I was both joking and serious…In Yugoslavia there were a lot of people who you knew were informing on
you. Lots of school teachers would do that, inform on what the kids said
about the parents. But again, the end result would be nuissance, not
imprisonment and torture.You might get fired… but in truth everyone knew somoeone so you could
always work the networks to get off.Serbia/Yugoslavia is an inherently corrupt, family oriented system.The danger with these authoritarian regimes is when they rule an ordered,
technocratic and bureaucratized society like the Germans… When you can’t
work your connections to alleviate the harm. That is what is so dangerous
about the Germans.
Sean Noonan wrote:
is that serious or a joke? I have no idea why they’d do that. Reminds
me of the nazi science experiments you always hear about.
Obviously my experience in China is nothing compared to actually living
it—but I think general surveillance is a bit different than this
complete infiltration of informants. In China, at least, you can get a
bit of an idea of who’s watching. Not sure how Yugoslavia/Serbia
compares, but constantly wondering who around you, including your
family, is informing on you! Fuck!
Marko Papic wrote:
“I was fingerprinted and then had to sit on a piece of fabric. That
was then placed in a jar to collect my smell.” (Thousands of such jars
were found after the wall came down but there has never been an
explanation of forensic value, bizarre or otherwise
K-9 death squads?
Sean Noonan wrote:
man this is fucked up. still can’t imagine what it would’ve been
like.
The Spy in My Bed
by Bob Jamieson Info
Bob Jamieson
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-10-02/the-spy-in-my-bed/full/
Vera Lengsfeld was arrested and tortured by the East German
government. Only years later, did she discover it was her husband
who informed on her. Bob Jamieson reports.
Hohenschoenhausen Prison in Berlin is the sinister reminder that
even now, on the 20th anniversary this Sunday, the work to reunify
Germany is still unfinished.
The complex of drab buildings was the secret detention jail for East
Germany’s Ministry of State Security-Stasi-the vast and brutal
internal army used to control the population. And
Hohenschoenhausen, left untouched since Stasi agents fled when the
wall came down, was the center of interrogation and torture.
“This was my cell,” said Vera Lengsfeld, who spent a month there
awaiting trial as Stasi agents tried to force a confession to
opposing the state. She did not know then that the man who betrayed
her was her husband.
In the 1980s Vera Lengsfeld was a modest civil-rights activist in
the Communist state, with three children and, friends say, very much
in love with her husband, a poet. Today she is a trim 58-year-old
with a blond bob who has become an influential member of the German
Parliament, often at odds with Chancellor Angela Merkel (also a
former East German) over individual liberty. She is no longer
married.
Walking in what is now a museum, under harsh fluorescent light on
long-faded brown linoleum, Lengsfeld stops outside another door.
“This was where they did the water torture that made you think you
were drowning,” she says without emotion. “And the one next to it
was for the Chinese water torture.”
“Doesn’t being a guide here revive bitter memories?” I ask. “No, it
doesn’t,” she says. “I give the tours to teach the truth about East
Germany, especially to the young.”
In East Germany, there was nowhere Stasi agents or their informers
weren’t watching or listening and reporting back to headquarters.
Homes were bugged, telephones tapped, mail opened, neighbors spied
on neighbors. According to German federal records, there were almost
100,000 Stasi agents and an estimated 500,000 informers under
contract to the ministry in a country of 16 million people. Some
informed to curry favor with the regime and others were induced with
threats.
Article – Jamieson Stasi Vera Lengsfeld was arrested and tortured by
the East German government. Only years later, did she discover it
was her husband who informed on her. (Jockel Finck / AP Photo)
In Hitler’s Germany, there was one Gestapo agent for every 2,000
citizens. In East Germany, there was one Stasi agent or informer for
every 63 citizens, records show.
Lengsfeld was under constant surveillance and harassment. She was
expelled from the science academy where she worked and then made her
living as a beekeeper and translator.
Finally, in 1988, she was arrested for carrying a sign in a
government parade. It quoted the first line of the East German
constitution: “Every citizen has the right to express his opinion
freely and openly.” The charge was riotous behavior. She remembers
that on her arrival at Hohenschoenhausen. “I was fingerprinted and
then had to sit on a piece of fabric. That was then placed in a jar
to collect my smell.” (Thousands of such jars were found after the
wall came down but there has never been an explanation of forensic
value, bizarre or otherwise.)
Convicted by a Communist court she was later thrown out of the
country, leaving her husband, and her three children behind.
But the worst for Vera Lengsfeld was yet to come.
Tens of thousands of Stasi victims, whose lives were destroyed; who
were beaten, tortured, kidnapped or killed, have never seen anyone
who was responsible punished.
