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‘I think at the end the Stasi had so much information,’ the fair man says, ‘that they thought everyone was an enemy, because everyone was under observation. I don’t think they knew who was for them, or against, or whether everyone was just shutting up.’ He is shy and looks at his hands, closed around his coffee mug, when he speaks. ‘When I find a file where they’ve been watching a family in their living room for twenty years I ask myself: what sort of people are they who want all this knowledge for themselves?’

‘Are you moved by what you find sometimes?’ I ask.

The young woman answers, ‘When I find love letters I think, good grief, they really opened everything—and how many hands did these pass through? How many times were they copied? I’d hate for that to have happened to me. I don’t feel too good about seeing them myself when I piece them together.’

The dark man says he is most shocked by how the Stasi used people’s own distress against them. ‘When they were in prison, for instance, offering to let them out on condition that they spy for the Stasi.’ I think of Koch’s father having to change political parties or be exiled to a Russian camp, or Frau Paul, who could have been bait in a trap to catch a westerner, and even of Julia, imprisoned in her country and offered freedom within it only if she would inform on the people in her life. I think of the generational cycles of tragedy the Germans have been inflicting on themselves.

‘But this is not about the individuals,’ the dark man continues. ‘It is about a system that so manipulated people that it drove them to do these things. It shows how people can be used against one another. I’m reluctant to condemn them because the Stasi were also manipulated, they too needed jobs.’ The others are nodding. ‘On the other hand,’ he says, ‘there were lots of people who just said no. Not everyone can be bought.’ He tells of an engineer who refused to inform, ‘And nothing more happened to him. The file was simply closed.’

I am reminded of the story of a factory worker who, after she was approached to inform, announced loudly the next day at the canteen table, ‘Guess what! You wouldn’t credit it, but they think me so reliable that I’ve been asked to inform!’ Her cover blown, she was useless and she was left alone.

The young woman says, ‘I think there were advantages over there, that we forget, particularly for mothers and children. I’m a single mum and I know what I’m talking about. I had to work, and it was hard to find a kindergarten place. I have a friend who lived over there and she says she didn’t want for anything…’

‘And rents were lower,’ the gap-toothed woman on my right adds.

‘The kindergartens were there,’ the dark man says, ‘because they wanted to get to the children early to bring them up loyal to the state.’

‘Sure,’ the young mother says. ‘But it all became crudely clear to me just after the Wall came down. I met a couple in the street who’d just come over from the east and had no money and nowhere to go, so I said they could stay with me. They were with me for a weekend and I showed them around. We went to Karstadt department store and looked in the food section. They were beside themselves. “How many kinds of ketchup do you have?” they said as they looked at the shelves. Then I thought to myself, it really is too much—there must be a middle way. Do we really need thirty different kinds of ham and fifteen kinds of ketchup?’

‘The mistake the GDR made was to force people into a position,’ the dark man says, ‘either you are for us or an enemy. And if you then came to think of yourself as an enemy you had to ask yourself: what am I doing here? They wanted to put everything into their narrow schema, but life simply didn’t fit into it.’ He pauses, and the others wait for him to finish. ‘I think we need to remember that they came here for the freedom, not for fifteen kinds of ketchup.’

Herr Raillard sees me out. I check with him what the consequences were when someone who