Wednesday, 6. July: Part I: Stasi Headquarters

This was a much lighter day than the previous day. First we walked past East Side Gallery again. We think this may be a picture of the young Turks who encouraged the Armenian genocide in the early 1900s which was a model for Hitler and possibly Stalin since it showed that the rest of the world would not interfere in a genocide.

Then we took the subway and city train to Magdelena Strasse. Magdelenstrasse had a very interesting set of pictures on the walls of the subway station put up in 1986 (3 years before the fall of the wall) showing the history of the German labor movement. It started with pre-history, gave a tribute to Hegel, showed a picture of the unification in the 1870s by Bismarck, World War I, the 1917 revolution which ushered in communism, the burning of the Reichstag which Hitler blamed on the communists, Hitler’s burning of books , World War II, and the founding of the GDR in 1949 and then ended with a mural encouraging world peace (although very likely their definition of world peace was everyone being communist.)

We then walked to the Stasi headquarters museum. This museum was in the headquarters of the former Stasi government. Although most of it was in German with only a small (but apparently increasing) amount of English explanation, it seemed to have 3 sections: first an explanation of the Stasi government and quotes from leaders.

To protect our German Democratic Republic from the attacks of the enemy--this was the mission toward which the Ministry of State Security has applied all its resources since the day of its foundation. For this it has received widespread support and assistance. Young cadres, devoted to the party of the working class and members and functionaries of the Free German Youth, were delegated and had to obtain the necessary knowledge and abilities required for every day work and struggle. This was only possible because the comrades in the security forces were able to draw upon the revolutionary traditions of the working class; to apply the experiences of the German Communist Party in illegal struggle, , to learn from the Soviet Chekists, and to emulate their role models: outstanding scouts [spies] and resistance fighters. Erich Honackar, First Secretary

10 Commandments for the New Socialist Human as announced by Walter Ulbright, secretary general of the SED at the 5th Party Conference 1958. These were part of the Party program from 1963 to 1976. These all sounded so impressive, yet the lofty goals went horribly wrong.

1. You shall always campaign for the international solidarity of the working class and all working people and for the unbreakable bond of all socialist countries.

2. You shall love your fatherland and always be ready to deploy all your strength and capabilities for the defense of the workers' and farmers' power.

3. You shall help to abolish exploitation of man by man.

4. You shall do good deeds for socialism, because socialism leads to a better life for all working people.

5. You shall act in the spirit of mutual help and comradely cooperation while building up socialism, and also respect the collective and heed its critique.

6. You shall protect and enhance state-owned property.

7. You shall always strive to improve your performance, be frugal and strengthen socialist discipline at work.

8. You shall raise your children in the spirit of peace and socialism to be well educated, highly principled, and physically hardened people.

9. You shall live purely and fairly and respect your family.

10. You shall show solidarity with those who fight for their national liberation and those who defend their national independence.

The schools had pretend tanks for children in school—hardly consistent with their ideals.

In 1953 about 8,800 officials worked for the Stasi, the East German government). By 1985, it had close to 90,000 official employees and more than 200,000 unofficial employees. This included about 3,000 unoffical employees in the “area of operations” which meant they were spies in West Germany and West Berlin, including Günther Guillame, a personal assistant to Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt. After the wall fell all Stasi workers including leaders, prison guards and prison interrogators were given amnesty.

Secondly and very chilling were the examples of the kind of surveillance done and the way scents of people who were interrogated were taken from the chair after an interrogation so that it would be possible to have dogs sniff out the person in the future.

Microphone designed as a watch:

Briefcase with camera, infrared beams and generator for infrared flash. The pictures were taken through the clasp. The artificial leather is transparent to infrared light. The generator is silent.

Incinerator with observatory camera/recording equipment

Car door with hidden microphone

Tree stump with hidden camera

A petrol canister with a built in Robot star camera. The trigger was located in the handle. Devices like this were used for the surveillance of parking lots in the transit routes& motorways that connected West Germany and West Berlin.

