Miriam and Charlie
• Maiden in her tower - “From here you could see anyone coming”. • Crime of sedition - "Enemy of the state at 16”. • Dehumanisation. "When I got out of prison, I was basically no longer human." • Peter Rabbit in Mr McGregor’s Garden. • “Eleven years too late and six months too early”. • 375 years to piece the shredded Stasi files together. • For Charlie “Making me finally, of this land”. • She cut herself out of photos, as she did not want to exist - "I cut myself out of it" • "brave and strong and broken" • "slight fragile body and big voice" • "perhaps they beat something out of her she didn't get back" • "she is so slight that the voice comes from nowhere and everywhere at once: it is not immediately evident that it is hers; it fill the room, and wraps us up." • "it was a crime of sedition" • Enemy of state at 16 • investigating her hustbands death • "she has a surprisingly big nicotine-stained voice. she is so slight that the voice comes from nowhere and everwhere at once" • "they break you just like fiction." • "i was no longer human" • "she is a madien safe in her tower" • "i became, officially, an enemy of the state at sixteen" • Was placed in "solitary confinement for a month" • "when i got out of prision i was basically no longer human" • " juvenile prisoner number 725" • "she is a maiden safe in her tower" • Miriam is playing a waiting game that keeps her life suspended • "the interrogation of Miriam, aged sixteen, took place every night for ten nghts for the six hours between 10pm an 4 am" • "When I got out of prison, I was basically no longer human" • Miriam was released in 1970, and was seventeen and a half
Frau Paul
• Crying so silently “It is more like leaking”. • Waking to a changed world. • Choices. • Function of memory. • "The mortgage out acts put on our future”. • seperated from her ill baby son by the wall • imprisoned for helping students escape the GDR • "frau paul had a delight and strength about her" • "frau paul had her youth taken away from her" • soul has been "buckled out of shape forever" • "a large woman in her early sixties. she has a cap of dark hair and very blue eyes. Her cloths and hair are neat and she has tapered plump fingers of mournful magdalene." • "Frau Paul does not picture herself as a hero, or a dissident" • "a lonely, teary guilt-wracked wreck.” • "a mournful magdalene" • "The Wall Went Straight Through My Heart"- title of her story • "i had decided against my son" • “memory, like so much else, is unreliable. Not only for what it hides and what it alters, but also for what it reveals. • “The picture we make of ourselves, with all its congruencies and fantastical edges, sustains us.” • "Frau paul does not picture herself as a hero, or a dissident. She is a dental technician and a mother with a terrible family history.And she is a criminal. This seems to me the sorriest;that the picture she has of herself is one the Stasi made for her" • “her decision took a whole new fund of courage to live with.” • "very blue eyes and a soft face" • “It seems to me that Frau Paul, as one does, may have overestimated her own strength, her resistance to damage,” • "She starts to cry, so silently, its more like leaking" • "she had been taken out of time, and out of place" • "memory, like so much else, is unreliable. not only for what it hides, bust also for what it reveals" - claims she didnt know they were going to escape, but Anna believes that she does but it has been repressed into her consciousness • "She had been taken out of time, and out of place" • "But here she is in the place that broke her, and she is telling me about it. It is part bravery, like the bravery that made her refuse the Stasi deal, and it is part, perhaps, obsession, caused by whay they did to her after that" • "She is a dental technician and a mother with a terrible family history. And she is a criminal. This seems to me the sorriest thing; that the picture she has of herself is one that the Stasi made for her"
Julia
• Funder realises “everything here was broken or about to be” - like Julia. • "I look at her and I know that under all those layers of black is a wiry body and a sharp-sharp mind, but there is something about Julia that breaks my heart." • Julia’s perception of life under the GDR is skewed - “no drunks before the Wall came down”. • Link between Funder and Julia - “I look at Julia and she reminds me of myself." • GDR created the shell in which Julia still lives - hermit crab analogy. • Genuine belief in the ideals of the GDR. • "End of the security state meant the end, too of her personal security”. • GDR-logic • "Fallen into the gap between the GDR’s action and its reality”. • "Julia was distressed, dropped out and suicidal" • Despite all she has been through, Julia seems at times nostalgic rather than bitter about the regime • "I look at Julia and she reminds me of myself - straggly fair hair she doesn't care much about, grey-green eyes and slightly crooked teeth that have seen a bit much nicotine." • "'im unemployed' julia said.'why else would i be here?' 