The Reality of the STASI State in East Germany
Yesterday, I wrote about the affinity of so many on the Western Left for the old Communist East Germany. What they wish to restore, if only they could, is the nanny state without the compulsory police apparatus they claim to disdain. What they do not admit to is that to realize their people’s paradise the state would have to enforce the system by precisely those repressive mechanisms.
That is why, in fact, the DDR created the STASI, their Ministry of State Security. To gain acceptance for the socialist goals demanded by the state, they had to create an atmosphere of fear – without which, so many citizens would refuse to accept the life the regime’s rulers mandated. Of course, the rulers claimed it was done for the good of the people. When the STASI sent its agents to Nicaragua to train its secret police during the Sandinista regime’s heyday in the 1980’s, the Sandinistas cleverly named their secret police- I kid you not- “The Sentinel of The People’s Happiness,” a slogan which was inscribed on the front of the Interior Ministry’s headquarters.
Take the realm of art, which the regime claimed thrived in the years of the socialist society being built in East Germany. As A.J. Goldmann notes in his review of a 20th anniversary art show on art in both the East and West during the years of the Wall, “in the repressive atmosphere of East Germany, artists often paid a price for making provocative art.” One artist serves as an example. Annemirl Bauer found that her drawings inflamed the STASI, especially one of a naked man suspending from a clotheslines while being pierced through his navel and feet by a guard. As a result, she was expelled from the Artists’s Association, and forbidden by the regime to paint. Another artist, Roger Loewig, was imprisoned for “agitation and propaganda endangering the state.” The STASI destroyed his novel, although a powerful triptych, displayed in the current exhibit, reveals how he composed art that meant to expose the fear that always was beneath the surface of everyday life.
As for the nature of the regime, no one has said it better than journalist John Simpson, the BBC’s World Affairs editor. Simpson knows that: “Nowadays you come across a certain amount of nostalgia for the old East Germany.” But, he writes, “in reality it was a deeply unattractive place. The secret police didn’t just watch people, they beat them up, forced confessions from them, ruined their lives. They only stopped guillotining enemies of the state in 1968, and after that they shot them. Life was full of shortages – except for the politicians and the secret police.” Recalling what it was like to travel from West Germany to East from 1978 through the mid 80s, he talks about what an intimidating experience it was: “On the Western side, everything seemed normal and safe but as you passed into East Berlin, a huge camera lens was trained on you, searching out your thoughts and intentions. And if there was anything wrong with your visa they would keep you in solitary confinement for hours.”
Next, Simpson says, “after the men with guns had gone through everything you’d brought with you, and confiscated any books they didn’t like, you passed through a creaking gate and found yourself in a darkened street with no cars or taxis and streetlamps suffering permanent brown-out. Nothing was what it seemed.” The government assigned him an official minder, who continually told him how wonderful life was in the DDR. She and her family, he was assured, led a good life. Later, when she was sure she was not being bugged, the minder whispered to him, “‘I’ve got to get away from here. There’s no future for our children.’”
Thank you for the article. I always advise visitors to Berlin to see the Stasi Museum rather than the more centrally located DDR Museum or the overpriced Checkpoint Charlie Museum. You can get Ostalgie anywhere, but the Stasi Museum is one of a kind. You can enjoy a coffee or tea in the Stasi executive lounge in the original seats and think about what kind of conversations and decisions were made there. Chilling.
I agree that is a shame that the displays are mostly in German, but they present so much raw information it would be impossible to appreciate otherwise. Of particular note is the collection of internal propaganda meant to keep up the Stasi spirits in the last days of the regime.
The same is true for the Stasi prison, Hohenschoenhausen, where tours are run by former prisoners. Anyone who visits Berlin and has an interest in politics or history should go there as well, but they have limited English tours. To hear the stories from the people themselves is a gift and a strong antidote against the cutesy aspects of Ostalgie.
This week Germans were shocked to learn that almost 17,000 of their civil servants had once worked for the feared East German secret police, the Stasi. Commentators on Friday are happy to argue the relevance and accuracy of the figures but they all agree about the need for debate on an uncomfortable topic.
http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=2200618
http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=2191896
Thank you, Ron. That’s socialism:
When it all doesn’t go the way they think it should, they will pull out the guns and MAKE us do it their way, just like Stalin, Mao, Ché, Pol Pot, Ortega, =:obama.
As Hayek has proven, central planning MUST lead to suppression, then oppression.
They’ve got dozens of nutty Eugenicists and Communists “czars” running around in your White House as a shadow government. A few strutting narcissists manage the world’s largest economy in operatic hilarity while we suffer daily barrages of Big Brother lectures.
It’s WAAAY too late. Their ball began rolling down hill 40 years ago while Americans slept (not me!).
They’ve now got three generations behind them.
Theme park of Democrats! This is what they want and pine for, folks! East Germany had free healthcare and full employment for everyone, you know.
In 1982 I spent 2 weeks in the DDR as part of a college semester in Munich. My German had become passable enough that I could communicate with people, especially at youth hostels, when lubricated with appalling East German schnapps. Lots of quick asides with individuals who were not as ideologically pure as their supervisors had thought. Lots of despair. Dirt and shoddy merchandise everywhere. I will never forget overhearing in a shop “The cheeze only comes tomorrow”.
When I visited Hungary, the booze was better and the regime less strangulating. Hungarians credited this to their more relaxed national character, and they may have been right.
Our German language teacher introduced us to the music of Wolf Biermann, which I found incredibly poignant. Most of my West German friends thought Biermann was a total fool for believing in socialism when he had seen the kind of system it brought about and suffered under its boot.
