Germany (Lonely Planet, 6th Edition) - Andrea Schulte-Peevers [20]
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A Train of Powder by Rebecca West ranks as one of the most informative books on the Nuremberg trials.
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A NEW EAST & WEST GERMANY
In this frosty East–West climate, the Rhineland town of Bonn hosted West German state representatives in September 1948 who met to hammer out a draft constitution for a new Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; BRD by its German initials). A year later, 73-year-old Konrad Adenauer (1876–1967), a Cologne mayor during the Weimar years, was elected as West Germany’s first chancellor. Bonn – Adenauer’s home town – was the natural candidate for the FRG’s provisional capital.
East Germany reciprocated by adopting its own constitution for the German Democratic Republic (GDR; DDR by its German initials). On paper, it guaranteed press and religious freedoms and the right to strike. In reality, such freedoms were limited and no one dared strike. In its chosen capital of Berlin, a bicameral system was set up (one chamber was later abolished) and Wilhelm Pieck became the country’s first president. From the outset, however, the Socialist Unity Party led by party boss Walter Ulbricht dominated economic, judicial and security policy.
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Interviews with former Stasi men in the mid-1990s form the basis of Australian journalist Anna Funder’s Stasiland – crammed with fresh and alternative insights into what the men of the Stasi did after it was disbanded.
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In keeping with centralist policies, the East German states of Saxony, Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia were divided into 14 regional administrations and the notorious Ministry for State Security (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, also known as the Stasi) was created in 1950 to ensure SED loyalty (see the boxed text). Workers became economically dependent on the state through the collectivisation of farms, and nationalisation of production such as the Horch car factory in Zwickau near Leipzig (which later produced Trabants as the GDR answer to the West Germany’s Volkswagen).
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STASI SECRETS
The Ministry of State Security, commonly called the Stasi, was based on the Soviet KGB and served as the ‘shield and sword’ of the SED. Almost a state within the state, it boasted an astonishing spy network of about 90,000 full-time employees and 180,000 inoffizielle Mitarbeiter (unofficial co-workers) by 1989. Since 1990, only 250 Stasi agents have been prosecuted and since the 10-year limit ended in 2000, future trials are unlikely.
When it came to tracking down dissidents, there were no limits. One unusual collection of files found in its Berlin archive kept a record of dissidents’ body odour. Some dissidents who had been hauled in for interrogation were made to deliver an odour sample, usually taken with a cotton-wool pad from the unfortunate victim’s crotch. The sample was then stored in a hermetic glass jar for later use if a dissident suddenly disappeared. To track down a missing dissident by odour, Stasi sniffer dogs were employed. These specially trained groin-sniffing curs were euphemistically known as ‘smell differentiation dogs’.
What happened to the dogs after the Stasi was disbanded is unclear. What happened to the six million files the Stasi accumulated in its lifetime is a greater cause for concern. In January 1990, protestors stormed the Stasi headquarters in Berlin (today a museum, memorial and research centre – Click here for details), demanding to see the files. Since then, the controversial records have been assessed and safeguarded by a Berlin-based public body. In mid-2000, 1000-odd information-packed CDs, removed by the US Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA’s) Operation Rosewood immediately after the fall of the Wall in 1989, were returned to Germany. A second batch of CIA files (apparently acquired by the CIA from a Russian KGB officer in 1992) were handed over in 2003. The files, for the first time, matched code names with real names. Some of those with an inoffizieller Mitarbeiter file are