'This is the Employment Office, not the Unemployment office'" • “Behrends were ambivalent about their country.” • "She is a hermit crab, soft-fleshed with friends but ready to whisk back into its shell at the slightest sign of contact" • “The system which had imprisoned her had also, somehow, protected her.” • “a single woman in a single room at the top of her block, unable to go forward into her future.” • "She is wearino her usual assortment of black" - doesnt want to draw attention to herself. • “I wanted to explain to people overseas about the GDR—that Communism was not such a bad system.’ She didn’t want to leave. • "like her father, Julia believed in East Germany as an alternative to the west" • “I look at the box in her arms and know that you cannot destroy your past, nor what it does to you. It’s not ever, really, over” • Anna's Landlady • victimised by the stasi • raped after the wall fell in 1989 • "under all the layers of black is a wiry body and sharp-mind, but there is something about julia that breaks my heart. she is a hermit crab, all soft-fleshed with her friends but ready to whisk back into its shell at the slightest sight of contact." • “Julia was being asked to repeat her knowledge of socialist catechism, her belief in things that were hard to remember, because they were not real.” - the political exam for university entrance • “Julia and her family, like many others in the GDR, trod this line between seeing this for what they were in the GDR, and ignoring those realities in order to stay sane”
The Wall
• "Anti-Facist Protective Measure" • “It was one of the longest structures ever built to keep people separate from one another.” • “On the night of 12 – 13 August the Berlin Wall was rolled out in barbed wire.” • "I'd really like to have me a look at that wall of theirs" - defined by the wall • " the wall went straight through my heart" • created overnight - "woke to a changed world" • "if you didnt know that the wall had been in this place, you'd find it hard to imagine." • "in less than one generation this scar will be invisible" (building over where the wall used to be) - however inlay still exists through the city today • "monstrous expanse of grey concrete designed to make people feel small. It works" • “Mauer im Kopf" (or the Wall in the Head) • “The Wall persists in Stasi men’s minds as something they hope might one day come again, and in their victims’ minds too, as a terrifying possibility.” • "a hole in the city" • "The wall went through houses, along streets, along waterways, and sliced underground train lines into pieces" • "In other place in Berlin the border, and with it the wall, cut a strange wound through the city." • Berliner Mauer • "Most useful construction in all of German history! In European History!" • "After the wall fell, the german media called east germany 'the most perfected surveillance state of all time"
Absurdity in Stasiland
• Anna in Stasiland like Alice in Wonderland. (stories that are almost unbelivable) "I Shrank like Alice" - Anna Funder. • “Let the jury consider their verdict,’ the King said, for about the twentieth time that day. ‘No, no!’ said the Queen. ‘Sentence first—verdict afterwards.’ Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll” • "'im unemployed' julia said.'why else would i be here?' 'This is the Employment Office, not the Unemployment office'" • Julia - “The system which had imprisoned her had also, somehow, protected er.” • Hohenschönhausen - translates to 'High beautiful house' yet it was "“a prison for political prisoners—it was the innermost security installation in a secured area within a walled-off country; it was another blank on the map” • “Have you ever in your life heard such a ridiculous story? Can you believe they swallowed that?’ ” - Miriam. They did not believe she could have made it over the Wall, but initially they did believe her crazy story about the "underground organisation" that assisted her • They believe that the actions taken amongst the stasi regime was humane • 'the two of you, violator and victim (collaborator! violin!), are linked, forever perhaps, by the obscenityy of what has been revealed to you, by the sad knowledge of what people are capable of. We are all guilty.' - the true confessions of an albino terrorist, Breyten Breytenbach. • ‘“Big Brozer” - von Schnitzler is angered and frustrated by this reality TV show, which is essentially just a microcosmic version of the security state he continues to believe in • "This land gone wrong" • "The Stasi entirely failed to predict the end of Communism, and with it the end of the country.” • "one can never say that something is not possible" • "land gone wrong" • "they just want to know what happened in their lives" • "tomorrows bruises will develop on my skin, like a picture from a negative." • “I pictured the street ballet of the deaf and dumb: agents signalling to each other from corner to corner: stroking noses, tummies, backs and hair, tying and untying shoelaces, lifting their hats to strangers and riffling through papers—a choreography for very nasty scouts.” • "in the GDR, there was one Stasi officer or inforant for every sixty-three people" • "i shrank like Alice" • "Doesn't that mean we're banned?" "We didn't say you were banned,' Comrade Oelschlagel said. 'We said you don't exist" • “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, by having swelled the ranks of the opposition, the Stasi was giving the people heart to keep demonstrating against them." • Half painted buildings - "This society was built on lies - lie after lie after lie."
Place in Stasiland - Physical Descriptions, Places, etc.
