Mauer im Kopf
- Grace van Vliet
- May 14
- 15 min read
Updated: Jun 14
The Half-Resolved Legacy of East German Stasi and Reunification
Writer: Grace van Vliet, PhD Candidate
Introduction
Look at any infographic of Germany today, and you will probably see the same line of division. Whether in voting habits, rates of employment, religiosity, or rates of income, what used to be the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR)— once on the Eastern side of the Berlin Wall— rarely falls in line with its Western counterpart. The Germans call this the Mauer im Kopf or ‘Wall of the Mind’: a layered, lingering division that still exists between former East and West. Former East Germans often accuse the West of failing to understand them or their past— a tapestry of things that made life in the GDR unique, including cultural touchstones, recipes, and the rituals of daily life shaped by living within the blanket surveillance constructed by the communist police service, the Stasi. Meanwhile former West Germans accuse their Eastern counterparts of not being able to move on.
If you want to understand the divisions that persist in Germany today, understanding the history of East Germany is a good place to start. To do that, it’s essential to look into the role of the Stasi, and how its presence shaped peoples’ lives. In this article, I explore how the Stasi dissolved in 1990 after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the ways in which reunification was rushed, at the expense of long-term cultural memory.
The Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS), colloquially known as the Stasi, was East Germany’s intelligence and security organ, led for most of its existence by the Minister for State Security, Erich Mielke. The Stasi orchestrated what is known as ‘blanket surveillance’ across the GDR from its creation in 1950 to its dissolution in 1990. The agency kept files on millions of their own citizens. In 1989, they had active files on six million East Germans, two million West Germans, and countless others from around the world [1]. They were able to do this due in large part to their Inofizielle Mitarbeiters (IMs), or unofficial collaborators. The exact number of IMs is difficult to estimate due to the abstract nature of their work, but most calculations place them at about 176,000 by 1989 [2], within a population of 16.4 million.
The MfS considered itself ‘the sword and shield’ of the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED), carrying out its will to ensure political hegemony in East Germany. Their early operations were characterized by Soviet influence and their anti-fascist history. In the wake of the Second World War, blanket surveillance was believed to be necessary to create a fully denazified society. The MfS understood this to be in contrast with West German reconstruction, which reabsorbed many former Nazis into important professions. While life in the GDR for average citizens was more than just the Stasi, the fact that it was so ubiquitous makes it hard to talk about the history of the GDR without bringing it up. Between 1950 and 1989, the Stasi spied on its own citizens, arresting any political dissidents. This makes the mass protests of 1989 that led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall much more impressive in light of that repression.
Shortly after the Wall fell in early November 1989, the Stasi renamed itself from the Ministry for Security to the ‘Office for National Security’ to try and fashion itself more as a Western-style organization [3]. Throughout November and December, Stasi offices began a mass destruction of their own documents. In some instances, it was the smoke and debris in the air that alerted demonstrators to the fact that, as they had feared, the Stasi was trying to cover up its tracks. On January 15th, demonstrators occupied the last remaining Stasi headquarters at Berlin-Lichtenberg, an event which historian Christiane Lemke argues “accelerated not only the collapse of the SED/PDS [Party] but the exit of the GDR as a state” [5].
A pressing question quickly emerged: what should be done with the sheer mass of files left behind? For some demonstrators at the time, destroying the files was “a euphoric act of victory" [6]. Advocates for the destruction of the documents cited that they had been collected unconstitutionally through espionage, and that, in the spirit of reunification, no one should be entitled to monopolize state archives anymore [7]. Naturally, many former Stasi employees and IMs sympathized with this reasoning: what if their industry secrets and tradecraft were handed over to the West Germans, or worse, the Americans [8]? Paralyzed, they were unable to further destroy any documents now that all their offices had been occupied by protestors. As reunification became a certainty, the Stasi were effectively powerless to stop its own dissolution.
The Committee for the Dissolution of the Stasi was assembled throughout the spring and summer of 1990. By then, all MfS employees were terminated. Ironically, the committee’s director, Günter Eichorn, whose assistant had been an MfS employee, was later revealed to have been an informant [9]. Another committee, Treuhand, was established to investigate the remaining Stasi influence on the soon-to-be defunct GDR, but was also revealed to be compromised [10]. To the surprise of many, the MfS by this point quietly resigned itself to its fate [11].But the ease with which former agents quickly tried to integrate themselves into the process of reunification was not a good sign.
