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Surveillance and Control: an Ethnographic Study of the Legacy of the Stasi and Its Impact on Wellbeing

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Surveillance and Control: an Ethnographic Study of the Legacy of the Stasi and Its Impact on Wellbeing Surveillance and Control: An Ethnographic Study of the Legacy of the Stasi and its impact on wellbeing Ulrike L. Neuendorf University College London Department of Anthropology A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2016/2017 Declaration I, Ulrike L. Neuendorf, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 Surveillance and Control: An Ethnographic Study of the Legacy of the Stasi and its impact on wellbeing Ulrike L. Neuendorf 3 4 Abstract This ethnographic field study examines East Germans’ experiences and perceptions of state surveillance in the former German Democratic Republic. Through ethnographic accounts and in-depth life histories, this study illustrates the long-term effects state control has had on the wellbeing of individuals and society as a whole. Here, several key themes emerged which are explored in detail: ideology and state control; betrayal and distrust; and trauma and resilience. Life in a dictatorship and exposure to repressive techniQues of the state created complex socio-cultural dynamics that are still palpable for victims today. Over 40 years of Stasi surveillance and the extensive use of unofficial informants within the population created a self-perpetuating surveillance culture. Along with the uniQue conditions that followed Germany’s reunification, this has impacted East Germans’ interpretation of their own wellbeing negatively (albeit to varying extents), accumulating traumatic experiences and compounding human suffering. The social dynamics created continue to impact East German’s lives, their sense of self, and their regional identities. This thesis explores through various accounts how traumatic experiences are understood and coped with. It concludes that state surveillance leads to collective trauma that at times causes continued suffering, but in certain cases is interpreted positively eliciting a narrative of resilience. 5 Table of Contents Chapter One: Motivation and Methodology…………………………………………………………7 Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………………………. 37 Chapter Two: Overview of the Literature……………………………………………………………38 Chapter Three: Life in the former GDR: Emerging themes…………………………………..86 Chapter Four: The Ministry of State Security…………………………………………………….114 Chapter Five: Privacy and the State…………………………………………………………………..148 Chapter Six: The Role of Ideology and Power……………………………………………………179 Chapter Seven: Trauma and Wellbeing in Contemporary East Germany……………223 Chapter Eight: Long-Term ConseQuences of Mass-Surveillance and Repression.257 Chapter Nine: Discussion and Conclusion………………………………………………………….281 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………………………….298 Appendix…………………………………………………………………………………………………………313 6 Chapter One: Movaon and Methodology I was born in 1987 in a small town in the Northeast of Germany, located in a picturesQue rural area called Uckermark. In 1989 my family and I moved to East Berlin. Shortly a`er our move to the city, the Wall came down and the lives of many East Germans changed drama_cally overnight. One of my earliest memories is about me sing in the backseat of my mother's Czech-built white Lada and crossing the border to West Berlin at "Bornholmer Brücke". Men in uniforms stopped our car and opened our trunk to search it. Although I was very small at the _me, I recall that this intrusion made me feel very uncomfortable. Of course, I did not understand what was happening at the _me. I s_ll have some vague recollec_ons of this exci_ng _me period, known to Germans as the Wende (Engl.: Turning point). We lived in a typical turn-of-the-century building in Berlin - Prenzlauer Berg, part of the city which is nowadays considered very hip, full of Quirky shops and restaurants, par_cularly popular amongst tourists from abroad. Only a short walk across Prenzlauer Allee, was my Kindergarten. Surprisingly, I remember my "Eastern" Kindergarten Quite dis_nctly. In the GDR, Kindergarten and 7 Krippe (Engl. Daycare and nursery), were a person's first contact with the socialist state and its ideology. In the GDR, almost 90% of women were working full-me. Hence, a highly developed network of childcare was available, even catering to those parents working night shi`s. State-run childcare was available to everyone. Children were uniformly taught cleanliness, order, and independence. At they same _me, they were supposedly moulded into becoming "good socialists" (Plänkers et al. 2005; Schroeter 1974). Indeed, I remember the strict rules and highly structured daily rou_ne, the songs we sung and the stories we were told. This was the _me when they would do what some people these days ironically call "Pojy-terrorism"- "Toepfchen-Terror", aligning poes in the nursery bathroom and expec_ng all