• “At ground level Alexanderplatz is a monstrous expanse of grey concrete designed to make people fell small.” (explanation of communist city / powerless ) • “I walk home to the apartment from Rosenthaler Platz station. The park is alive, the light so bright it picks out people and their shadows in exaggerated 3-D.” • “Hohenschönhausen was a prison for political prisoners—it was the innermost security installation in a secured area within a walled-off country; it was another blank on the map.” • “This U-Boat smelt of damp and old urine and vomit and earth: the smell of misery.” • “Further inside the zone we reached a building with high concrete walls topped by barbed wire. The walls seemed to stretch on and on, enclosing an area as big as a city block. At the corners were octagonal guard towers, and underneath them, along the outside, an empty dog-run.” • In Northern Germany I inhabit the grey end of the spectrum: grey buildings, grey earth, grey birds, grey trees • "people shake infants up and down to make them calm, and children spin on swings and roundabouts, i never noticed were there" • “A carpet hangs on the wall bearing the woolly triumvirate of Marx, Engels and Lenin in profile next to a lurid hand-worked mat with the Stasi insignia in red, yellow and black acrylic. The rugs fascinate me. They demonstrate, I think, the value of labour over everything else here, mostly aesthetics and utility.” - at the Normannenstrasse Stasi headquarters, but serves as a greater metaphor for the whole of East Germany • "it occurs to me that the purpose of disinfectant globules is to mask the smells of human bodies with something worse" • "outside the city and then the country spool past in black and white" • "east germany still felt like a secret walled-in garden, a place lost in time" (when Anna Funder went after the wall fell in November 1989) • "the street wound crookedly" • “Berlin is green, a perfumed city.” • "In this city where some of the darkest chapters of the 20th century were written, few claim to crimes committed by the Red Dictatorship were on a par with the nightmare of Nazism." • Funder also uses a great deal of colour to create mood and a sense of place, particularly grey and brown and ‘ExtremeDark Green’ • Street names are changed in a "massive act of ideological redecoration".
Anna Funder - Author Intent and Intrusion
• Narrator of this non-fiction text and journalist living in Berlin. • journalistic non-fiction. • she personally leads the reader on their journey of exploration into Stasiland. • "Im making portraits of people, East Germans, of whom there will be non left in generation." • "i found a part-time job in television, and set about looking for some of the stories form this land gone wrong." • "I am in favour of remebering things, so as not to do them again" • "Ishrank like Alice." • “I recognise this pattern of unpredictable shouting followed by bouts of quiet reason from other bullies I have known.”- influencing the reader's perception of von Schnitzler by characterising him as a bully • Inserts her narration and commentary upon those stories that she recounts. • Anna Funder gives a voice to the past community of what was, East Germany • “No-one is interested in these people.”- said to Schmidt and Scheller, upset by their lack of interest in former East Germans • 'Funder becme aware of the hidden histories of people whose lives had been shaped by one of the most efficient police states in human history. she set out to collect and investigate the stories of both victims and perpetrators of those who had worked for the Stasi (the east german secret sevis) • "i recognise this pattern of unpredictable shouting followed by bouts of quiet reason from other bullies i have known" • Stasiland - "written almost like a novel, with a perfect mix of compassion and distance" • Anna Funder spiritedly plunges herself into "this land gone wrong..."
Let's look now at THEMES...
Guilt
• Personal guilt is explored through characters such as Frau Paul who has wrestled with her feelings of guilt about leaving Torsten in the West rather than being used as bait by the Stasi. • East Germans are taught to associate Nazism with West Germany • There is an absense of guilt in several of the ex-Stasi men interviewed by Funder. They have a lack of repentance for their actions. • National or community guilt is seen in those who stood by and watched the regime destroy the lives of many of its citizens. • Funder feels a form of guilt for the horiffic memories she encourages Miriam, Julia and Frau Paul to recall. - “I decide to give it another fortnight or so before I call again. At some level, at least, I am aware that I am following a person who has been hounded enough.” • “ I am humbled for reasons I cannot at this moment unravel. I am outraged for her, and vaguely guilty about my relative luck in life.” - Anna Funder, realising how different her life could have been if she was born into the GDR like Julia, sense of guilt at growing up in a free country. • “I don’t feel guilty, I mean, I was just lucky that I didn’t fall into the clutches of the Stasi.” - Michael Hinze does not feel guilt over the sacrifice Frau Paul made to protect him from the Stasi.
