Authors: Timothy Garton Ash
When I sit down in my hotel room half an hour later and take out a pen, I find that my own hand is trembling.
Y
OU MUST IMAGINE CONVERSATIONS LIKE THIS TAKING
place every evening, in kitchens and sitting rooms all over Germany. Painful encounters, truth-telling, friendship-demolishing, life-haunting. Hundreds, thousands of such encounters, as the awful power of knowledge is slowly passed down from the Stasi to the employees of the Gauck Authority, and from the employees of the Gauck Authority to individuals like me, who then hold the lives of other people in our hands, in a way that most of us would never otherwise do.
Might it not, after all, be wiser to allow them their own particular imaginative mixture of memory and forgetting, of self-respect built on self-deception? Or is it better to confront them? Better not just for yourself, for your own need to know, but for them too? Even in her first confused reaction, “Michaela” herself said, “Really it’s good that you’ve shown me this.”
W
HEN WE TALKED, SHE STRONGLY DENIED KNOWING
that the Stasi had her down as an informer. At first I was inclined to believe her, but experts and friends told me not to be so naive: “That’s what they always say.” Frau Duncker, who has taken over my case on Frau Schulz’s retirement, now suggests that the archive might trace “Michaela”’s own file. As a normal reader, you are given only photocopies of the pages from the informer’s file that relate directly to you. You can also request formal, written confirmation of the real identity of those who informed on you, “insofar as this is clearly established by the documents.” As a researcher I am, exceptionally, allowed to see their actual files.
A regular informer’s file has three parts, compiled according to strict rules. Part I documents the biography of the informer, the way in which the Stasi has won their cooperation, up to and including the written pledge to work as an informer, with personal choice of code name, and their subsequent record, including photocopies of their private correspondence, information given on them by other informers and a note of any concerns the Stasi has about their reliability. Part II contains their
work: detailed notes by their Stasi case officer on the information they give at regular meetings, usually in “conspiratorial flats,” their own written reports, reviews of the year’s work, plans for further action and so on. Part III has receipts for all the expenses and “premiums” paid them.
Unfortunately, the archive can find only Part II of “Michaela”’s file, and not all of that. Still, it is nearly six hundred pages, covering the period 1976 to 1984. The Weimar years. It begins with Lieutenant Küntzel reassuring “Michaela” that, as he puts its, “our organ” will ensure that there will be no unfortunate consequences for her because she was caught taking hard currency out of the country illegally, on an official trip to Hungary. “Michaela” is very relieved about this. She had feared being refused permission for future official trips abroad. A few weeks later he visits her again, and records that she expressed readiness to work “with our organ … in respect of her professional concerns. She feels herself personally unsuited for other tasks.” Her husband had told her a little about what
that
was like. He had known Kim Philby well “and also worked for the friends during his time in exile in England.” (“The friends” is a phrase people in East Germany used, often ironically, to refer to the Russians.) “She did not feel herself to be suited to such work.”
Two months later she can report on a successful official trip to Switzerland: something of which most East Germans could only dream. Lieutenant Küntzel confirms with her his “legend,” that he comes from the district council. And here already I find the first handwritten report, signed “Michaela.”
One has to be careful, though. Later in the file there are other handwritten reports, also signed “Michaela,” but these are in the handwriting of the person who took over from Lieutenant Küntzel the conduct of regular meetings with her. (This man—was it “Dieter” or “Heinz”?—was not a regular officer at all, but an informer whose job was to run other informers.) In the earlier reports, however, the large female hand does appear to be that of “Michaela” herself. In fact, one document in this handwriting—a draft letter to the cultural attachés at several embassies—is signed with her real name, which has then been crossed out and “Michaela” written over it.
Her second handwritten report concerns a matter of huge importance for the security of the state. Across three pages, “Michaela” complains about the service in the restaurant of the Hotel Elephant. She has been most rudely treated by the headwaiter, Herr Göbbel, in front of her English guests, who made fun of this. “Above all,” she writes, “the dictatorial tone [of Herr Göbbel] was described as unworthy of an international hotel. This sort of guest care does not, in my opinion, enhance the international reputation of the GDR.”