toddlers to use them at the same _me to achieve a controlled, reliable daily rou_ne. Indeed, it was one of those things I would later hear my informants describe as "Just normal". I suppose I felt the same way then. But as I discovered throughout my fieldwork, this "normality" had a much deeper meaning. Finally, in 1990 Germany was officially reunited and soon a`er my family relocated to the West Berlin Bezirk of Reinickendorf, where I then spent the rest of my childhood. We moved into a house that a distant West German rela_ve rented out to us in a Quiet residen_al area. I s_ll recall the first day at my new "Western" Kindergarten and how foreign it seemed to me. If one was to believe my family's stories, I was a prejy ar_culate toddler and apparently repeatedly pointed out the stark differences between the two Kindergartens expressing my devasta_on at the disorderliness of the new place. Later on, as I started school, my East German background did not impact my daily life much. Only occasionally would it come up in conversa_on amongst the 8 teachers. Looking at it now, I suppose it was the type of conversa_on adults have, without realising that children can not only hear them but also understand that they are being talked about. I have several memories of this from Kindergarten and then later, primary school. Being the only Easterner it made me feel like I was different in some way, without really understanding how or why it majered. I do not remember when exactly it started, but at some point in my childhood, I began to get embarrassed about my background. I suspect it was my older brother who introduced me to that feeling. He was a teenager in the 1990's and had just been transferred to a school in West Berlin, where he persistently denied being from the East. It simply wasn't "cool". He wanted to fit in with the other kids, and having the s_gma of being an "Ossi" (i.e., a cliché for being lazy, always complaining, etc.) ajached to him was not desirable. Indeed, many East Germans of his genera_on, especially those who were between 8 and 16 years old when the wall fell, felt this way. They were ashamed, as people from the GDR were o`en portrayed as being less worthy by the media, and West German clichés further emphasised this (Rennefanz 2014). So, my brother would always tell me that I should never men_on where we were from. From that point onwards, I believed being from the GDR was something to be ashamed of and avoided men_oning it. As an easily impressionable child, his words stuck with me, even to this day. Without knowing why exactly, my East German iden_ty had an ambivalent connota_on for me. Later, when I spent _me abroad, where most of my friends and acQuaintances were not German, my "Eastern" background rarely majered to anyone besides me. 9 Looking at it now, it seems somewhat puzzling, as all my extended family con_nued to live in the East a`er Germany's reunifica_on and I s_ll denied this part of my iden_ty. As a child, I spent many summers there, with my grandmother in a small town in Brandenburg and my great-grandmother in a lijle village in Saxony. To this day, these places have a comfor_ng familiarity for me and even make me feel "at home". Looking back at those summers in the countryside, the GDR was o`en casually men_oned in everyday conversa_ons, mostly star_ng with the words "During the _me of the GDR, we used to..." ("Zu DDR Zeiten, haben wir..."). To me, these memories always resembled some mys_cal, faraway place or even a previous life that everyone besides me had experienced. In recent years I have begun reflec_ng more cri_cally on where I am from and what it means to me. To what extent is East Germany s_ll part of my own iden_ty? I find myself wondering whether, a`er so many years, it s_ll majers where you are from in Germany. As a Masters student in Medical Anthropology, I decided to inves_gate and compare contracep_ve choices of women in East and West Germany. The con_nuing differences in percep_ons and gender images were remarkable (Neuendorf unpublished, 2011). Conduc_ng this research, I became extremely interested in the topic of the GDR. I was curious how my parents, family and friends had experienced life in this small isolated state. How had the legacy of the GDR shaped their lives as well as my own life and worldview? Following my Masters, I spent half a year living in the East German city of Leipzig. This remarkable place is rich in history and a significant site, due to its major role in community ac_vism, the forma_on of the Neues Forum and eventually the uprising against the socialist regime. 10 At the first viewing of my new apartment, I was Quite astonished however. The place I had decided to rent was inside of a lovely early 1900's building, not far from the city centre. What unsejled me though, was the street I was going to live in. Apart from the newly renovated building directly opposite mine, all other buildings in the lijle street, were derelict with broken or bolted up windows.
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