“East German Stasi files open to public online for the first time,” states Justin Huggler’s in an article in the Telegraph on January 9, 2015.
Who is the Stasi?
The term *Stasi” refers to the East German Ministry for State Security (Ministerium fuer Staatssicherheit – MfS for short). The Stasi has been called the most repressive secret police agency ever. One of its tasks was to spy on its own population through agents but also through a vast network of citizen-informants. The Stasi countered opposition by overt and covert means, often involving psychological techniques.
Stasi files since German reunification
Following the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the Stasi tried to destroy the almost 70 miles of documents it had on file. It was stopped by ordinary citizens who stormed and occupied the agency’s offices. As a result, the Stasi was able to destroy only about 5% of all documents. Following a declassification ruling by the new German government in 1992, the remaining files were opened. According to the Telegraph, almost 7 million applications to view these files have been registered since then.
What Stasi files are available online?
Available for viewing online are 161 documents, 29 photos, 6 audios and 18 videos. They include information on the 1953 East German uprising against communist rule, the 1960 execution of defected border officer Manfred Smolka, Stasi chief Erich Mielke’s comments on the shoot-to-kill policy (read also: http://www.walled-in-berlin.com/j-elke-ertle/erich-mielke-master-of-fear/, the 1983 concert of West German rock star Udo Lindenberg and the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. For privacy reasons, the website does not include files on living individuals.
To access the online information, currently available only in German, go to http://www.stasi-mediathek.de/sammlungen/.
For a sneak peek at the first 20+ pages of my memoir, Walled-In: A West Berlin Girl’s Journey to Freedom, click “Download a free excerpt” on my home page and feel free to follow my blog about anything German: historic and current events, people, places and food.
Walled-In is my story of growing up in Berlin during the Cold War. Juxtaposing the events that engulfed Berlin during the Berlin Blockade, the Berlin Airlift, the Berlin Wall and Kennedy’s Berlin visit with the struggle against my equally insurmountable parental walls, Walled-In is about freedom vs. conformity, conflict vs. harmony, domination vs. submission, loyalty vs. betrayal.
