The Stasi Museum

The Stasi Headquarters, Lichtenberg, Berlin

I am sitting in the cafeterior of the Stasi museum, located fittingly in the old headquarters of the Stasi in Lichtenberg, Berlin. The walls of the room are placid yellow - faded like a cigarette butt that's been left in a sunlit ashtray. The chairs are brown, like the floor and the windows are too high to bring any natural light into the room, leaving visitors to be doused instead in an dull artificial glow. Each table has a very small cactus on it, no doubt to bring the smallest amount of colour into the otherwise desolate room. 

On the far wall there is a display behind glass of full alcohol bottles with their companion glasses - the labels are all strange to me and reek of a time when sourcing of goods was primarily done from "socialist allies". No Bacardi for them. The building, like the room, could never be accused of resembling anything of the glamour, colour, vibrancy and variety of modern life in Berlin. The cacti's failure in the middle of my table is testament to that. 

The building has an air of James Bond about it, coming from a time when the means of oppression were almost pantomime in their presentation: bare walls, bad furniture, no decoration and no variety. Additional to the decor of the pantomime palace of evil, is the resident pantomime villain presented in a exhibition upstairs of the office he used to frequent. I am talking of Erich Mielke, who was head of the Stasi from 1957 to 1989. Anna Funder, author of Stasiland, wrote of Mielke: "It is said psychopaths, people utterly untroubled by conscience, make supremely good generals and politicians, and perhaps he was one." He was above all things, a committed Stalinist communist who believed that control of every human impulse was necessary and control over society made possible by knowing everything about everyone at all times. 

His rooms do not in themselves display anything all that sensationally interesting. Everything has been emptied - all locks unlocked and files un-filed. However, there is a safe cabinet - a locked metal cabinet that sits in the corner of the room. It is a dark, grey green cabinet with metallic flecks. The door now stands ajar and inside are empty shelves stained with lost piles of books, files, information and papers - secrets. The cabinet now sits empty in an empty room that without the placard on the wall would mean nothing to no one. But at one time, not so long ago - my lifetime ago - that room and that cabinet held the freedom or imprisonment of thousands. The key to that cabinet would have been one of the most safely guarded items in the DDR. It is said that Mielke held secrets in that cabinet that would have enabled him to dispose of even Honecker (Head of State from 1976-1989) if need be. Yet now it stands, empty and alone in an unlocked room with no purpose. 

But what of our pantomime villain's handmaidens - those diligent comrades who gave the information that was used to lock up their fellow citizens in the hundreds and thousands? There is a great video upstairs talking about the recruitment of informants - one of the most talked about and debated aspects of Stasi oppression. It talked of a shift from forced recruitment (familial threats, imprisonment or hushed up convictions) to "politically or ideologically committed informants". 90% of informants by the end, did it because they wanted to, or they saw the benefits for their career, income or housing. Figures vary, but some suggest that there were up to 190,000 informants (IMs) and 90,000 who worked directly for the Stasi; making it one of the biggest state security apparatus' in history. 

It makes me wonder though, about the modern equivalent. The Snowden leaks make it clear that the capabilities of our own security apparatus' in western countries would shock and awe the Stasi. Yet there is no building with blank walls, bad furniture and drab colour schemes to visit; there is no pantomime palace of evil, or pantomime villain sitting at the centre of all to direct blame or fury at. The reality of modern surveillance is that it really is everywhere, and we are all informants. 

We live in an age when ideology is completely unnecessary now, a result of the failures of 20th century political systems. We have become disillusioned with grand visions of society - but have inadvertently all become informants to keep up the regime of market fundamentalism. There is a cartoon  upstairs of a boney skeletal hand coming out of a large coat and trying to grab the hand of an honest socialist. The hand is named CIA. It was a poster designed to encourage DDR citizens to be aware of the corrupting influence of the US secret services. Today though, there is no covert meeting planned and executed on park benches by men wearing trilbies and raincoats, there is no need for that. The internet history of every citizen in the western world, and to a degree globally, is enough. There is no cabinet of locked away secrets to bring down the head of state if necessary, just a direct tap to a cellphone, or tablet. Was there perhaps comfort back then in the fact that evidence could be found, touched or destroyed? 

People say that after Erich Mielke was arrested and imprisoned for the murders at the wall, he was supplied with a red telephone, the like of which he had used during his time in office. The telephone was not connected to the outside world, though he would frequently be overheard shouting down the phone orders to no one and asking for his dog to be brought to him immediately. His dog was already long dead at this point. 

It seems to me, that though there is always change, it never turns out quite as you expect.