The Office of the Federal Commissioner, better known as the Stasi Archives or BStU, was established in October 1990 for the purpose of housing, preserving, and eventually disseminating the mountains of paperwork and other artifacts that were not destroyed by the MfS. The first commission was led by former pastor and dissident, and future President of Germany, Joachim Gauck. To Gauck and his team, these archives were meant to be an active symbol of the openness of the newly unified Germany. Preserving the files and ensuring fair access was not a question of scholarship, it was part of completing the revolution [12]. Access to personal files was the main goal of the BStU. Gauck and others hoped that in making this the priority, citizens of the now-former GDR could begin to heal their trust in government institutions. The Stasi Files Law (Stasi-Unterlagen-Gesetz) came into effect on 1 January 1992, explicitly stating its primary focus as allowing individuals to view their own files and to “judge the Stasi’s influence on their lives” [13]. This goal was also reflected in the other tasks undertaken by the BStU, namely in providing evidence in the various Stasi trials that took place over the 1990s, and carrying out vetting applications.
Vetting involved identifying those who had collaborated with the Stasi. This was generally done for the purpose of ensuring they did not find employment in the same field they had been working in previously. On paper, this vetting was taken very seriously. The Unification Treaty contained a clause stating that dismissal for having worked with or for the Stasi was legally justified, a process some at the time referred to as getting ‘Gaucked’ [14]. This in particular led many to see vetting as a ‘witch-hunt.’ Gauck insisted that this “screening process was not designed to deprive individuals of employment,” but to ensure that former high officials did not make their way back into the halls of power; they could “work in business and the professions, as a doctor or an artist, for example, but not in service of the democratic state [15]. However, in many cases it was just more pragmatic to hire someone with little to no questions about their past. Jens Gieseke elaborates on the “extremely heterogeneous” results of the vetting process, explaining that many public employers “turn[ed] a blind eye to full-time or unofficial MfS work, even in clearly documented cases” [16]. Ultimately, it is difficult to measure how many dismissals were driven by BStU vetting. A 1996 study estimates a yawning range 60,000 to 100,000 dismissals occured, while a 1999 survey of sixteen government departments measured 3-18% of their employees had been examined for Stasi involvement [17].
Justice was no easy feat in the case of German reunification. Unlike the other satellite states like Poland or Hungary, the GDR did not have to create its own constitution from scratch. Rather, it was being subsumed into an already functioning legal system that had expanded to accommodate some East German laws [18]. Courts agreed that trials would be held with an understanding that the GDR did indeed have codified laws that were broken by the Stasi in several cases, thus Stasi employees would be tried according to East German jurisprudence [19].
Immediately this presented problems. For one, anyone who had been a lawyer in the GDR was able to transfer their credentials into the unified Germany [20]. One such lawyer, Frank Osterloh, made a name for himself in the 1990s defending other employees of the Stasi [21]. Former Stasi employees went beyond the courtroom, however. Nearly 1,500 employees became police officers, almost a third of which became border guards [22]. Throughout the 1990s, there were nearly 23,000 cases dealing with crimes overall in the GDR. By 2000, 16,494 (72%) of them had been heard and a sentence pronounced [23]. Most of the trials carried out were for border guards who had shot those attempting to flee to West Germany.
Not all of the high-ranking officers were ever brought to trial, and many of those that were, never received a sentence. Markus Wolf, head of the Stasi’s foreign intelligence, went to trial in the early 1990s, but in 1995 the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that former spies could not be prosecuted for espionage carried out on behalf of East Germany [24]. Erich Mielke also saw time in prison [25], but not for any crimes committed as Minister for State Security; he was charged for two murders committed as a young communist in 1931, during the pre-Nazi Weimar Republic. After his sentence, Mielke lived out his remaining days in Berlin, under the pseudonym of Herr Müller [26]. There had been trials planned for Erich Honecker, leader of the GDR from 1971 to 1989, on the charge of manslaughter, and Zwangstaat, or maintaining a state on the basis of force, but due to his ailing health, he was allowed to leave for Chile where he would die in 1994 [27]. Several high-ranking politicians like Egon Krenz were tried by various courts, including the Human Rights Court in Strasbourg, where they were found guilty in part due to the ‘shoot-to-kill’ orders at the Wall, which violated the GDR’s own constitution [28]. He served his six year sentence to completion, from 2000-2006.