Thomas Habicht, a leading German journalist who was a target of
Stasi agents in West Berlin, says that still casts a shadow over
reunification. “The generation of Stasi criminals is still alive,
behaves aggressively, and in some cases even has gained influential
positions again.” Many of the former agents and officials, Habicht
says, still live in the privileged housing built for them by the
East German government “which adds insult to serious injury.”
On this subject, Lengfeld’s eyes flash for the first time this day.
“I’m angry,” she snaps. While the first and only freely elected
East German parliament moved to punish the Stasi agents, she and
others believe that to speed reunification, the West German
government of Helmut Kohl swept the issue under the rug and
subsequent governments have kept it there. “Just look at pensions,”
she says. “Because (the Stasi agents’) wages were two or three times
higher than the average East German, their pensions now are two or
three times higher” than most of the retirees. “East Germany,” she
says, “had both victims and perpetrators and we cannot forget that.”
In November, 1989, as chaotic protests against the repressive regime
grew, Lengsfeld wanted to return from her exile in Britain to be
with her family. On November 9 she arrived in West Berlin and
through confusion at the Friedrichstrasse checkpoint, she was able
to slip back into East Berlin. Her timing was exquisite: that night
the Berlin Wall fell.
The Stasi learned from her husband not only about her opposition to
the government but intimate details of dinner table conversations,
pillow talk, even their sex life.
In the aftermath, six million files on East German citizens were
discovered in Stasi archives. Laid end to end they would be 125
miles long. In 1991, the files were opened for the Stasi victims. It
was then that Vera Lengsfeld learned that that the Stasi informer
code named “Donald” was her husband, Knud Wollenberger.
In 1984, Wollenberger signed a Stasi contract agreeing to inform on
Lengsfeld and her son from a previous marriage. The Stasi learned
from her husband not only about her opposition to the government but
intimate details of dinner table conversations, pillow talk, even
their sex life. She divorced “Donald” in 1992.
Today, she says, “I will never again talk about this.” But those who
saw her then described a shattered woman, someone who felt violated
in a way she could not at first fully comprehend like, say adultery.
Wollenberger, who suffers from advanced Parkinson’s disease, does
not give interviews. But a decade ago when a television interviewer
asked why he agreed to spy on his wife he said, “I didn’t think you
could say no.” Was he forced to do it? “No.” Well, asked the
interviewer, was it voluntary? Wollenberger answered with a
question. “What is voluntary?”
There are certain echoes to this story in The Lives of Others, the
Oscar winning movie about the Stasi and its victims. In the
film-the only serious one on the subject-a playwright’s lover is
induced to spy on him with tragic consequences. The playwright has
long made his accommodation with the regime, but then turns against
it.
Sebastian Koch, who portrayed the playwright, believes many in
Germany, like his character, find the Stasi excesses too easy to
ignore. “He refused to see it because things were too perfect and
he was too productive,” Koch says, “but it will always be there,
underneath the surface.”
At the end of the film Koch’s character meets the former minister of
state security, still smug and arrogant. “And to think,” the
playwright says, “that people like you once ruled a country.”
Habicht, the journalist, says, so far, that question has not been
fully answered. “We still have thousands of Stasi victims who, 20
years after reunification, want to learn the truth from their
files.”
According to Germany’s Federal Commission, which manages the Stasi
archives, two and a half million people have read their personal
files. Another six thousand are applying each month to gain access
to theirs. Many former East Germans still do not know who spied on
them, what was reported and the consequences.
At the same time, Sebastian Koch says Germans should never forget
people like Vera Lengsfeld. “There is a larger truth here. You have
to commit yourself and face the consequences. You have this moment
when you have to react or surrender.”
Bob Jamieson has worked as a correspondent for NBC News and ABC
News, reporting from all seven continents during his 40-year career.
He has received five national Emmys as well as DuPont and Peabody
awards.
—
Sean Noonan
Tactical Analyst
Office: +1 512-279-9479
Mobile: +1 512-758-5967
Strategic Forecasting, Inc.
http://www.stratfor.com
—
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Marko Papic
Geopol Analyst – Eurasia
STRATFOR
700 Lavaca Street – 900
Austin, Texas
78701 USA
P: + 1-512-744-4094
marko.papic@stratfor.com
—
Sean Noonan
Tactical Analyst
Office: +1 512-279-9479
Mobile: +1 512-758-5967
Strategic Forecasting, Inc.
http://www.stratfor.com
—
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Marko Papic
Geopol Analyst – Eurasia
STRATFOR
700 Lavaca Street – 900
Austin, Texas
78701 USA
P: + 1-512-744-4094
marko.papic@stratfor.com |
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