Samuelsen 1

Lauren Samuelsen
HIS 233
May 12th, 2010
Book Review

For nearly a quarter century, the political enclave of West Berlin remained segregated

from the surrounding German Democratic Republic by a militarized barrier known as the

Berlin Wall. Raised nearly literally over night, the Berlin Wall separated family members

and friends, and divided Berliners between two opposing ideologies: capitalism and

communism. In Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall, author Anna Funder

provides a journalistic account of life in East Berlin as told through interviews with both

victims and perpetrators of the numerous instances of social injustice that occurred

under the watchful and oppressive gaze of the GDR’s secret police: the Stasi. As the

Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the Stasi frantically destroyed their documents, which contained

not only state secrets, but intimate details of the lives (and deaths) of those they had

surveilled, and in many instances, arrested and tortured. With the loss of these

documents also comes the loss of precious details, details which Funder attempts to

shed light on through her interviews. Her subjects include a woman who, as a

teenager, was arrested, imprisoned, and tortured for her attempt to escape; the

mastermind behind East Germany’s propaganda television channel “The Black

Channel”, still loyal to his anti-capitalist beliefs; and even the man who demarcated the

line of the Berlin Wall. The stories of these and others paint the picture of an

oppressive regime that destroyed the lives of those it perceived to be as dissidents.

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However, Funder’s account is limited in it’s ability to describe an unbiased description of

life in East Berlin.

As a historical source, the interviews can only provide the viewpoints of the subject, as

edited and filtered through Funder, which can prove to be ruefully one dimensional.

Also, her narrative style at times reveals personal biases that seem to explain the social

injustices committed by the Stasi as the result of their specific ideology, ignorant of

other factors that contribute to the rise of despotism. It is also necessary to wonder how

many people Funder may have met during the process of collecting interviews that may

have had positive or neutral opinions on their lives in East Berlin. These issues

potentially make Stasiland only one of the facets of East Berlin’s story.

While interviews are a valuable resource when studying history, they can only

provide details of personal experience and may require additional political and historical

context. Unfortunately, some of the context Funder provides serves more to strengthen

the narrative than it does to adequately describe the complicated circumstances that

give rise to historical events. For example, Funder’s description of the East German

Revolution implies that it was due mostly to popular dissent, and gives little insight as to

the political circumstances that led to it’s end.

In A History of Germany 1918-2008: The Divided Nation, the transition from the

GDR to the unified Germany we know today is described as the “Gentle Revolution”

(Fulbrook 272). In regards to what triggered the revolution, it is explained that it had

“...not so much to do with dissent or destabilization inside the GDR, as with radical

transformations in the external context” (270). Primarily, neighboring Hungary

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underwent changes in its own communist regime in 1989, culminating to the dismantling

of the militarized border between it and Austria, and the proclamation that “...Hungary

would no longer officially recognize or sustain the travel restrictions imposed by its

fellow communist state, the GDR” (271). This made travel from the GDR increasingly

easy, and resulted in numerous refugees fleeing over the border, a situation that, in light

of its inability to effectively resolve the crisis, undermined the GDR government. Funder

makes no substantial references to this event. The revolution is divided into three

phases: the first entails the rise of oppositional groups that gained more popular support

than previous dissenters, the second is the development of new regime policies that

constituted a “reform from above”, and the third is a change in leadership within the

regime (273). One of the most important oppositional organization to form during the

first phase of the revolution was New Forum. Rather than being a direct opposition to

the Communist party, “New Forum intended to represent, not a party with a specific

programme or platform for reform, but rather a forum for open and free discussion”

(273). The group applied for legalization, but was denied, and hence it issued “mass

pressure” to achieve its goals. The establishment of New Forum and similar groups

signaled a departure from previous patterns of dissent in East Germany: “They were no

longer content with informal networks of organization...Moreover, they also sought

recognition as legally accepted and autonomous institutions” (273). Issues were not

limited to “peace, human rights, and environmentalism”, but rather focused on “the

whole range of politics and problems associated with taking over and dramatically

reforming -and then running- a state” (274). These dissenters did not purely seek to
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destroy the GDR or escape from it, but rather demanded that policy makers address

why so many citizens were attempting to flee. The only description of dissent in the

GDR given by Funder is that of underground networks that enabled refugees to cross

the border, or of cultural rebels such as her friend Klaus, the former rockstar. The

interview with Frau Paul, a woman who was placed under arrest after being caught by

the Stasi attempting to flee through the agency of an underground network, describes

her brutal treatment at the prison of Hohenschönhausen (222-234). Klaus the rockstar

is told by the chairman of a licensing committee that he and his band no longer exist,

and almost immediately, their American inspired records disappear from store shelves

(189). While these instances represent the harsh measures taken against some

dissidents, they do not represent the actions of the government in all cases.