Surveilance
• An estimated one informer for every 6.5 people • 'The most perfected surveillance state of all time' • At the end the Stasi had 97,000 employese- more than enough to oversee a country of 17,000,000. However they also had over 173,000 informers among the general population. • "In Hitler's Third Reich it is estimated that there was one Gestapo agent for ever 2000 citizens, and Stalin's USSR there was one KGB agent for every 5830 people. However is part-time informers are included, some estimates have the ratio as high as one informer for every 6.5 citizens in East Germany." • "Stasi File Authority- Project Group Reconstruction. Time required for reconstruction: 1 worker reconstructs on average 10 pages per day, 40 workers reconstruct on average 400 pages per day, 40 workers reconstruct on average in a year of 250 working days 100,000 pages, there are, on average 2,500 pages per sack, 100,000 pages amounts to 40 sacks per year, In all, at the Stasi File Authority there 15,000 sacks. This means that to reconstruct everything it would take 40 workers 375 years." • “Julia’s experience: the end of the security state meant the end, too, of her personal security. The system which had imprisoned her had also, somehow, protected her. ‘They were much quicker in the east to find and convict people,’ she says. Deep down, and for so far indelible reasons, she associates the fall of the Wall with the end of what had remained of her private sphere after the Stasi had finished with it.” • "obsessiveness with detail" • “The Stasi was the internal army by which the government kept control. Its job was to know everything about everyone, using any means it chose.” • “But looking back on it, it’s the total surveillance that damaged me the worst. I know how far people will transgress over your bound-aries—until you have no private sphere left at all. And I think that is a terrible knowledge to have.”- Julia • x"It inspected all mail in secret rooms above post offices (copying letters and stealing any valubles), and inspected, daily, tens of thousands of phone calls. It bugged hotel rooms and spied on diplomats. It ran its own universities, hospitals, elite sports centres and terrorist training programs for Libyans and the West Germans of the Red Army Faction." • "Anyone can have an affair, but everything must be reported."
The Past • For victims of the Stasi like Miriam, Julia and Frau Paul, recalling the past is extremely painful. • Klaus tends to be nonchalant and unresentful about the demise of The Klaus Renft Combo, prefering to take life as it comes, rather than dwell on the past. • Miriam has invested considerable time and emotional energy int her search for answers over Charlie's death, thus remaining 'suspended' in the past. • Julia is seeing a psychotherapist at the time of Funders meeting with her, who wants Julia to confront her past in order to move on with her life. • "You know, they just want to stop thinking about the past. They want to pretend it didn't happen." • ‘What interests me is the process of dealing with it all now that it is all over. Can you rework your past, the grit that rubs in you, until it is shiny and smooth as a pearl?’ • There are those who want to keep the GDR as history, while others are embarrassed by the past. • “I think it’s worse if you repress it.’ To dig it up, or to leave it lie in the ground?” • "It is history, airbrushed for effect."
Truth
• it is estimated to take "375 years" to put all the Stasi files back together. this means that for many people who are left "suspended" in their own lives without knowing the answers to why they were victimized are likely to never get the answers they are looking for. "GDR logic" • The wall went up overnight and went down overnight. • Herr Bohnsack, who outs himself as ex-Stasi after the fall of the Wall, becomes a pariah; telling the truth has made him an outcast. • The destruction of files by the Stasi was an attempt to conceal the truth of their activities. • Miriam finds it vertually impossible to discover the truth about Charlies death, and his death becomes symbolic of the search for truth in Stasiland. • Frau Paul has not revealed the whole truth about herself and her role in assisting people like Michael Hinze. • Funder is interested in why the Stasi regime failed to see the truth about the possibility of the Wall coming down in 1989. • Funder interviews both victims and perpetrators to find out what their 'truths' are. • “ I think it is a sign of being accustomed to such power that the truth does not matter because you cannot be contradicted.” - relates directly to von Schnitzler but also more widely to all the Stasi perpetrators and those with power over the oppressive GDR regime as no one could contradict them without being destroyed
Ideology
• “The romance comes from the dream of a better world the German Communists wanted to build out of the ashes of their Nazi past: from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” - communist ideals • “Julia’s father Dieter is a sensitive man. He wanted to better what he saw as a flawed system, but one which, from its founding premise, was fairer than capitalism. ” - despite the flaws of communism, at its core it was seen as a more just alternative to capitalism • “Like her father, Julia believed in East Germany as an alternative to the west. ‘I wanted to explain to people overseas about the GDR—that Communism was not such a bad system.” - alternative to the West, ie. alternative to Nazism • Funder meets people who are deeply passionate about their political ideology and others who are ambivalent. • Von Schnitzler remains deeply resentful of the 'capitalist, imperialist West.' • Herr Winz brings a copy of The Communist Manifesto that he signs and gives to Funder. • The women who works at the TV archive building believes von Schnitzler is not 'a turncoat' like the others; she is one of those nostalgic for life before the Wall came down.
