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The Stasi and State Surveillance in East
The Stasi and State Surveillance in East Germany
Barnaby Carter (TR) The Stasi (Ministry for State Security) was the name given to the secret police that operated in the German Democratic Republic, better known as East Germany.
East Germany was created in 1949 and lasted until 1990 when Germany reunified. It was the Soviet sector of post-war Germany, with West Germany created out of the British, American, and French zones.
Berlin, despite being in the Soviet sector, had a zone designated to the West. East Germany was behind the Iron Curtain and was a communist state. The economy of East Germany was considerably smaller than its western counterpart, with over 100,000 citizens who tried to escape between 1961 to 1988 because of the poor economic conditions and the limited rights. Despite its name, the German Democratic Republic was neither a republic nor democratic and was a communist dictatorship in which there were no free elections nor freedom of movement. 9% of East Germans lived in poverty, and many were unhappy with the regime, which eventually led to its collapse. The Stasi was one part of this regime which caused a lot of suffering. The Stasi police terrorised the citizens of the GDR for 40 years. The Stasi’s role was to spy on its own people, gathering information and brutally dealing with resistance to the government. The Stasi kept files on 5.5 million East Germans despite an absence of former offences, due to its informers.
The Stasi would bust plans to escape from East Germany, arrest or kill those plotting against the government of East Germany, spy upon those who posed no threat to the government, and spy upon people abroad (the Stasi had files on 500,000 Westerners). For most of its duration, the Stasi was led by Erik Mielke (head of the Stasi from 1957 to shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989). He had joined the Communist Party at the age of 18 and ruled the Stasi with a steel grip. Like many
other policing institutions in the Eastern bloc, the Stasi was more loyal to Moscow than it was to its own state. Mielke is a perfect example of this because of his ties to Moscow. Mielke escaped arrest in the Soviet Union and was subsequently recruited by the NKVD creating strong ties to Moscow.
The Stasi operated from their headquarters in Berlin, reporting directly to the leadership of East Germany. Most Stasi operations were based in East Germany, however one branch of the Stasi, the HVA (Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung), designated its operations abroad, mostly in West Germany. They would take part in espionage, active operations (such as retrieving escaped citizens), and counterintelligence against NATO countries. Many East Germans became informers because the Stasi offered them a physical reward (money), or they were blackmailed by the Stasi (promised immunity from a threat of prosecution) or the Stasi appealed to their patriotism in such a way that they were persuaded to spy on their friends. There were around 200,000 informers in East Germany in 1989, East Germany having the highest proportion of informants and secret police ever, 1 in 60 people were involved by 1989. The Stasi would also spy on people by tapping into their methods of communication. For example, they would steam open letters, copy them, file them, and then reseal them. They would bug homes when they knew the inhabitants were out, and they would bug the phone infrastructure of buildings. They would send in informants with cameras hidden in their ties and use other obscure techniques to gather information. The Stasi would also resort to more violent methods, such as torture, murder and imprisonment. One of the Stasi’s favourite methods of torture was sleep deprivation. They would lock the supposed offender in a very small cell, with room only to stand up. Even if you did manage to fall asleep a guard would wake you. This was all to extract an often-false confession, but was always effective, because someone who has gone a week without sleep will do anything to sleep. This was a preferred method of the Stasi because it left no marks on their body and could not be traced back to them. Mariam Weber is a classic example of the East German regime and the role the Stasi played in everyday life. It was during the year 1968 (Mariam was 16), when the Prague spring was in full effect, when a church in Leipzig was demolished by the state. This caused revolt amongst the citizens of Leipzig, which was put down very harshly by the Stasi. Mariam and her friend thought that they should do something about this, and thus bought a children’s ink and stamp set. They proceeded to make leaflets with mottos such as ‘Consultation, not water cannon!’ to protest against the regime. They posted them to one of the boys in their class; the leaflets were reported, and Mariam was caught. Mariam and her friend were placed in solitary confinement for a month and eventually broke and confessed. Whilst awaiting her trial, she decided to jump over the Berlin wall. She got close at Bornholmer bridge, within sight of the West, when she was captured by border guards. She was taken to Stasi HQ, and was deprived of sleep, despite telling the truth, until she told them an invented story about how she had met an escape organisation in a bar and had arranged her escape through them. She faced many consequences and became an enemy of the state because of her attempt for freedom and was spied on until the fall of the Berlin Wall. This story shows the brutality of the Stasi and their willingness to go to any lengths to achieve their means, even if it meant torturing a sixteen-year-old.
This brutal regime came to an end on 9th November 1989, when Günter Schabowski, an East German politician, gave an interview misreading new travel regulations, leading to crowds swarming the Berlin Wall, and with the civilians outnumbering the guards, the Berlin Wall fell. A month prior, there had been mass protests in East Germany about the government, and the government had decided to loosen the border control slightly to satisfy the citizens. When handed notes in his interview about the new regulations, Schabowski mistakenly said on camera that the new regulations were effective immediately, causing a swarm towards the wall. The guards did not open fire, both because they wanted the new regulations to be in effect and were fed up with the government, and because they mistakenly thought that the new regulations were effective already and that they should allow people through. Thus, the Berlin wall fell, and Germany was re-united within the year, causing the end of the Stasi. The Stasi file archives are held in Berlin, and if the Stasi kept a file on you, you can now request it from the archives. In total, the Stasi kept files on more than 6 million people out of the 16 million people living in East Germany by 1989, more than a third, the most information kept on a single population in human history.