On September 15, 1976, Lieutenant Küntzel notes that their next appointment, on September 21, will be the interview to recruit her formally as an informer. The meeting will take place, unusually, in her own flat. The record of that crucial conversation is not in this binder, presumably because it was placed, following the standard procedures, in Part I of her file, together with any handwritten pledge—if pledge there was. However, she is subsequently designated with the abbreviation for an informer
having direct contact with the enemy, IMV Later in the file she is described as IMS, the abbreviation for an informer on the security of a particular area. And she certainly kept talking.
That autumn, for example, there is a prominent West German visitor to the Art Galleries, one Helmut Kohl. “Michaela” deplores the fact that, encouraged by Comrade (name), the attendants had been overzealous in their duties, “opening doors and making bows.”
What follows is less amusing. At meetings every two or three weeks, a pattern interrupted only by her holidays and official trips abroad, she gives generously of her time and knowledge. She reports on the political attitudes of her subordinates: this one had criticized the expulsion of the dissident singer Wolf Biermann, that one showed “an almost bourgeois attitude to various problems of our society.” She supplies a five-page handwritten report on a visit to someone she describes as one of her best friends in the West.
Reading such a file you see how an informer is gradually played in, like a fish on a line, starting from the initial resolve to talk only of “professional concerns” and ending up with the most private betrayal. For in the end, “Michaela” even informs on the West German boyfriend of her own stepdaughter. Under “Instructions to the IM on further measures,” Lieutenant Küntzel then writes the chilling words
“Abschöpfung der Tochter.” Abschöpfung
is another Stasi technical term, laboriously defined in the 1985 Stasi dictionary as “systematic conduct of conversations for the targeted exploitation of the knowledge, information and possibilities of other persons for gaining information.” The nearest English equivalent is, I suppose,
“pumping.” So “Michaela” is to pump her step-daughter for the secret police.
Perhaps she really thought she was just chatting away to “Dieter” or “Heinz,” showing that she was a good comrade and loyal citizen with nothing to hide. Harmless gossip, you know. Perhaps she never imagined that it would all be written down in such detail, although she seems—if my handwriting analysis is correct—to have been quite ready to write things down in detail herself. Certainly such “instructions” may bear little relation to what actually happened, as I know from my own file. A friendly “How’s your stepdaughter getting on these days?” becomes the chilling
“Abschöpfung der Tochter.”
But if she didn’t know what she was doing, that’s because she didn’t want to know what she was doing.
To make a fair judgment, I would like to know precisely what damage, if any, was done to the people “Michaela” talked about, but this is very difficult to establish. As required by the law, names of innocent third parties are blacked out. Even if I could still identify them, I would not be given access to their files. Only by looking at those records could I assess the effect of her information, as against that coming from other sources. Hence only those who were directly affected, and now choose to read their own files, can really say. Yet we do know that the Stasi paid particular attention to information corning from the IMs. Their seemingly harmless snippets of information were stitched together into something altogether more harmful. That was how the whole system worked.
Meanwhile, although I cannot definitely say what difficulties she caused others, I can say what benefit she
derived for herself. A month later, for example, an internal memorandum confirms that there are no objections at all to her continuing to travel abroad: a rare privilege. After they discuss how she might serve the state on her forthcoming trip to Japan, Lieutenant Küntzel notes: “The tasks assigned to the IM have always been readily accepted and realized. IMV ‘Michaela’ has acquired operative knowledge and abilities that enable him
[sic]
to realize complicated tasks.” The “him” refers to IM,
Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter
, for which the Stasi did not recognize the female form,
Mitarbeiterin
. In fact, this was a largely masculine world: only some 10 percent of Stasi informers were women.
In September 1979, I appear on the scene. At the next meeting, Lieutenant Küntzel “instructs” her on how to behave toward me. A week later I haven’t been in touch. A month later and still no word from me: “The IM was concerned that he [i.e., she] might have done something wrong. These doubts could be allayed.” Summing up the year’s work at the end of December, Lieutenant Küntzel notes with satisfaction that the IM was now ready to do things that [s]he was not ready to do at the outset. “The main point was identified as the contact with Garton Ash. The IM was praised in respect of the
[sic]
behavior.”
