(2 of 2) An excerpt from “Stasi State or Socialist Paradise” by Bruni de la Motte:

Since unification, the German government has spared no effort or expense to investigate what it calls ‘crimes’ of the GDR. The Enquete Kommission (Commission of Enquiry) established by the government and given the task of investigating the ’SED dictatorship’ detailed a series of victim categories for which evidence was to be sought. These were: deaths in custody, contract assassinations by the state both inside the GDR and abroad, rendition to foreign powers, murder with the collaboration of medics, the withholding of necessary medical aid and forced adoptions. ⁵⁰

As a result, around 30,000 cases were opened by public prosecutors against former employees of the Stasi. In the end, 20 individuals were found guilty, of whom 12 were given fines and seven suspended sentences. Chief prosecutor Schaefgen was unable to find a single case of torture, the use of radioactive radiation, of pharmacological drugs, the administering of electrical shocks or similar torture methods. And certainly not for want of strenuous effort. There is a huge chasm between the lurid stories spread by the media and the facts themselves, but despite this, the same accusations are continually regurgitated.

For example, one of the big West German tabloid newspapers reported that in Stasi prisons more than 2,500 prisoners were murdered and thousands committed suicide. In reality, nobody was murdered and in almost four decades, 14 suicides took place in all the holding prisons of the State Security apparatus. ⁵¹

In contrast to the Stasi files, West German secret service (BND) files relating to the Nazi past are still kept under lock and key. In 2012, the Linke party faction in the Bundestag requested that BND files on the Nazis be made accessible. At the same time, the party also asked the government to release all files concerning any collaboration and possible obstruction of due judicial process in the prosecution of Nazi war criminals. These requests were rejected – even the files relating to top Nazi, Adolf Eichmann, remain secret.

The statistic that 180km of shelving is needed to hold all Stasi documents is continually reiterated by the authorities. You have to delve assiduously in order to find out what is actually contained in these kilometers of documentation, which include: files on individuals requesting official recognition as ‘victims of fascism’, documents about the Nazi period, about the Eastern offices of those parties - SPD, CDU and LDPD – re-established after the war, reparations paid to the Soviet Union, Soviet military tribunals and other judicial papers, information about the GDR and the West German armies, counter intelligence reports, exchange of agents, information on Western spy agencies, applications for permission to emigrate, foreign relations maintained by the parties, verbatim transcripts from Western agencies and ministries, details of town twinning between the GDR and FRG, property ownership details, survey reports on ‘attitudes of the population’, materials about housing, workplace rights, problems of food supply, imports that were made despite the Western embargo, monitoring of terrorist and extremist groups around the world, nuclear security and protection against radiation, environmental problems, CVs of those permitted to travel to the West, security measures for teams going to the Olympic Games… Much of it appears to be normal run-of-the-mill documentation that any state authority would keep. ^52 ^

Both within and outside Germany the image of the GDR as an ‘unjust/illegal state’ in which every citizen was either intimidated by the Stasi or kept under surveillance by them or both, has been firmly cemented in the consciousness with the result that the GDR today has become synonymous with the word Stasi . But those who argue that the organisation penetrated all aspects of life, ignore the memories of most of those who lived in the GDR. Their assertions provoke tedium, prickliness and defiance in the latter. If, as a GDR citizen, you were not a dissident or expressed opposition to the state or socialism as a concept, you would probably have had little or no contact with the Stasi throughout your life. But if you did express opposition – as many artists by the very nature of their work did – then you would almost certainly have dealings with it. However, the Stasi was hardly the monstrous all-seeing, omnipotent vicious organisation it has been depicted. What is also certainly true, is that the Stasi was not a corrupt force in the sense that the British police were recently shown to be.

[50] German Bundestag Enquete-Kommission. Aufarbeitung von Geschichte und Folgen der SED-Diktatur in Deutschland, Drucksache 12/7820, p. 229.

[51] Ralph Hartmann. Die DDR unterm Lügenberg (Berlin: edition ost, 2010)

[52] Daniela Dahn „Der Waschzwang des Staates - Wem gehört die Gauck-Behörde?”, Süddeutsche Zeitung 17./18.1.1998.