20 Years Since The Fall Of The Berlin Wall

Published on Mon 19th Oct 2009

Lib Dem MEPs were in Berlin recently following the German elections which raised our sister party the FDP into partners in government. Berlin is gearing up for the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall (9th November), and as a reminder of what life was like in East Germany before the fateful events of 1989 we visited the non-descript office block which houses the Stasi archives.

Today, anyone - German citizen or foreigner - can ask for the information held about them on file, though 90% of the records on foreigners were destroyed in the frenzied shredding and pulping engaged in by the Stasi as the Wall crumbled. Those who liberated and occupied the building in November 1989 also destroyed quantities of material and chucked documents out of the window. Nevertheless, half of the Stasi files are still in their original manilla folders, stack after stack in rooms with specially reinforced floors, the folders accessed through separate card index files. Altogether, the Stasi used 189,000 unofficial informers who passed on details about the lives of their neighbours and colleagues. Imagine the trauma for those who put in a request today for the information held on themselves and discover that a friend or family member had informed on them, perhaps blocking their promotion or even breaking up an "unsuitable" personal relationship.

Almost the most shocking feature of the Stasi surveillance is how recent it all was. By the eighties, the demands of the market economy to the west were bumping up against the communist state. When West and East Germany concluded an agreement to deliver all mail within the two countries within four days, the Stasi found they had a turnaround problem: they were opening and re-closing 90,000 items of mail a day, and even using the sophisticated equipment which had replaced women with ironing boards, they were forced to recruit more staff in order to save face.

When the Wall came down, moves were already underway to computerise the whole operation. It is sobering to reflect that with 21st century paraphernalia - CCTV, satellite positioning, biometric data, email interception - the Stasi would not have needed 189,000 informers and mail-openers wielding steam irons. Today's normal apparatus of state would have sufficed.