The reports for 1980 and 1981 follow our sporadic contacts, as recorded in my own file, interspersed with her trips to Italy and Denmark. In late 1981 an informer for running informers with the code name “Singer” takes over from the lieutenant. “Michaela” continues to sing for her exit visas. In March 1982 “Singer” and “Michaela” are recorded as “evaluating” extracts from my book
about East Germany that had appeared in
Der Spiegel
. In June “Singer” congratulates her on receiving the Fatherland Order of Merit in Silver, and adds a present of fifty marks from the ministry. At the next meeting she reports at length the saga of the Dürers. Unless I had talked to her, I would never have understood from reading this document that it was all about her frustration at being denied the chance to visit America.
And so it goes on, and on. A contact with the Swiss embassy. The assessment of another employee. A present from the ministry for “Michael”—that is, Dr. Georg—on his eightieth birthday. “A congenial gathering took place in dignified festive fashion,” writes “Singer.” Then a report on her stepdaughter’s new husband.
A trip to Austria. Dr. Georg falls gravely ill. A meeting that “served the purpose of showing ‘Michaela’ that in the coming hard time she [for once, the female form is used] can find support from our organ.” Her report of a letter from Litzi, the former Mrs. Philby, saying that she would not be returning to East Germany after a trip to Vienna.
Then Dr. Georg’s death, retirement from the Weimar job and the proposed move to Berlin, eased by a widow’s letter to Politburo member Kurt Hager (alias Feliks Albin), who knew Dr. Georg from their time in London during the war. But just before she goes, a last little report on an artist who had applied to emigrate …
As I explore the trivial and sometimes intimate details of “Michaela”’s collaboration I stop to ask myself: Should I really be reading all this? And even if I should, should you?
When writers or newspaper editors are criticized for publishing details from someone’s private life, they cite “the public interest.” But in practice their definition of “public interest” is often “what interests the public”—that is, what sells more of their newspapers or books. Is there, here, a genuine public interest to justify publishing personal details that will certainly embarrass “Michaela” and may even damage her relationship with her stepdaughter?
A formal answer can be found in the law on the Stasi files. According to Article 32, for the purposes of the historical exploration of the Stasi’s history and “political education” I may see and publish personal information from the files on “persons of contemporary history, holders of a political function or officeholders exercising their office, so long as they are not adversely affected persons or third parties;” on those who worked for the Stasi, whether full-time or as any of the various kinds of unofficial collaborator; and on those who benefited from the Stasi’s work. However, this applies only so long as “no overriding protection-worthy interests of such persons are adversely affected.”
But who is a “person of contemporary history” and what is an “overriding protection-worthy interest”? A legal expert at the Gauck Authority explains. The former are what in English would be called “public figures.” However, German law makes a further distinction between “absolute” and “relative” historical figures. “Absolute” historical figures are people like Hitler or Churchill. “Relative” historical figures are people of historical importance only in a particular area or time, and just that part of their life is, so to speak, fair game.
“Protection-worthy interests” are sensitive details from the person’s private life, inasmuch as these are not important to understanding how the Stasi worked.
In practice, the employees of the Gauck Authority have to make countless individual judgments as they prepare the files for the reader. As well as blacking out the names of “affected and third parties” while leaving those of “persons of contemporary history,” they are to cover up passages that concern such “protection-worthy interests.” Several pages on “Michaela”’s file are covered up for this reason.
For some time I thought it was they who had to make the hard decisions and take legal responsibility, but the expert puts me straight. I alone am answerable in court for what I publish. So “Michaela” might, as she fantasized, sue me. But I am not worried about that. What concerns me is not the legal responsibility but the moral one. For example, why not simply leave out the bit about her stepdaughter? Fortunately I manage to locate the stepdaughter, and carefully explain the position. She knows already that her stepmother had informed on her. She found out about it by reading her own file and as a result has severed all ties. “Michaela”’s own daughter also learned about it on that occasion.