Many organizations were formed in the 1990s by former Stasi employees so they could advocate for themselves and socialize with former comrades, many of whom were the only other people with shared lived experiences.The most public of these networks is the Joint Initiative for the Protection of the Social Rights of Former Members of the Armed Organs and the Customs Administration of the GDR (more succinctly known as ISOR), a lobbying group that mostly advocates for better pensions for former Stasi employees; their logic was that they should not be punished for serving the state they were living under [29]. While ISOR is frequently spoken of as a ‘social club,’ others call it an “association of old Stasi cadres” (“Verein alter Stasi-Kader”) [30].
ISOR is currently located in the same building, down the hall, from the Society for Legal and Humanitarian Support (GRH), which handles most of the non-pension related issues [31]. Their membership is mostly former MfS employees but also includes former state prosecutors, judges, and border officers who “deny or try to justify the crimes of the GDR” [32]. Many see the GRH as more of a “relief organization” for former officers, publishing pamphlets trying to absolve the Stasi. According to Ralph Hope, the GRH was also consulted in the making of the 2006 film The Lives of Others, to make sure the MfS wasn’t “defamed” [34]. There also exists the Insider Committee, which was formed not long after the Stasi’s formal dissolution and is now known for publicly agitating against it in the media [35].
Other key individuals have weaponized their enormous influence in the MfS and SED to secure social, financial, and legal safeguards for themselves. Perhaps most notable is Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski, who headed most of the economic and business affairs of the Stasi through the Commercial Coordination Unit, or KoKo. KoKo’s main goal was to acquire hard currency for the GDR, which it lacked chronically. Wolf lists Schlack-Golodkowski’s activities as having included exchanging West Germans imprisoned in the GDR for cash [36]. He has also admitted to stealing antique goods and art from East German citizens and selling them on behalf of the state, and KoKo is believed to have coordinated the selling of ‘clean’ blood (collected through legitimate blood drives, as well as unwillingly from prisoners) to the West at the height of the AIDS crisis [37]. In his well-timed defection shortly after the Wall fell, he handed over the details of almost all the Stasi’s East German accounts [38]. Many, such as East German lawyer and future member of German parliament Gregor Gysi, understood early on that Schalack-Golodkowski would never face justice because he “[knew] too much about Western officials” [39]. Indeed, while many charges were brought against Schalck-Golodkowski, he never saw trial.
Many of those who evaded justice did so by protecting their identities and their history. They benefited greatly from the amendments towards redaction that Gauck and Knabe fought against. As Ralph Hope explains, several former MfS officers routinely filed complaints with the Berlin Commissioner for Data Protection in order to ensure their full names were not appearing on lists of Stasi employees that were being made public [40]. This has been a highly effective technique, especially in a place like Germany where there exists a strong culture of privacy backed by robust legal support. It is perhaps ironic that those who carried out blanket surveillance have now become some of the most vocal advocates for the right to privacy. Bruce also highlights this derision:
Several high-ranking Stasi officers have taken great pleasure in the turn of events in the West following September 11, pointing out how those who criticized East Germany for putting security above individual freedoms are the very ones who now defend the USA PATRIOT act or surveillance cameras in public places [41].
As seen above, many former Stasi employees were able to quietly reintegrate themselves into unified German society. Large networks of them do exist, though much less prominently now in the 2020s than in the 1990s and 2000s. Many, like Schlock-Golodkowski, leveraged their tremendous power and influence, and waited out the statute of limitations on any charges, effectively evading justice. While the BStU was widely successful in ensuring that former Stasi employees would not be able to work in government, it seems that other professions have not been subject to the same scrutiny.
