Die volkseigene opposition? The stasi and alternative culture in the GDR
This article examines the character of oppositional movements in the GDR in the light of post‐Wende revelations of Stasi infiltration. We look at responses by members of the alternative culture to accusations that their work during the GDR was rendered ineffective by the Stasi and is consequently of little importance to a historical reappraisal of the GDR. Whilst they were clearly aware of the Stasi, whose influence did have an effect, our evidence suggests that this influence was not total. Current debates about the Stasi are creating an unbalanced view of the actual situation in the GDR before 1989 in that the Stasi is being portrayed as an organisation of almost Orwellian Big Brother proportions. Our article attempts to deconstruct this paradigm and argues that the complicity of the few with the MfS should not invalidate the activities of the majority of those involved in the alternative culture.
The East German Ministry of State Security and East German Society during the Honecker Era, 1971–1989
The East German Ministry of State Security enjoys a reasonably well-founded reputation as an omniscient and omnipresent agent of domination. Not only did its army of officers and agents impose on GDR society a system of surveillance unprecedented in its comprehensiveness, but its telephone tappers and spies were able to penetrate the innermost secrets of West Germany’s political and social institutions. One chancellor, Willy Brandt, resigned as a result of the Stasi’s penetration of his office, and another, Helmut Kohl, has suffered severe damage to his reputation after the discovery of Stasi recordings of telephone conversations concerning nefarious financial dealings within the ranks of the CDU. An examination of the files which the MfS kept on writers, peace activists, environmentalists, athletes, academics, skinheads and punks, as well as on its own spies, testifies to the ministry’s paranoiac hunt for suspected ‘hostile-negative forces’ and to its bureaucratic zeal for the gathering of data. The surviving archival materials, if arranged end-to-end, would stretch for about 178 kilometres. By the late 1980s, over 91,000 full-time MfS officials and about 175,000 unofficial collaborators (Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter — IMs), that is, about one in fifty East German adults, as well as several thousand West German citizens, were contributing to this mountain of paper.
In 1926: Living at the Edge of Time
User's manual: airplanes Americans in Paris asssembly lines automobiles bars boxing bullfighting cremation dancing elevators employees endurance engineers gomina gramophones hunger artists jazz league of nations mountaineering movie palaces mummies murder ocean liners polarities railroads reporters revues roof gardens six-day races stars strikes telephones timepieces wireless communication. Codes: action versus impotence authenticity versus artificiality centre versus periphery immanence versus transcendence individuality versus collectivity male versus female present versus past silence versus noise sobriety versus exuberance uncertainty versus reality action = impotence (tragedy) authenticity = artificiality (life) centre = periphery (infinitude) immanence = transendence (death) indiciduality = collectivity (leader) male = female (gender trouble) present = past (eternity). frames: after learning from history being-in the-worlds of 1926 - Martin Heidegger, Hans Friedrich Blunck, Carl Van Vechten.