The government’s reaction to groups such as New Forum and the mass demand

for its legalization began with violence, but eventually entailed policies of non violence

and attempts at reform. In an account given by Dresden dissident, the outbreak of

violence between police and peaceful protestors in October of 1989 is described as

shocking and nonsensical: “Originally, the operation might well have been geared

toward observing and removing violent citizens, but in the utter absence thereof,

peaceful citizens were arbitrarily seized and “transported” (Altmann). Indeed, “Despite

the non-violence of demonstrators, there were numerous arrests and instances of policy

brutality” (274). However, at a demonstration on October 9th 1989, instead of heinous

acts of brutality, the police allowed the demonstration to conclude peacefully. Funder

explains that this turning point was conducted from above: “...The initiative for dialogue
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rather than force came from three local SED functionaries...This pattern began to be

repeated elsewhere” (276). This led to the institution of reforms from above, the

resignation of Honecker, discussion between the SED and New Forum, more accurate

media coverage, and the eventual demand from the masses of the disbanding of the

Stazi (276-277). Again, Funder makes little reference to this series of events and

instead attributes reform purely to the masses forcing the Stasi out of their offices.

Stasiland is introduced by describing the museum of the Runde Ecke, the

former head quarters for the Stasi in Leipzig, as having been left just as it was when

protestors forced its occupants out in December of 1989, setting a precedence for the

description of change in the GDR to be purely from the ground up. Funder describes

how “all the desks were just as they were left the night the demonstrators took the

building,” and that “between 1989 and 1990 (the Stasi) was turned inside out: Stalinist

spy unit one day, museum the next” (5-6). In an interview with former Stasi Herr

Bohnsack, it is described how in December of 1989, Bohnsack’s division remained

holed up in their offices, machine guns in hand, defending their building against the tide

of protestors at its doors and that “his greatest fear was that he and the others would be

ordered to shoot the demonstrators outside their building” (239). It is assured that it

never came to this, as Mielke, the Minister of State Security, had stood down and

subsequently the army could not seize control without his command (240). Very little is

mentioned about the reforms that took place several months before this event that

included the official stance of nonviolence towards protestors. It it as if Funder

deliberately tries to absolve and responsibility of the government for the revolution and
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places it totally within the hands of the people, despite political circumstances that

dictate otherwise.

Funder seems to also be ignorant of or purposefully excludes any positive

aspects of life in the GDR, which were not nonexistent and are integral to an adequate

portrayal of life therein. Funder also implies generalizations about the GDR, which upon

closer inspection reveal that some of these generalizations are not limited in instance

due to the country they occur in. The interview with Julia, a woman who was

questioned by the Stasi for her relationship with an Italian, includes a description of how

she was raped in the GDR. “‘Rape was taboo in the GDR,’” explains Julia, in light of the

police’s apprehensiveness at taking her case seriously (142). However, the taboo of

rape is not limited to the GDR, and to create this specificity implies that certain political

and cultural aspects of the GDR are to blame for this woman’s plight. Numerous rape

cases are dismissed in the United States every year, without adequate investigation,

and in blatant disregard for the physical or mental well beings of the victims. Julia later

explains in an email to Funder that she later moves to the USA, where she participates

in “Reclaim the Night”, an event dedicated to victims of sexual assault and abuse, and

marvels at how Americans “honour their victims” (246). This assertion is clearly up for

debate in the United States, however, Funder takes no time to question this or to

analyze the true nature of sexual assault in the GDR in comparison to other countries.

It is as if Julia’s interview is included purely to shock the reader with an act of blatant

barbarity which is dealt with in a slow and bureaucratic response. However, Julia’s
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attacker was tried and imprisoned, something that cannot be said for many rapists in the

United States.

