Stasiland_ Stories From Behind the Berlin Wall - Anna Funder [18]
‘Everyone, every single one of us was photographed. And you could see in advance the path the procession was to take from the chapel to the grave: it was marked at regular intervals all along by the Stasi men, just standing around.’ When they reached the grave, there were two of them sitting there on a trestle, ready to watch the whole thing. ‘As soon as the last person threw on their flowers,’ Miriam says, ‘the cemetery people started piling on the earth and it was too quick. It was just too quick.’
Miriam walks barefoot across the room to a desk and picks up some papers in a plastic sheath. ‘I made a copy of this for you,’ she says, coming back to the table. It is part of the Stasi file on Charlie Weber: a handwritten report signed by a Major Maler. In it all the divisional plans are set out for the organisation and surveillance of the Weber funeral: Miriam’s telephone is to be tapped; she is to be called in for a ‘Clarification of Circumstances’ the day before; sound recording technology is to be used at the site; a ‘photographic documentation’ of the event is to be made; citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany attending the funeral are to be supervised to ensure they leave the GDR before curfew at the end of the day. ‘The name of the pastor who will conduct the service regrettably could not be ascertained by this operative. Should negative-enemy behaviour occur during the funeral all men are given orders to use force to quell it on the grounds that such actions would contravene the dignity of the cemetery premises.’ Major Maler noted that the head of the Southern Cemetery, a Herr Mohre, had guaranteed the Stasi complete freedom of movement for the Weber ‘action’, and that should any of the Stasi officers be questioned by workers at the cemetery, they should be referred to Colleague Mohre. Mohre knows that Maler is an officer of the Stasi, and also knows him by his true name, not his undercover identity.
All of this Miriam could have guessed, from what she saw on the day. She points to the next line and reads it aloud: ‘No definitive information is available as to the date for the cremation. This date can be ascertained from Colleague Mohre on or after 31.10.80.’
Miriam hands the file to me. ‘On 30 October we buried a coffin. We buried a coffin and they are setting the date for cremation the next day. Either there is no-one inside that thing, or there is someone else in it.’
Miriam went to the Interior Ministry, and added the claim of ‘Transportation of Coffin’ to her application to leave the GDR. She wanted to get out, and she wanted to rebury Charlie in West Germany.
Every month or so she would be called in to the Stasi for a chat. It went on for years. ‘What’s all this about transportation of the coffin?’ they asked her. ‘What do you want with the coffin?’
‘What do you think I want with the coffin? To take it for a Sunday stroll? I want to do with the coffin what one does with a coffin: I want to bury it.’
In 1985 they said to her, ‘You probably want to have the contents examined, do you?’
‘What if I do? What am I likely to find other than that he hanged himself, as you say?’
‘You know there will be nothing left in the coffin. You won’t be able to prove anything.’
‘Well, why are you so preoccupied with it, then?’ she said, and took it as an admission of guilt. After a time Miriam stopped obeying the cards that appeared in her letterbox summoning her to their offices to clarify some circumstances. The only thing that ever got clearer was that they had the power, in the circumstances.
‘It was silly. I stopped thinking I’d ever get out. They were playing with me like a mouse.’
At 8 am one morning in May 1989, Miriam’s phone rang. It was the Stasi. They couldn’t say why, but she was required to report