Germany: Stasi Skeletons in the Closet
From the desk of Thomas Landen on Wed, 2009-08-05 12:37
Next month, Germany will elect a new parliament. The Christian-Democrats of Chancellor Angela Merkel are expected to do well. Ms. Merkel, who is of East-German origin, is especially popular in the former West-Germany. In Merkel’s native East-Germany, however, there is a lot of nostalgia – “Ostalgie” (“Eastalgia”) as they say in German – for the days of the erstwhile Communist “German Democratic Republic” (GDR).
A recent poll showed that 49% of the former East-Germans have “more good than bad” memories of life under Communist dictatorship. Half of the former GDR citizens feel that their hopes for a more comfortable life since the fall of Communism in 1989 have not materialized.
Die Linke, the German Left Party, is very popular in the East, despite (or perhaps because of?) the fact that many of its candidates were active supporters of the dictatorial regime two decades ago. It is difficult for the Christian-Democrats to criticize Die Linke for the immoral behavior of its leaders in the past, since some prominent Christian-Democrats in the Eastern provinces have an equally dubious past.
Saxony is the only state in East-Germany which has been governed by the Christian-Democrats since the German reunifaction in 1990. Its Prime Minister, 50 year old Stanislaw Tillich, was a member of the European Parliament from 1991 to 1999 before becoming a state minister in Saxony and finally the state’s leader in May 2008. Mr. Tillich is a Sorb, a member of Germany’s only ethnic minority. The Sorbs, also knows as Wends or Lusatian Serbs, are a Slavic people of some 60,000 who live in the German states of Saxony and Brandenburg. They are related to the Poles and Czechs and their freedom-loving spirit and religious attachment used to cause the East-German Communists a lot of trouble.
Mr. Tillich, however, appears to have been a collaborator of the Communist regime. Shortly after he became Saxony’s Christian-Democrat Prime Minister, the German press revealed that up to four weeks before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Mr. Tillich had been busy expropriating the house of an opponent of the Communist regime who had fled to the West. In the GDR, the property of refugees was routinely confiscated by the state.
The weekly magazine Der Spiegel wrote that Mr. Tillich was an informant of the Stasi, the infamous East-German secret police which spied on citizens and tortured and murdered “enemies of the state.” The magazine also pointed out that Mr. Tillich did his military service as a border guard, a position which, because of the risk that the guards might flee to the West, the Communist dictators never entrusted to those whose loyalty to the regime was uncertain. The border guards were under orders to shoot refugees, which resulted in the death of over 1,000 citizens.
Mr. Tillich’s spokesman accused Der Spiegel of “discrediting” his boss “because he grew up in the GDR.” Last May, however, the magazine, alleging that Mr. Tillich had deliberately cleaned up his biography, obtained a court order compelling the Christian-Democrat politician to disclose his GDR activities.
Next month’s elections will show whether German voters are bothered by Mr. Tillich’s past. They do not seem to be bothered by the past of many of Die Linke’s leading politicians, but perhaps the Christian-Democrat electorate is less forgiving.
Mr. Tillich’s past, however, is not the only GDR skeleton in Germany’s political cupboard. The newspaper Die Welt recently revealed that over 1,000 current German police officers have a Stasi past. 58 of the 730 employees of the Landeskriminalamt, the crime investigation office, of the state of Brandenburg, are former Stasi employees. Two former Stasi officers form part of the police unit protecting the weekend residence of German Chancellor Merkel. One of them even used to work for Abteilung III, the Stasi department which tapped telephone conversations from West-Germany.
When, in 2007, a member of the German Parliament asked the government how many former Stasi officers were working for the German federal police, the government answered that it is impossible to scrutinize over 60,000 personal files. A recent bill prohibits employers, including police departments, to ask for information concerning the Stasi past of employees. It is estimated, however, that at least 1,500 former Stasi officers are currently working for the German police, including former employees of Abteilung KI whose job it was to recruit citizens to spy on fellow citizens. After the reunification of Germany, the department which was set up to investigate the Stasi was allowed to register and investigate those citizens who had spied on fellow citizens, but not the official Stasi KI staff who had recruited the spies.
It is known that the post-war denazification process in Germany only affected the top brass of the regime. It seems the “decommification” process after the fall of Communism in 1989 has even spared some of the vilest collaborators of the old regime. With Stasi officers still active in Germany, it should come as no surprise that half of the former GDR citizens think the party of the former Communists is a respectable party.
De-construct vs. Re-construct
Submitted by Kapitein Andre on Fri, 2009-08-07 20:49.