The really ironic thing was that my Quaker-affiliated college had arranged the visit to East Germany in order to encourage international brotherhood. All of us returned with a great sense of pity for the East Germans, but as fierce anti-Communists.
“Their ball began rolling down hill 40 years ago while Americans slept (not me!).”
Affirmative action policies were firmly entrenched by 1969. They promoted inflated grades for the politically favored. The soft science departments of our universities officially declared that academic excellence was of secondary importance next to pleasing those in power. Of course, they were never that blunt. These ideological goons preferred to employ Orwellian language to hide the nasty truth. This inevitably lead to our present predicament where many people possessing a liberal arts Ph.D. cannot even read a typical op-ed editorial. Those who have obtained these phony degrees obviously don’t wish to surrender their unearned financial gains and other privileges. They constitute a powerful faction within the Democratic Party—which is ultimately pushing America towards outright Communism of the East German variety.
David Hume predicted and described Communist tyranny in a few paragraphs of his chapter “On Justice” in his Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. The principle is equality of property, the problem is enforcement – who is to do the enforcing, what are the consequences for incentives, etc.
“The principle is equality of property, the problem is enforcement – who is to do the enforcing, what are the consequences for incentives, etc.”
This is why the peculiar writings of John Rawls are so popular within the leftist community. Any attempt at equality—inevitably leads to the empowerment of elites. They literally become benevolent dictators. These folks also will be amply awarded for their efforts supposedly on our behalf. Rawls, in his heart of hearts, was a soft totalitarian. These people subconsciously do not give a damn whether our national economy eventually reminds one of the former DDR. They take it for granted that the system will make sure they are guaranteed an affluent lifestyle. The hell with the rest of the unwashed masses.
It is great to read this, also chilling. God help us if we, in our stupor, stumble on to this path of one party rule. One wonders how far down this road we have already passed, and how much longer before we roll out 1776 v2.0.
A lens focused on all you do, your intentions and affiliations… Sounds just like England today and where America is heading. Only the Western powers figured out to do it slowly and with subtly while convincing everyone it was for their own good. Once our freedoms are all gone the State Police will be right behind to ensure conformance with the same brutality, disappearances and manipulations.
Makes me wonder why Obama says he needs his own private internal police, loyal to only him. Or maybe we all know exactly what it’s for.
It would be nice to set-up an exchange with Cuba for all of those who are pining away for the “Good old Days” of East Germany. Cuba is closer, tropical, and very similar in their ways. So why not let those who want those days exchange places with those who want the get the heck out?
Heck that’d be great for Fidel too since he’d get brand new workers!
We’d get people who actually want to be here and are thankful of it.
Good article. It’s really important to get the message out about communism, especially to the younger generation. The only improvement I would say is to make sure that both bookends are presented. The stasi represents the final police state, but long before that was a leader that promised a better life if you would give up just a few more of your freedoms. Next thing you know a few troublemakers get rounded up and sent to the gulags and forget about a better life, its just a question of staying alive.
“The really ironic thing was that my Quaker-affiliated college had arranged the visit to East Germany in order to encourage international brotherhood. All of us returned with a great sense of pity for the East Germans, but as fierce anti-Communists.”
In 1965-66 I was a graduate student in international affairs at the Free University of Berlin–a university that had been started by students and faculty who left the Humboldt University in East Berlin (one could still travel from east to west in the late 40′s) and started the FU.
The most powerful experience of my young life was a two-month break I spent traveling with a friend whose family had escaped from the “DDR” in 1954 and gone to South Africa. We traveled through Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, and spent two weeks in the “DDR”, mostly visiting with his relatives. I also traveled many times from west to east Berlin. Fortunately–mostly through the patience of my friend–my German had become good enough that I was able to communicate well with the east Germans I met; in most cases I was the first American they had ever seen.
As with the commenter cited above, this trip converted me from a liberal who considered himself a “citizen of the world” to a fervent patriot and anti-communist.
In 1990 I took my two sons to east Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland, so they could hear first-hand what life had been like just months before.
We owe it to ourselves, particularly to future generations, that the failure of the “socialist experiment” not be prettied up, distorted, and blamed on poor execution (pun intended) by Stalin. One west German economist tried to tell my sons just that, but they had been told in no uncertain terms by a Pole named “George” in Krakow: “Don’t listen to the people who say ‘Yes, communism was bad, but socialism is completely different’”.
Radosh’s excellent article points as well to strategic dangers: 1. The Checka’s KGB successor, Putin, had a German portfolio when he was an agent and Putin’s KGB run state remains a danger to the West particularly if we continue down the path of retreat begun this past January. Will American troops eventually be withdrawn from Germany, they who have done so much to guard against the twin evils of Nazism and Communism? 2. Radosh’s reminder of the role of East German security forces in Nicaragua under Ortega should alert us to his return to that country and to the growing threat from Chavez and our President’s appeasement and emboldening of these dictators. 3. The role Russia plays in arming Chavez and the role Iran and Hizbullah play in South America constitute immediate dangers to our strategic rear. We face a global enemy in both radical Islam and in neo/post communist regimes who generally work together (see Russia’s supply of missile technology and nuclear facillities to Iran in my article in Midstream April 1999 The New Russia and Iranian “Moderates” and Russia’s role in Latin America in Midstream December 2000, Russia, Venezuela and the Palestinian Authority).
Just think, in another decade we will all be Osties. One nation, united.
Just think, in another decade we will all be Osties.