Contending with the regime and transitioning into a democracy was not about de-communizing the way it was in other satellite states and SSRs, it was about de-Stasification. This is why it was much more pragmatic for organizations like the Stasi Archives to focus their attention on the intelligence apparatus. To Gauck, this was also due in part to the Party being ‘berechenbar,’ more able to be calculated with [42]. It also helped that it had been relatively successful in destroying its documents, and that the Stasi had long since positioned itself as the ‘sword and shield’ of the Party. Despite their enmeshment during the existence of the GDR, it appears as though collective memory has begun to sever the two, focusing on the activities of the Stasi as an almost unique tool of repression.
When the Archives first opened in 1990, many East Germans applied to see their files. Learning the truth about the Stasi’s surveillance and its effect on their personal and professional lives, while painful, was a cathartic and healing process for many. Though in vastly less numbers than citizens of the now former GDR, historians and scholars also went to the archives and began researching the regime with access to sweeping amounts of new information. This also made integrating East German citizens much easier. By framing the Stasi as a system of control in a repressive state that was not supported by the public, it had served to further separate the citizens from the machinations of the state, thus making it easier to blame the Stasi [43]. By concentrating on the Stasi and its surveillance, and not yet addressing questions of quiet collaboration, citizens of the regime were absolved. They could avoid any uncomfortable questions. Revelations through the archives, however, quickly rendered this chiaroscuro unsustainable. The conversation rapidly shifted to include not just full-time employees and officers, but IMs and casual informants. Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, the archives tried to account for this by introducing new categories of collaboration and according to new protocols for information access [44].
There are still countless personal files that remain unopened, in addition to numerous other parts of the extensive paper trail the Stasi left behind. While none of the academic, legal, or political ways in which the newly unified Germany contended with the Stasi was perfectly carried out, the openness of the Archives did provide closure and catharsis for many who lived through the regime. Reunification, however, was not as thorough as it could have been. Many corners were cut in the interest of time and state-building. Real reconciliation around and beyond the Stasi would have taken years that decision-makers simply did not have. In the end, everyday East Germans paid and continue to pay the price, feeling like their experience of blanket surveillance was, at best, swept under the rug, or at worst, selectively instrumentalized in the name of reunification.
Conclusion
It is a cliché for historians to plead that history matters, and that our area of study can indeed contribute some understanding to our society. In the 1990s, understanding the Stasi was a crucial feature of German reunification, and it remains crucial to understanding the political, social, and economic divisions that exist in Germany today. The state didn’t have time to properly and meticulously understand the legacy of the Stasi, and so it never felt like justice was fully served. While individuals can still seek answers and healing in the archives, the question of collective memory remains unaccounted for. Many former East Germans felt misunderstood at the time of reunification, and still do not feel heard. It is not only important to understand why they feel their experiences were distinct, but by examining how the Stasi has been remembered since 1989, and to explore why many who lived under its surveillance still do not feel that their history has been fully addressed.
Endnotes
[1] Richard Popplewell, “The Stasi and the East German Revolution of 1989,” in Contemporary European History 1:1 (1992), 38.
[2] Mike Dennis, The Stasi: Myth and Reality (London: Routledge, 2014), 4,6.
[3] Bruce, The Stasi, 173
[4] Bruce, “Access to Secret Police Files, Just, and Vetting in East Germany since 1989,” in German Politics and Society 26:1 (2008) 85.
[5] Christiane Lemke, “Trials and Tribulations, The Stasi Legacy in Contemporary German Politics.” In German Politics and Society 26:1, (1992), 44.
[6] Bruce, “Access to Secret Police Files, Justice, and Vetting in East Germany since 1989,” 87.
[7] Gieseke, The History of the Stasi, 202.
[8] Ibid., 201-02.
[9] Ralph Hope, The Grey Men: Pursuing the Stasi into the Present (London: Oneworld Publications, 2021), 129-131.
[10] Treuhand was later found to have had many former Stasi officers and employees in its ranks. See Ralph Hope, The Grey Men: Pursuing the Stasi into the Present, (London: Oneworld Publications. 2021).
[11] In fact, the dissolution was so unceremonious that it has given way to conspiracy theories that the Stasi had planned for its own demise and had preemptively gone underground in order to continue their operations clandestinely. Some have even gone so far as to posit that the Stasi helped orchestrate 1989.
[12] Bruce, “Access to Secret Police Files, Justice, and Vetting in East Germany since 1989,” 86.