Totalitarians know best how to deal with totalitarians. Despite Stalin's singular reluctance to accept the inevitability of conflict with National Socialism, and his sabotage of Soviet preparedness, Communists proved the most implacable enemies of the National Socialists. Communist insurgents fearlessly resisted German occupation, and suffered torture, death and reprisals on civilians. The Red Army's counter-offensives ground down the German forces and drove them all the way to Berlin, and yet the Red Army suffered an attrition rate of 4:1.
However, National Socialism was never extirpated in Soviet-occupied Germany. Rather, National Socialism was supplanted by Marxism-Leninism; one totalitarian ideology for another. This process was far simpler and quicker than the "de-Nazification" of Allied-occupied Germany. The USSR demanded alliance and compliance from the DDR, not moral justice; reparations and the removal of plant, equipment and resources was sufficient. Though many East Germans opposed and resisted the DDR, many could transfer their affinities and erase the bitter taste of utter defeat. The NVA dressed and marched just as smartly as the Wehrmact; the new authorities enforced discipline and order as before; there was a Party much like the old; and the country was once again on course for a bright future of gleaming skyscrapers, smiling families, full employment and cultural achievement.
If the unjust go unpunished in Germany, it started before re-unification. Nor did de-nazification work as intended. Many ex-national socialists rose to prominent positions in the Bonn government. The Western Allies wanted a liberal democratic Germany, but the liberals and conservatives were not on the leading edge of cleansing West Germany of national socialism. Again, it was the forces of the left. Given the complicity of the German people with national socialism, German military aggression and German crimes, it was impractical to imprison everyone.
By condemning the DDR and hunting down its former officials, Germany is not taking a stand against totalitarianism, it is yet again trying to "make up" for national socialism.
DDR memory loss
Submitted by traveller on Fri, 2009-08-07 18:49.
For those DdR(GdR)people with bad memories:
In 1976 I was at Sofia airport, waiting for a DdR flight with INTERFLUG, their state airline. Normally we diidn't take that airline, but I had to be in West Berlin and the East Berlin airport was only minutes away from West Berlin. The total number of passengers was11 people, one Austrian woman, myself and 9 DdR engineers who just finished 2 years construction work in Bulgaria. The fligfht was supposed to leave at 10 am and at that time it was announced that the flight would leave in the afternoon.
The restaurant in the Sofia airport departure hall was closed and the only drink in the bar was Bulgarian cognac, drinkable but not so good. I paid for everybody, peanuts anyway, and the Germans drank themselves into a stupor. The only 2 people more or less sober was the woman and myself.
This merry group finally boarded around 10 pm and off we were.
In the plane the drunken engineers started realizing that they would arrive in Berlin after midnight and since they were from Leipzig they had no way of arriving home that night, and this after 2 years.
In their drunken stupor they started yelling at the "Scheiss Commies" and their lousy organisation. By the end of the flight every DdR politician had been called the worst names in the book.
When the plane finished taxiing and the doors opened, the VOPO(police) entered the plane and beat the 9 engineers to a pulp with blood all over the plane.
The Austrian woman and myself were roughly pulled out, our luggage identified and we were driven in a police car to the Western checkpoint where we were dropped and where we could find a taxi with the help of the US soldiers.
Just a little reminder of that "paradise", the pilots had radioed the situation and I am sure they don't feel guilty today.
The Lives of Others
Submitted by KO on Fri, 2009-08-07 15:13.
This story invites comment on The Lives of Others, which depicts the main character, a Stasi interrogator who is a true believer in the totalitarian police state, as capable of being redeemed by sympathy and love of truth, in contrast to the corrupt, fascistic pigs who ruled the country. An intriguing film, but strangely sentimental, as if it were arguing that there was an abiding innocence in the DDR, and even in the Stasi, that survived the squalid brutality of the regime and still survives today. Perhaps the same film, set 40 years earlier, could have been made about a Gestapo interrogator. In the words of Brecht and Burns, a man's a man.
Idle discussion
Submitted by Reconciler on Fri, 2009-08-07 10:09.
Whenever one or the other political faction wants to discredit an opponent here, they draw the Stasi wildcard. This goes for EVERY faction. If memory serves, former Stasi operatives were hired by secret services far and wide, including the Israeli Mossad. The police officers mentioned were hired or absorbed into service exactly and only for their professional skills. Other branches of the GDR's state services were no so lucky. Most of the army's commissioned officer korps was dismissed. This was not a political or moral decision, they were simply not needed.