Funder repeatedly describes the dismal lives of East Berliners in comparison to

their Western counterparts, with little to no mention of any positive aspects. She

describes and encounter with former East Berliners in the spring of 2000 who profess

nostalgia for the old days, lamenting at the raise in prices of most goods. Funder

responds with the thought that she does not “...doubt this genuine nostalgia,” but that

she thinks it has “...coloured a cheap and nasty world golden; a world where there was

nothing to buy, nowhere to go and anyone who wanted to do anything with their lives

other than serve the Party risked persecution, or worse” (252). Furthermore, at the

Berliners’ assertion that evading persecution simply entailed not breaking the law,

Funder muses that she has definitely seen otherwise. This blatant disregard of a

positive opinion on the GDR begs the question of what Stasiland would read like if she

had seriously included these people’s interviews in her work. Fulbrook explains how

employment, access to food, housing, and medical care were all provided by the state

in the GDR, albeit the quality of these services was limited (192-193). The East

German standard of living is described as “rather depressed, but essentially adequate”,

and that in comparison to the living standards of other members of the Eastern Bloc

such as Poland (194). In regards to women’s rights, “More women were in paid

employment outside the home in East Germany than in West Germany”, and that “While

there remained a structural differences in the role of women, as compared with men, in

both Germanies by the 1980s, these differences were less in the East than in the West”
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(199). While Fulbrook concedes that statistics on such circumstances can be

“elaborated endlessly” and that women were in no way socially equal to men in either

Germany, Funder makes no room for concession on this subject.

Throughout Stasiland, Funder repeatedly reveals personal biases that imply that

the social injustice that occurred in East Germany was purely the result of Communist

ideology mixed with an inherent defect of German society that propagates despotism. It

is necessary to state here that the communist perpetrators in the GDR cannot be seen

as innocent of their crimes. However, even within German communist thought there

existed numerous opinions on the relationship between the state, the market, and the

people (Fulbrook 224). Also, seeing as even more heinous and yet similar acts had

occurred under a completely different ideology (Nazism) only a generation before hand,

it cannot be assumed that communism alone is what triggered the crimes committed

against East Germans. In fact, even democratic West Germany exhibited tendencies

that unfairly limited and invaded the lives of its citizens. “To point to tolerance of a

diversity of views is not to suggest that, simply by virtue of the political system, the

Federal Republic did not face problems of political dissent” (Fulbrook 234). Fearing that

certain actions would taint the institution of democracy, measures were taken in the

FRD that, ironically so, limited freedom of expression. Left-wing dissent in the 1960s

led to acts of terrorism in the FRD, which in turn led to what Fulbrook describes as a

“witch hunt” of young extremists (239). The 1972 Decree on Radicals severely limited

freedom of speech, assembly, and legal council of those accused or suspected of

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terrorism (239). Once again, Funder mentions nothing of this as she describes the

attempts of East Berliners to cross over into West Berlin.

Funder also does not address the disconnect between communist thought in the

GDR and the actual policies of the regime. In her interview with Herr Von Schnitzler,

the mastermind behind GDR propaganda channel “The Black Channel”, Schnitzler

seems to waver between violently professing his loyalty to communism, and

acknowledging the disconnect between official doctrine and reality. “‘I noticed relatively

early that we would not be able to survive economically,’” he admits, in between raging

about the evils of imperialism (135). Funder describes him as a “cadre whose ideas

were moulded in the 1920s by the battle against the gross free market injustices of the

Weimar Republic and the outrages of facism...He is a true believer and for him my

questions only serve to demonstrate a sorry lack of faith” (135). Schnitzler is presented

like a caricature of the failed GDR, still adamant about the theoretical strength of

communism, but facing cognitive dissonance at the reality of its failure. However, not

every communist in the GDR adhered directly to the official Marxist-Leninist doctrine.

Throughout the history of the GDR, there were “...expressions of a range of coherent

world views which differed explicitly from official Marxist-Leninist ideology...These views

included the humanistic Marxism of a number of intellectuals pursuing what has been

called the tradition of the ‘Third Way’” (Fulbrook 224). This “Third Way” was not to

abandon the East for the West, but to transform the East into a more desirable place to

live (225). Unfortunately, Third Way intellectuals often found themselves restricted from

higher ranks of the SED, surveilled, and imprisoned (226-227). One example is Robert
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Havemann, a professor at Humboldt University, who, a committed communist, opposed

Stalinism and favored freedom of expression and democracy (226). Another is Rudolf

Bahro, who critiqued the shortcomings of the GDR and it’s bureaucracy (227). Both of

these men were punished for their ideas, but they existed none the less. Four years

prior to the founding of the GDR, a proclamation made by the Central Committee of the

German Communist Party listed democracy amongst its ideals and aims for post war

Germany. “The establishment of democratic rights and liberties for our people”, The

completely unhindered development of free trade and private enterprise on the basis of

private property”, and “Peaceful and neighborly coexistence with other nations” are

amongst the list of pressing tasks the KPD listed (Aufruf des Zentralkomitees). In

Stasiland no mention is made of communists who opposed Stalinism or supported

democracy. If despotism is not limited to communism, and if not all communists are

supporters of despotism, then does it not follow that perhaps communism alone is not at

the root of the problem?

