Change of pace...
Stasiland
Real Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall
by Anna Funder
Yes, I liked
The Lives of Others so very, very much that It made me want to learn more about the Stasi, and I did so with Anna Funder's
Stasiland. Funder spent years living and working in Berlin while writing this book, a sabbatical away after her mother died notwithstanding. She delves into the history and methods of the German Democratic Republic, interviewing victims of the Stasi, former Stasi men themselves, rebellious rock bands under the regime, and so on.
The numbers are striking. One Stasi employee or full-time informer for every 63 GDR citizens, a ratio which utterly dwarfs even Stalinist Russia at its height. When part-time informers are included, some estimates go as high as 1 in 6. The GDR kept tabs on absolutely everything, no matter how insignificant, in hopes that it might be used as leverage at some point. They produced as many records in just 40 years as had been produced throughout Germany's history, back to the Middle Ages. 15,000 bags of shredded documents recovered; the shredding was so sudden and fervent that hundreds of paper shredders literally broke down from use in the regime's waning days.
Funder is very thorough (too thorough at times, perhaps) and asks plenty of pointed questions, but the book is a surprisingly personal one. She doesn't approach this world as a pure journalist, but simply as herself. Personal experiences and observations are never excluded, and she makes mention of her reactions to what she hears regularly. Perhaps the alternative -- a colder, more objective approach -- would have seemed out of place, given the haunting nature of what happened in the GDR.
Storylines create themselves spontaneously more than once, and Funder does a good job of forming themes from the various accounts. She posits questions about how best to deal with tragedy and suffering, and whether dredging up the past does more harm than good. By the end of the book, after she has left and returned to Berlin to complete it, she has circled around her answer with little trace of uncertainty.
The translation is perplexing at times. On one hand, there are several typos, and some sentences that don't end exactly where they seem they should. I learn that the interviews were apparently done in German, but I can't help but suspect some of the rest of the book may have been as well. That said, this book is far more poetic than I could reasonably expect any translation to be, and the mistakes are few and far between.
I don't want to recount too many of the anecdotes; they are best heard from the source, and they seem to go on forever. Story after story details the abuse, always behind a veil of legality. At times, it is almost amusing to hear stories about Stasi offers making outrageous accusations and twisting laws and definitions to their own ends, somehow with a straight face. Some of the victims are too stunned to protest much.
It's hard to believe the Berlin Wall came down only 20 years ago. Perhaps things are easier to forget when entire societies want them to go away. But the GDR remains a stark warning against the dangers of the state's power. Thankfully, it is just as forcefully a warning against such states, and just how quickly they can crumble when their people have had enough.