A Chosen Few - Mark Kurlansky [205]
Irene had been naive about the changes that were taking place. Walking over to the West, she did not at first realize that her country was about to vanish. “I never thought that the GDR would be lost,” she frequently said. “I think I just didn't want to believe it. Now I can't believe that I didn't believe it.” She always referred to the unification as “the beginning of the not-the-GDR time.”
“I thought this would be the time for the better East Germany.” But soon there were elections, and the right-of-center parties backing Helmut Kohl won 48 percent of the vote. The Communists, who were offering the kind of program to reform the GDR that Irene had hoped for, only won 16 percent, and in October 1990, Irene's country ceased to exist.
The Stasi, the GDR's state security police or Staatssicherheits-dienst, died with its state, and now its secrets were left unguarded. The Stasi had wanted to compromise everybody. According to Stasi records, it had deployed 100,000 agents and another 400,000 “unofficial agents,” its euphemism for informers. Some East Germans had spied for the Stasi. Others had fed it information. Others had simply been duped into an association. It had reputedly operated one of the world's finest espionage networks. It even stole the underwear of suspects, filing it in jars so that later they could be tracked down by sniffer dogs. Before it covered up the graffiti on its walls, it would analyze the lettering and brushstrokes. It collected minute details of peoples’ lives, such as what time they went to bed. But it also did an excellent job of monitoring popular sentiment. Stasi files showed that there had been a growing disenchantment with the regime.
Once the Stasi files became accessible, people started finding that their friend Irene had talked about them. “You know, I gossip with everyone, and I gossiped with them. That was the problem,” Irene explained without a hint of embarrassment. Someone found a postcard they had sent Irene years ago stored in a Stasi file with a notation that Irene had turned it over. On the other hand, someone else found a letter Irene had written them, apparently turned over by someone else and filed by the Stasi, with the notation “This must be the Irene who teaches at Humboldt.” She had signed only with her first name.
Irene had used her bilingual skills to show journalists and other foreigners around and then report to the Stasi on their activities. She was frequently questioned on her colleagues’ attitudes about the regime, and later on about people she knew in Jewish circles. But Irene tended to see everyone in her circle as loving the GDR. By 1985 the Stasi were convinced that she was untrustworthy and were having others inform on her.
After the collapse Irene was the one compromised German who seemed to like talking about the Stasi and who often mentioned it. Gertainly the many parliamentarians from the former East Germany who were involved with Stasi never mentioned it, because it would have destroyed their new political careers. All three new political parties in the East lost their leaders when they were ruined by Stasi revelations. Even the staff of the Committee to Dismantle the Stasi was found to include some with Stasi links.
Irene had thought that since everyone wanted to start talking about this Stasi business, she should come forward. She and a friend made a joint announcement that they had been Stasi informants. It seemed like the civic-minded thing to do at this point. Other colleagues at the university could come forward as well, she reasoned, and they could discuss this Stasi issue. “Everyone said we have to talk about it. We have to talk about the past,” Irene explained. It was the old Communist way of doing things—have a meeting and discuss it. The new German way, however, was to fire both