Bedtime Biography: Stasiland

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Imagine a world in which every conversation you have – even the most trivial or mundane – is being spied on and reported to the authorities. A world in which the tiniest infraction against government rules can be held against you for the rest of your life. A world in which attempting to leave your country – or even the suspicion you might want to leave – can get you thrown in a dark prison located off the map, subject to endless interrogation and unimaginable torture.

This was life under the “Stasi,” the nickname given by East German citizens to the Ministry for State Security, a government agency that oversaw their lives. Part police force, part spy service, the Stasi was the dominant force in East German society.

From the end of World War II in 1945 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Stasi operatives haunted East Germany. They taped phone calls, monitored workplaces, and installed informers into every aspect of daily life. In a nation of seventeen million people, nearly 100,000 were Stasi agents, and another 200,000 were informers paid by the Stasi to report on fellow citizens. If part-timers are included, some estimates reckon there was one Stasi informer for every 6.5 East German citizens.

What did the Stasi want? What was the point of all this surveillance?

The answer was simple: control. Without control, an East German citizen, whose government was allied with Communist Russia, might simply cross the border into West Germany, where the government was allied with capitalist Western nations like the USA, the UK, and France.

Living in East Germany did come with certain perks: the state guaranteed jobs and housing for everyone, and it fought to keep prices low. But it couldn’t compete with the wages and political freedoms offered in the West, which prompted citizens to abandon their country in droves in the years following the creation of the two separate states after World War II.

So East Germany’s solution was control. In tandem with the famous Wall that controlled its citizens physically, the Stasi emerged to control them mentally. Through a vast network of bugs, spies, and informers, the Stasi created the most intricate and complex surveillance apparatus the world has ever seen.

In this Bedtime Biography, we’ll be considering the lives of normal people in East Germany. In particular, we’ll focus on two women who came into contact with the Stasi. What was it like to live in a surveillance state? How did the presence of Stasi informers shape everyday lives?

Sometimes the impact could be dramatic, involving daring escapes and terrifying interrogations. Sometimes the impact could be more prosaic and insidious, shaping your life in ways you couldn’t fully understand.

Whatever the case, few escaped the scars of growing up in Stasiland.