will take until 2035 or 2036 for Germany to fully process what took place.
"To
understand the motive of the GDR system, one has to read the files," he
said.
In the
state of Saxony, Rathenow offers educational programs for schoolchildren and
teenagers so that the "evil side of the system" is not forgotten with
the new generations.
Poppe finds
she also has a great deal of work to do in her state of Brandenburg. "The
majority of Brandenburgers are still interested in the history," she said.
"Most of them are also opposed to former Stasi employees working in the
civil service."
Poppe says
Brandenburg schools continue to show interest in material on the Stasi they can
teach to students.
"There's
never going to be a point in history where you can say, 'Now we've come to
terms with it all.' "
Author: Arne Lichtenberg / dl
Editor: Ben Knight
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