[13] Ibid, 88.
[14] Ibid, 100.
[15] Gauck, “Dealing with a Stasi Past,” 279-280.
[16] Jens Gieseke, The History of the Stasi (New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2014), 212.
[17] Bruce, “Access to Secret Police Files, Justice, and Vetting in East Germany since 1989,” 102.
[18] Lemke, “Trials and Tribulations,” 46.
[19] Bruce, “Access to Secret Police Files, Justice, and Vetting in East Germany since 1989,” 104.
[20] Many of them had attained their credentials through Law University of Potsdam (JHS), a Stasi-run institution created to help fulfill the Stasi’s mission and fill its ranks.
[21] Hope, The Grey Men, 122.
[22] Gieseke, History of the Stasi, 207.
[23] Bruce, “Access to Secret Police Files, Justice, and Vetting in East Germany since 1989,” 99.
[24] Ibid, 99.
[25] He was briefly held in Hohenschönhausen prison, which would later be turned into a museum, but he was eventually brought to the more comfortable Moabit prison to serve his sentence.
[26] Hope, The Grey Men, 146.
[27] Bruce, “Access to Secret Police Files, Justice, and Vetting in East Germany since 1989,” 98.
[28] Ibid.
[29] Knabe, Die Täter sind unter uns: Über das Schönreden der SED-Diktatur (Berlin and Regensburg: Ullstein Buchverlage, 2007), 310-11.
[30] Ibid, 311.
[31] Hope, The Grey Men, 208.
[32] Gieseke, The History of the Stasi, 209.
[33] Knabe, Die Täter sind unter uns, 309.
[34] Hope, The Grey Men, 205.
[35] Gieseke, The History of the Stasi, 209-10.
[36] Wolf, The Man Without a Face, 202-05.
[37] Hope, The Grey Men, 93-94. Some have also explored the role of the KGB and the Stasi in spreading AIDS disinformation during the 1980s, see Douglas Selvage, “Operation ‘Denver’: The East German Ministry of State Security and the KGB’s AIDS Disinformation Campaign, 1985-1986,” in Journal of Cold War Studies 10:21 (2019), pp. 71-123.
[38] Hope, The Grey Men, 81.
[39] Ibid, 83.
[40] Ibid., 126. Sharing these lists online would later become punishable by a fine.
[41] Gary Bruce, The Firm: The Inside Story of the Stasi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 184-85.
[42] Bruce, “Access to Secret Police Files, Justice, and Vetting in East Germany since 1989,” 95. Gauck would, however, later state his regret that so much attention was focused on the Stasi rather than the SED and other aspects of the domestic security apparatus, but admitted that because so many people were forced to join the party in order to get a job, for instance, it would have been ineffective to investigate every single case.
[43] Bruce, The Firm, 2.
[44] For further reading on how this categorization came to be, see Gary Bruce,“Access to Secret Police Files, Justice, and Vetting in East Germany since 1989,” in German Politics and Society 26:1. (2008), pp. 82-111.
Bibliography
Bruce, Gary. “Access to Secret Police Files, Justice, and Vetting in East Germany since 1989.” In German Politics and Society 26:1. 2008. Pp. 82-111.
Bruce, Gary. The Firm: The Inside Story of the Stasi. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2010.
Dennis, Mike. The Stasi: Myth and Reality. Routledge: London. 2014.
Gauck, Joachim. “Dealing with a Stasi Past.” [translated by Martin Fry] In Deadalus 123:1. 1994. Pp. 277-284.
Gieseke, Jens. The History of the Stasi. New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books. 2014.
Hope, Ralph. The Grey Men: Pursuing the Stasi into the Present. London: Oneworld Publications. 2021.
Knabe, Hubertus. Die Täter sind unter uns: Über das Schönreden der SED-Diktatur. Berlin and Regensburg: Ullstein Buchverlage. 2007.
Lemke, Christiane. “Trials and Tribulations: The Stasi Legacy in Contemporary German Politics.” In German Politics and Society 26:1. 1992. Pp 43-53.
Popplewell, Richard. “The Stasi and the East German Revolution of 1989.” In Contemporary European History 1:1. 1992. Pp. 37-63.
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