Necktie camera which took pictures through a special pin. The camera was connected with a remote cable to a control unit.

Button hole camera

A third sections showed examples of dissidence in the DDR:

Telephone sockets and junction boxes were fitted with microphones, amplifiers and transmitters. The telephone line provided the power supply and allowed the transfer of bugged speech. This photographer was arrested as a dissident because he showed pictures of people waiting in line (Today: Strawberries at 4:30)

In 1950 eighteen year old Hermann Flade spread leaflets saying that the upcoming election was a fraud since there was no way to vote no and only one choice. ("The goose slouches as Pieck, quacks like Grotewohl and is plucked like the German people.”) He resisted arrest and slightly injured a policeman for which he was sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted to a prison term due to international protests, and he was released some years later. Meanwhile other students at the school continued the protest, printing the slogan “Freedom for Flade” on walls all over their hometown and distributing leaflets against the 1950 elections. Nineteen of them were arrested and sentenced to a combined total of 130 years in prison. A pharmacist was given 5 years in prison for selling them the paint.

Physician Robert Havemann was a Stalinist who initially supported communism, the SED, and the Berlin Wall. In 1963 he began to distance himself from the SED, at which point he was expelled from the SED, lost his professorship and was banned from any profession. When he supported the Prague Spring 2 years later, he was watched around the clock by Stasi employees, his house was bugged, his telephone tapped, and his mail opened. When he died in 1982 his Stasi file contained over 55,000 pages.

Rudolf Bahro was also a loyal communist, initially supportive of the SED and even of the Berlin Wall. But the violent repression of the reforms by Czechoslovakia communist were put down, he was disillusioned and wrote a book criticizing the SED dictatorship from a communist point of view. As soon as his book was published in the West, Bahro was arrested and taken to the central remand prison Berlin Hohenschönhausen (where we went in the afternoon.) He was sentenced to 8 years in prison for betraying secrets. A year later he was granted amnesty and left East Germany. In 1997 he—and two other prisoners who were at the same Stasi prison at the same time –died of a rare form of cancer, likely because they were exposed to radiation in order to kill them slowly.

Wolf Biermann was a singer and songwriter who had moved from West to East Germany because he believed in communism, but he became disillusioned and started to speak out about the problems. He was banned from performing in East Germany beginning in 1965, his apartment was completely bugged, and he was spied on. In 1976 he was allowed to give 2 concerts in West Germany but then he was not allowed back to come back home. This set off a wave of solidarity which was punished with a wave of arrests. Even in the west he was spied on by East Germans including his tour manager.

The last section explained the uprisings in 1953 and 1989.

First was an explanation of the 1953 uprising (3 months after Stalin’s death when construction workers were given increased production goals which practically halved their wages) and the brutal repression of that uprising. More than 100 people were killed, 18 were executed, and 41 Soviet soldiers who refused to shoot protestors were executed also. More than 1,400 participants were sentenced to a prison term.The SED (East German government) represented the uprising as a “fascist provocation.”

This section also included the fall of the wall and the explosion of anger when it did fall.

The graffiti on this guardhouse situated outside the Stasi headquarters says “Freedom for my file” referring to the personal files kept on purported dissidents in the DDR. In January 1990 more than a thousand demonstrators occupied the Stasi Headquarters.

At the end we watched the movie Clarification of the Situation, a true story about man who was arrested for applying for an exit visa. First they tried to get him to withdraw his exit papers. When he refused, he was arrested and sent to the jail until the West paid for his release. Because the spy system and prison system against their own people was so expensive, the DDR was always short on money. Everyone being guaranteed a job didn’t help the economy either: “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.” The DDR government got Western money in two ways. First they charged an exorbitant exchange rate at the border (one to one) and forced everyone to exchange a certain amount of money per day as well as a charge just to be in the Eastern Zone. Then they allowed the West to buy political prisoners at a cost of 136,000 dm. each. Overall the West German government spent 3.6 billion Deutschmarks freeing political prisoners.