Book a Week Challenge 2008 - 1/52, Stasiland by Anna Funder
Friday, January 4th, 2008 01:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lizziecMy first book of 2008 in the CBB Book a Week challenge 2008 has been Stasiland by Anna Funder. I brought it after Christmas with some Waterstones vouchers I had been given.
It's a series of stories written by an Australian who lived and worked in Berlin after Germany was reunited and began looking into stories of those who found themselves on the wrong side of it. There were accounts by people who had worked for the Stasi and those whose lives had been ruined by it. There were brief rundowns of the way in which the GDR (German Democratic Republic also known as East Germany) and the Stasi were run. It is very interesting and I couldn't put it down - I would recommend it to anyone who wants an idea how these organisations worked and their impact on people's lives but only had a very hazy idea before picking up the book. I could have told you what the GDR and Stasi were before, but now I have a much better understanding and want to read more. It is also truly scary in parts:
The use of Radiation to track suspects:
(Talking about a member of The Klaus Renft Combo, Gerulf Pannach) I've been reading about Pannach's death lately. He died prematurely of an unusual kind of cancer, as did Jürgen Fuchs and Rudolf Bahro, both dissidents and writers. All of them had been in Stasi prisons at around the same time. When a radiation machine was found in one of those prisons, the Stasi File Authority began to investigate the possible use of radiation against dissidents. What it uncovered shocked a people used to bad news.
The Stasi had used radiation to mark people and objects it wanted to track. It developed a range of radioactive tags including irradiated pins it could surreptitiously insert into a person's clothing, radioactive magnets to place on cars, and radioactive pellets to shoot into tyres. It developed hand pump sprays so Stasi operatives could approach people in a crowd and impregnate them with radiation or secretly spray their floor at home so they would leave radioactive footprints everywhere they went. Rudolf Bahro's manuscript was irradiated so it could be traced to recipients, even in the west. To detect the marked person or object, the Stasi developed personal geiger counters that could be strapped to the body, and would silently vibrate if the officer got a reading. And in the prison and remand centres, the Stasi sometimes used radiation machines as well as cameras where the prisoners' mugshots were taken. The File Authority report was cautions. It found no evidence that radiation was used to kill off marked men and women. But it did find that it was used with reckless disregard for people's health. And it recommended that former prisoners of the Stasi get regular medical check-ups.
On the levels of surveillance and infiltration of informers in all aspects of GDR life
I once saw a note on a Stasi file from early 1989 that I would never forget. In it a young lieutenant alerted his superiors to the fact that there were so many informers in church opposition groups at demonstrations that they were making these groups appear stronger than they really were. In one of the most beautiful ironies I have ever seen, he dutifully noted that it appeared that, by having swelled the ranks of the opposition, the Stasi was giving the people the heart to keep demonstrating against them.
It also brought my attention to the "puzzle-women" of the File Authority. As the GDR collapsed the Stasi attempted to destroy by electronic shredder, and when those failed, by hand, the files it held on their own citizens. (which back to back would have stretched for more than 100 miles). The fragments from these were held in sacks and with the manpower available to piece them back together it would have taken more than 400 years to repair all the files that had been shredded (still more were not destroyed and are available for former East Germans to view - many now want to see their own files). The BBC News has a recent story about the switch to computers in the hope that the job will be completed sooner. It is fascinating.
In all a very very interesting book that leads me to want to read more about the GDR and the Stasi.
It's a series of stories written by an Australian who lived and worked in Berlin after Germany was reunited and began looking into stories of those who found themselves on the wrong side of it. There were accounts by people who had worked for the Stasi and those whose lives had been ruined by it. There were brief rundowns of the way in which the GDR (German Democratic Republic also known as East Germany) and the Stasi were run. It is very interesting and I couldn't put it down - I would recommend it to anyone who wants an idea how these organisations worked and their impact on people's lives but only had a very hazy idea before picking up the book. I could have told you what the GDR and Stasi were before, but now I have a much better understanding and want to read more. It is also truly scary in parts:
The use of Radiation to track suspects:
(Talking about a member of The Klaus Renft Combo, Gerulf Pannach) I've been reading about Pannach's death lately. He died prematurely of an unusual kind of cancer, as did Jürgen Fuchs and Rudolf Bahro, both dissidents and writers. All of them had been in Stasi prisons at around the same time. When a radiation machine was found in one of those prisons, the Stasi File Authority began to investigate the possible use of radiation against dissidents. What it uncovered shocked a people used to bad news.
The Stasi had used radiation to mark people and objects it wanted to track. It developed a range of radioactive tags including irradiated pins it could surreptitiously insert into a person's clothing, radioactive magnets to place on cars, and radioactive pellets to shoot into tyres. It developed hand pump sprays so Stasi operatives could approach people in a crowd and impregnate them with radiation or secretly spray their floor at home so they would leave radioactive footprints everywhere they went. Rudolf Bahro's manuscript was irradiated so it could be traced to recipients, even in the west. To detect the marked person or object, the Stasi developed personal geiger counters that could be strapped to the body, and would silently vibrate if the officer got a reading. And in the prison and remand centres, the Stasi sometimes used radiation machines as well as cameras where the prisoners' mugshots were taken. The File Authority report was cautions. It found no evidence that radiation was used to kill off marked men and women. But it did find that it was used with reckless disregard for people's health. And it recommended that former prisoners of the Stasi get regular medical check-ups.
On the levels of surveillance and infiltration of informers in all aspects of GDR life
I once saw a note on a Stasi file from early 1989 that I would never forget. In it a young lieutenant alerted his superiors to the fact that there were so many informers in church opposition groups at demonstrations that they were making these groups appear stronger than they really were. In one of the most beautiful ironies I have ever seen, he dutifully noted that it appeared that, by having swelled the ranks of the opposition, the Stasi was giving the people the heart to keep demonstrating against them.
It also brought my attention to the "puzzle-women" of the File Authority. As the GDR collapsed the Stasi attempted to destroy by electronic shredder, and when those failed, by hand, the files it held on their own citizens. (which back to back would have stretched for more than 100 miles). The fragments from these were held in sacks and with the manpower available to piece them back together it would have taken more than 400 years to repair all the files that had been shredded (still more were not destroyed and are available for former East Germans to view - many now want to see their own files). The BBC News has a recent story about the switch to computers in the hope that the job will be completed sooner. It is fascinating.
In all a very very interesting book that leads me to want to read more about the GDR and the Stasi.
