Stasiland

After fielding many calls and making appointments to meet with several Stasi men, Funder visits the national Stasi Headquarters at Normannenstrasse. Erich Mielke, the former Minister for State Security, had an office there, and it is from there that the Stasi oversaw the widespread enterprise of domestic surveillance.

Early in his life, Mielke was involved with communist organizations in Germany. After shooting and killing two German police officers in 1931, he fled to Moscow, in order to work with Stalin’s secret police. After the war, he worked for internal affairs at the Soviet-run police force in Berlin. In 1957, he organized a coup and became Minister of State Security. With the more public figure of the Secretary-General, Erich Honecker, the “two Erichs” ran the Stasi Party.

Funder listens to a tour guide in the Stasi headquarters telling a group about the high-tech, life-extending remedies and luxurious shops available to the Stasi officers here. Funder then provides more historical context: in 1985, the Soviets pulled out of East Germany. Unlike other Eastern-Bloc countries, East Germany never had a culture of opposition, because of the crucial fact that the Stasi could send dissenters to West Germany. The resistance did not reach a critical mass until 1989, when, despite the Stasi Party’s efforts to stave off collapse (which involved “Day X,” the planned unsealing of thousands of documents with orders to arrest 85,939 East Germans listed by name), a relaxation on travel restrictions was announced.