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Commissioner for the Stasi Files Johannes Legner

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Commissioner for the Stasi Files Johannes Legner Key Institutions of German Democracy Number 7 COMMISSIONER FOR THE STASI FILES JOHANNES LEGNER GERMAN ISSUES 28 American Institute for Contemporary German Studies The Johns Hopkins University COMMISSIONER FOR THE STASI FILES JOHANNES LEGNER GERMAN ISSUES 28 The American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS) is a center for advanced research, study, and discussion on the politics, culture, and society of the Federal Republic of Germany. Established in 1983 and affiliated with The Johns Hopkins University but governed by its own Board of Trustees, AICGS is a privately incorporated institute dedicated to independent, critical, and comprehensive analysis and assessment of current German issues. Its goals are to help develop a new generation of American scholars with a thorough understanding of contemporary Germany, deepen American knowledge and understanding of current German developments, contribute to American policy analysis of problems relating to Germany, and promote interdisciplinary and comparative research on Germany. Executive Director: Jackson Janes Board of Trustees, Cochair: Fred H. Langhammer Board of Trustees, Cochair: Dr. Eugene A. Sekulow The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) alone. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies. ©2003 by the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies ISBN 0-941441-74-1 Additional copies of this AICGS German Issue are available from the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, Suite 420, 1400 16th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036-2217. Telephone 202/332-9312, Fax 202/265-9531 E-mail: [email protected], Web: http://www.aicgs.org/ [ii] Key Institutions of German Democracy #7 · 2003 C O N T E N T S FOREWORD.........................................................................................v ABOUT THE AUTHOR......................................................................vii INTRODUCTION.................................................................................1 THE MINISTRY FOR STATE SECURITY (MFS).............................3 The Secret Police.........................................................................3 MfS Records................................................................................6 THE STASI RECORDS ACT...............................................................8 End of the GDR and the Stasi Files..............................................8 Dual Control................................................................................10 Controversy................................................................................11 THE FEDERAL COMMISSIONER.................................................13 Position......................................................................................13 Structure and Personnel................................................................15 Regional Offices............................................................................16 THE ARCHIVE TODAY.....................................................................17 Exploitation of the Files...............................................................18 Reconstruction and Electronic Data Banks..................................18 CITIZENS’ ACCESS..........................................................................19 ACADEMICS’ AND JOURNALISTS’ ACCESS.............................22 PERSONNEL SCREENING..............................................................25 RESEARCH WITHIN THE AGENCY..............................................29 Documentation Centers...............................................................30 Key Institutions of German Democracy #7 · 2003 [iii] THE AGENCY ABROAD..................................................................31 OUTLOOK..........................................................................................32 ENDNOTES........................................................................................34 [iv] Key Institutions of German Democracy #7 · 2003 F O R E W O R D The institution treated in this, the seventh in the Institute’s series “Key Institutions of German Democracy,” is unique not only in its unwieldy title, “The Federal Commissioner for the Records of the Ministry for State Security of the Former German Democratic Republic” but in many regards. Repository of virtually all the huge files of the GDR’s secret police, the Stasi, it is the only institution given to united Germany by the GDR, communist East Germany. Or, to be more accurate, by the brave citizen activists there who in 1989-1990 brought the communist regime down and thus made the decisive contribution to unification. Elected representatives of those activists in the last, freely elected, parliament of the GDR in 1990 and again in that of the united Germany, the Bundestag, a year later insisted that the communist past be faced coldly and completely by opening the secret police files fully. Such courage to confront history in its dreadful entirety is rare and serves to validate democracy in Germany. The archive has provided detailed and personal information for journalists writing on communists and communism in Germany. It has given historians unique insights into how a dictatorship functions in controlling its people and how a people can succumb to arbitrary authority. It constitutes an unparalleled treasure trove for both professions and will continue to do so. The author of this study, the journalist Johannes Legner, served as spokesman for the Commissioner from 1996 until 2000. As editor today of a daily paper in the small eastern German city of Cottbus, he is sensitive to how the archive has been used in screening eastern Germans for jobs in government, business, and academia since unification and also to the divided attitudes among eastern Germans toward the work of the Commissioner. The Institute is grateful to him for his concise study, which too is unique, we believe, in English. Generous support for the study has come from the Dräger Foundation of Lübeck, Germany, to which the Institute herewith expresses its warmest thanks. The Institute also owes a large debt of gratitude to Professor A. James McAdams of Notre Dame University, Professor Peter E. Quint of the University of Maryland School of Law, and Dr. Bernd Schäfer of the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C. for their expert assistance during the editorial process. Robert Gerald Livingston Jackson Janes Editor Executive Director AICGS Key Institutions of German Democracy #7 · 2003 [v] [vi] Key Institutions of German Democracy #7 · 2003 A B O U T T H E A U T H O R Johannes Legner studied political science at the universities of Berlin and Strasbourg. From 1979 until 1985 he was an editor at the Tageszeitung (Berlin), from 1986 until 1989 press spokesman for the Berlin state govern- ment, and from 1989 until 1995 senior editor at the Sender Freies Berlin and the television news channel n-tv. In 1996 he became press spokesman for the Commissioner for the Stasi Archive. Since 2001 he has been deputy chief editor of the Lausitzer Rundschau, a daily paper in Cottbus. Key Institutions of German Democracy #7 · 2003 [vii] [viii] Key Institutions of German Democracy #7 · 2003 INTRODUCTION The Federal Commissioner responsible for the Stasi records is a strange object in the German bureaucratic landscape.1 It also has gained a political significance that makes it exceptional. Several thousand civil servants have been tasked with creating a paper legacy of a now defunct secret police. Part of that task is the establishment and maintenance of a huge archive for potential users. The resources that the Federal Republic has poured into the Stasi1 files are enormous, and the legal foundations of the institution remain the subject of lively debate even more than a decade after its establishment. The “Gauck Authority”2 is without equivalent, not only in Germany but in the world. A number of former communist countries have created similar institutions to handle custody, preparation, administration, and use of their communist legacy. None, however, approximates the scope and the importance of the Gauck Authority, which was established in Berlin in 1991 by federal law, the Stasi Records Act. Not only is the Federal Commission institutionally unique, it is also unique in that it is an expression of a brief period in German history that exhibited at least the beginnings of revolutionary development. The Agency constitutes a political milestone in a country not known for its revolutionary tradition. To understand this unique position, it is not enough to present the institution itself. To understand the Agency requires an understanding of the peculiarities of the communist exercise of power in the twentieth century. This in turn requires a short excursion into the workings of the communist secret police—the Ministry for State Security (MfS) or Stasi. The ministry’s involuntary legacy— mountains of documents—and dealing with it both caused and made possible a public debate about how to deal with that legacy. Secondly, to understand the uniqueness of the Gauck Authority, it is necessary to take a look at the upheavals, at the revolutionary process that brought about the end of communist rule in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1989. Thirdly, the Authority can be understood only when one recalls the debates about the “Freedom of Information Act” in the United States and similarly about the verdict by the Federal Constitutional Court on data
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