47 pages • 1 hour read
Anna FunderStasiland
Anna FunderNonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 6-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary: “Stasi HQ”
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. Thousands of East Germans flooded into West Berlin, while others danced and celebrated on the Wall.
Chapter 7 Summary: “The Smell of Old Men”
Funder listens as the tour guide recounts the last days of the East German Communist regime. At the headquarters, before the revolution, the Stasi shredded so many files they had to send agents to West Berlin to buy more shredders. These are the documents that the so-called “puzzle women” in Nuremberg are trying to piece back together.
A peaceful protest against the Stasi burning files was organized and Berliners surrounded the building. Mielke was denounced and taken into remand. He was eventually sentenced to six years in prison for his murder of police officers in 1931 (these were the only charges which stuck). Erich Honecker fled to Moscow and was extradited back to Berlin, but his trial was suspended due to terminal liver cancer. He died in Chile in 1994.
Even the many informers of the Stasi went along with voting for the dissolution of the regime, in order perhaps to maintain their cover. There was a debate on what to do with all the Stasi files. In August 1990, the elected parliament of East Germany passed a law granting the right for the files to be viewable, but the West German government prescribed the files be locked away in the Federal Archives in West Germany. People protested, fearing the files would be used in the future, and the protests were successful: provisions were added that allowed for public access to the files: “Germany was the only Eastern Bloc country in the end that so bravely, so conscientiously, opened its files on its people to its people” (71).
The tour ends, and the guide takes Funder upstairs, where she passes various artifacts from East Germany, including many representations of Lenin. She is fascinated by the rugs, which she feels demonstrate “the value of labour [sic] over everything else here, mostly aesthetics and utility” (72). She visits Mielke’s office and watches a video of East Germans talking in a casual manner about the ways they and others fell in line with the regime. A cleaning woman, a former East German herself, shows her a smudge on the wall where Mielke would have leaned back and rested his head:“Won’t come off” (74), she says. She adds that it took her a while to get rid of the smell of old men.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Telephone Calls”
Miriam Weber calls to thank Funder for listening to her story, and Funder detects a formality in her voice, which causes her to wonder if, having told Funder the most painful parts of her life, she ever wishes to see her again. Regardless, the two agree to meet up soon.
That night, Funder watches a TV show where a former East German stripper coyly dodges a question on whether she stripped for the Politbüro. Then she watches a channel showing a simple drive through the East German countryside, which continues into her dreams. In the dream, Funder is naked and ashamed when the phone rings, waking her up. It is her friend, Klaus, asking her to come to the pub, an invitation she declines.
In the morning, she gets a call from a former ministry officer named Herr Winz, who offers to meet in Potsdam. He is disguised, she notes, as a westerner. He takes her to a hotel. He asks to see her ID card and Funder replies that Australians don’t have them, but she does show him her passport. Examining it, he notes she was in East Germany in 1987.
She learns he is a member of the Insiderkomitee, which is a society of former Stasi men who lobby for entitlements for former Stasi officers and seek to tell their side of the story. Funder knows they have a reputation for dirty tactics, including acid attacks and harassment of those counter to their cause. She looks at him and this group as “victims of democracy and the rule of law” (84). Herr Winz dodges questions about the Insiderkomitee and is determined to praise socialist theory and his own persecution in the current political climate. It becomes clear to Funder that he is “waiting for the Second Coming of socialism” (86). Before they part, Herr Winz gives her a copy of Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto.
Funder calls Miriam and leaves a message, and after several days without hearing back, worries that something is wrong.
Chapters 6-8 Analysis
Chapters 6 and 7 delve into the historical context of the East German government and trace the life stories of its two most powerful leaders, the “two Erichs”: Erich Mielke (the head of the Ministry for State Security) and Erich Honecker (the General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party). The scope and historical context of the government’s surveillance state is also touched upon:
In Hitler’s Third Reich it is estimated that there was one Gestapo agent for every 2000 citizens, and in Stalin’s USSR there was one KGB agent for every 5830 people. In the GDR, there was one Stasi officer or informant for every sixty-three people. If part-time informers are included, some estimates have the ratio as high as one informer for every 6.5 citizens (57).
A primary concern of the book is to highlight the forms that resistance to the government manifested: we learn that East Germany’s lack of a culture of opposition while under Soviet control was perhaps “in part due to the better standard of living, perhaps to the thoroughness of the Stasi—or, as some put it, to the willingness of Germans to subject themselves to authority” (61). Certainly the standard of living in East Germany was above that of other Eastern Bloc countries, which Julia’s story about her relatively “normal” family life, in the following chapters, will further show.
The thread about the importance of remembering the past is complicated in these chapters as well, particularly as it relates to the dilemma over what to do with the Stasi files: "Should they be opened or burnt? Should they be locked away for fifty years and then opened, when the people in them would be dead or, possibly, forgiven? What were the dangers of knowing?” (70). One issue with releasing the files is that some of them might contain sensitive information or reveal the identities of informers, thus sowing divisiveness in a time that Germany is attempting to reunify. Does one need to confront one’s dark secrets in order to clear the way for the future, or are they better off buried? The unified government made its position clear in its decision to open the files.
Funder’s meeting with Herr Winz, in Chapter 8, shows us the limits of the healing power of remembering: acknowledging the failure of an ideology and a regime (as Herr Winz does) doesn’t seem to be enough to prevent him from wanting to repeat it. Funder attributes this fact to human nature: “There is an art, a deeply political art, of taking circumstances as they arise and attributing them to your side or the opposition, in a constant tallying” (86).
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