The only other concession that Funder implicitly makes at the speculation of what

causes despotism is a supposed feature of German culture that makes them particularly

susceptible to despotic rule. While visiting the Stasi File Authority office, Funder speaks

with a man who explains his shock at how “...the Stasi used people’s own distress

against them,” to which Funder responds by thinking of the “...generational cycles of

tragedy the Germans have been inflicting on themselves” (267). He goes on to say that

“This is not about the individuals. It is about a system so manipulated people that it

drove them to do these things...I am reluctant to condemn them because the Stasi were
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also manipulated” (267). Funder does not comment on this thought, but earlier in the

book it is implied that she views the psychological manipulation of the Stasi as

something endemic to the regime. When she is informed that many Stasi informers

were underpaid and participated more so to be apart of something larger, she responds

with the thought that

...There is something warmer and more human about the carnality of other

dictatorships, say in Latin America. One can more easily understand a desire for

cases stuffed with money and drugs, for women and weapons and blood. These

obedient grey men doing it with their underpaid informers on a weekly basis

seem at once more stupid and more sinister. Betrayal clearly has its own

reward: the small deep human satisfaction of having one up on someone else. It

is the psychology of the mistress, and this regime used it as fuel (201).

To make such a generalization about the nature dictatorships of other countries

implicitly makes a generalization about German despotism. Unlike the “carnal” desires

of Latin Americans, Germans are tempted through appetites of the psyche, and for this

are somehow less human in their actions. Another implied notion is perhaps that

dictatorships in Latin America, being more “human” and thus natural in nature, are

somehow more acceptable than dictatorships in Western countries such as Germany.

Throughout the entire book, it is as if Funder implores “Why and how could this have

happened?” but only spends more than a paragraph on those who either vehemently

denounced the GDR, or comically and sinisterly continue to support it. An interesting

viewpoint (oh which a similar one is never discussed in Stasiland) is found in a Der
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Speigel interview with East German author Heiner Müller, the subject expresses his

uneasiness about unification, but also describes Germans as a colonized people: “I

never doubted that this GDR existed only in dependence on the Soviet Union and that

the population here lived under the status of a colonized people,” he continues

What was useful for writing, totally void of morality and politics, was that we

were also living in a Third World situation. Socialism in the GDR in its Stalinist

form meant nothing more than the colonization of one’s own population. You can

still see that today in the subway immediately. GDR citizens have a concealed

glance. You can identify them right away as the people with the concealed

glance. Even the children. It is the glance of the colonized (Der Speigel).

While this opinion clearly absolves German citizens of any wrong doing, it also

interestingly takes into consideration the political circumstances through which the GDR

was founded, and the implementation of Stalinist doctrine as a means of foreign control.

The interviews chronicled in Stasiland are paramount to understanding the plight

of the oppressed in the GDR. However, these stories cannot be taken for face value, as

they clearly represent only the tip of the iceberg in the telling of the story of East

Germany. While it can be argued that perhaps Funder’s book is not meant to be taken

as absolute historical fact, a quick visit to Wikipedia shows that some readers are

unable or unwilling to discern this (for example, the sources for the article on Schnitzler

include Stasiland). It may be supposed that the exclusion of some historical context, or

polarization of the forces of capitalism and communism as “good guys” and “bad guys”

may be due to a desire to provide an engaging narrative, but a more compelling account
 Samuelsen 13

would be able to look past these tendencies. All in all, Funder does little justice to the

intricacies of the stories that really lay behind the Berlin Wall.

Works Cited

Aufruf des Zentralkomitees vom 11. Juni 1945 [Proclamation by the Central Committee,

June 11, 1945], reprinted in Ossip Kurt Flechtheim, Die Parteien der

Bundesrepublik Deutschland [The Parties of the Federal Republic of Germany].

Hamburg, 1973, pp. 292-99.

Fulbrook, Mary. A History of Germany, 1918-2008: the Divided Nation. Chichester,

West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.

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Funder, Anna. Stasiland Stories from behind the Berlin Wall. London: Granta, 2003.

“Jetzt ist da eine Einheitssoße [“Now it’s all just Unity Pabulum”]”. Der Spiegel, July 30,

1990, pp. 136-41.

Steffen Altmann, “Fünf Tage im Oktober [“Five Days in October]”. October 18, 1989,

Stadtmuseum Dresden (Dresden City Museum).