Courage
• ‘It was one of the very rare occasions when the bluff was called and someone ‘won’ against the Firm.’ • Page 84 • "When he was released into West Berlin, he immediately, and at some risk to himself, broadcast over the airwaves the story of his abduction. At the end of an afternoon spet with him he said to me, 'Frau Paul- then Ruhrdanz- is a very brave woman'." • “I was trying, I think, to get a perspective on this lost world, and the kinds of courage in it.” - Anna Funder on the purpose of her interviews and exploration of the former GDR • “You won’t find the great story of human courage you are looking for.” - ironic that Funder finds many great stories of human courage. • “Frau Paul had the courage to do the right thing by her conscience in a situation where most people would decide to see their baby, and tell themselves later they had no choice. Once made though, her decision took a whole new fund of courage to live with.” • “She’s a very courageous woman.” - Michael Hinze describes Frau Paul.
Resistance
• "east germany never had much of a culture of opposition" • “I am not your classic resistance fighter,’ she says. ‘I was not even part of the opposition. ” - Frau Paul. Resistance can come in many forms- ordinary people victimised by the Stasi, not just those who held opposing beliefs • “There must have been some resistance to the dictatorship?” - Anna Funder ch. 2 • “Everywhere Mielke found opposition he found enemies, and the more enemies he found the more staff and informers he hired to quell them.” • “After a time Miriam stopped obeying the cards that appeared in her letterbox summoning her to their offices to clarify some circumstances.” - Miriam began to resist against the manipulation of the Stasi. • “You know, they just want to stop thinking about the past. They want to pretend it all didn’t happen.” - authorities of united Germany resisting against investigating the past. • “They were clever—they slapped the leaflets up in telephone booths over the instructions and at tramstops over the timetables. ” - Miriam performing an act of resistance.
Remembering/ Forgetting
• "i forgot their existence altogther" (plants) • History influences the present and the future. we can learn from mistakes to ensure that we dont cycle through tragedy after tradedy. • As people, we evolve from what the past has made us, and living under different circumstances during the GDR has led to the differences in opions on how to deal with the past on how to deal with the past. For those that gained security they miss the regime but for those that lost something dear to them they are left broken. • “I know there are places that I don’t visit, some even that I prefer not to drive past, where bad things have happened. But here she is in the place that broke her, and she is telling me about it.” - some people choose to remember, others choose to forget (this quote relates to Frau Paul and Hohenschönhausen prison.) • “There are things I don’t remember,’ she says. I can’t tell whether she means she makes it a practice not to think of them, or she cannot recall.” - relates to Julia • “There are some things—’ she stops. ‘I don’t think I’ll be able to remember this. I haven’t remembered this.” - Julia has repressed her memories relating to her encounter with the Stasi Man Major N. Evidence of this: (a quote from Julia two chapters ago) “Julia glances away. ‘I don’t have any story of the Stasi, or anything like that,’ she says.” • ‘What interests me is the process of dealing with it all now that it is all over. Can you rework your past, the grit that rubs in you, until it is shiny and smooth as a pearl?’ • “I think it’s worse if you repress it.’ To dig it up, or to leave it lie in the ground?”
Hope
• “I am foreign here and speak with an accent but am much more at home than in my own country! Funny, no?” - hopeful end for Julia in San Francisco, where they "honour" their abuse victims. • “Sometimes she can hear and smell them, but for now the beasts are all in their cages.” - element of hope for Miriam. although she may never get the answers she needs, and her trauamtic past still has an impact on her, she may still be able to go on. • “Even in this land of rubble and dust there was room for hope.” - in 1946 people were still hopeful that somehow a socialist state would emerge which lived up to the ‘democratic’ in GDR. • “The Wall persists in Stasi men’s minds as something they hope might one day come again” • "The park is alive, the light so bright it picks out people and their shadows in exaggerated 3-D. Sunbathers loll on the grass, some in trunks and some bare- bottomed. There are teenagers removing gum from their mouths to kiss, a sheepdog with a single forelock dyed green, an adolescent cripple in a baby pusher being taken for a stroll. People shake infants up and down to make them calm, and children spin on swings and roundabouts I never noticed were there.” - Funder observes that hidden among the memories of the past are some hopeful signs for the future of Germany. • The change in season from Winter to Spring suggests that a new beginning is also starting for Berlin. Enough time has passed for a new generation to emerge who have no memory of the Wall. They are defining themselves differently and the Wall is being relegated to history.