Stasiland_ Stories From Behind the Berlin Wall - Anna Funder [31]
As the Party was losing its grip on the country, it started negotiating with the Runden Tisch, the consortium of East German citizens’ rights activists and church groups. But even these were riddled with Stasi informers. Nevertheless, when the Runden Tisch passed a resolution at its first meeting on 7 December 1989 demanding that free elections be held, and that the Stasi be dissolved under civilian control, most of the informers voted in favour. It seems they felt compelled, in order to maintain their cover, to vote for measures to destroy the regime that employed them.
From 1989 to October 1990 debate raged hot in Germany as to what to do with the Stasi files. Should they be opened or burnt? Should they be locked away for fifty years and then opened, when the people in them would be dead or, possibly, forgiven? What were the dangers of knowing? Or the dangers of ignoring the past and doing it all again, with different coloured flags or neckerchiefs or helmets?
In the end, some files were destroyed, some locked away, and some opened. The Runden Tisch decided the Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung (the overseas arm of the Stasi) could disband itself. Too many files concerning too many foreign countries, not least the West German administration which had been infiltrated by Stasi spies, were in this trove, and they were too dangerous.
That left the files the Stasi kept on the people inside the GDR. Many East Germans, particularly those who had been in power, or were informers, argued against making them available. The West German government argued this too. Did it fear embarassment from what the files might reveal—its own dealings which supported the regime? Or would there be indiscriminate bloodletting, as people took revenge on informers?
In August 1990 the first and only elected parliament of the GDR passed a law granting the right for people to see their own files. But the West German government, in its draft Unification Treaty for the two countries, prescribed that the files would all be delivered to the Federal Archives in Koblenz, West Germany, where, most likely, they would be locked away.
Ordinary people in the GDR were horrified. They feared that all this information about them might continue to be used, or that they would never know how their lives had been manipulated by the Firm. Protests began. On 4 September 1990 campaigners occupied the lobby here, and a week later they began a hunger strike. The protesters were successful, and provisions were included in the Unification Treaty regulating access to the files.
On 3 October 1990, the day of German reunification and the day that the GDR ceased to exist, the East German pastor Joachim Gauck took office as head of the newly formed Stasi File Authority. It was a close call, but Germany was the only Eastern Bloc country in the end that so bravely, so conscientiously, opened its files on its people to its people.
The group leaves, not even muttering among themselves any more. I imagine they are in a hurry to get back to the international-style West Berlin hotel that reminds them of nothing, and I don’t blame them. The guide comes over and asks me about my interest in this place. I explain that after the Runden Ecke in Leipzig, I wanted to see the Stasi headquarters. I say though, that I’m looking to speak with people who confronted the regime, as much as those who represented it. ‘In that case then,’ she says, ‘you need to meet Frau Paul.’ I follow her into her office, a small space lined with binders of files, and she gives me a phone number.
I make my way up the stairs in the foyer. On the landing, glass cases display objects that hid tape recorders and cameras in order to document the ‘enemy’. There is more variety than I saw in Leipzig: a flower pot, a watering can, a petrol canister, and a car door, all with cameras of varying sizes hidden in them. There’s a thermos with a microphone in its lid, a hiking jacket with a camera sewn into the lapel pocket and an apparatus like a television antenna that could pick up conversations fifty metres away