Word: stasis
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...group's members. The 15 people at the meeting had been close friends for years. Most were involved in Lutheran church activities; two were pastors. And at least four of the 15 were also paid informers of the East German Ministry for State Security, the Stasi...
...Poppes, who were denied educational opportunities and adequate housing during the Stasi's reign, have now been allowed to see the reports prepared by those former friends, and to learn the depth of their betrayal. The documents, which also revealed Stasi attempts to break up the Poppes' marriage, are part of the secret archives opened Jan. 1 for inspection by the 6 million eastern Germans -- one-third of the population -- on whom dossiers were compiled. More than 300,000 have applied to read their files...
What file readers discover is just how pervasive the network of betrayal was. Stasi tentacles extended into the schoolroom, the pulpit, the bedroom, even the confessional: Roman Catholic authorities are investigating indications that penitents' confessions reached the Stasi through hidden microphones or corrupted priests. Stasi technicians bugged homes, telephones, cars and seats in concert halls. The Stasi's "Section 8" dealt with children, requiring principals of every school in the country to keep a file of "dangerous persons" in their classrooms. Teachers filled out forms on "conspicuous" children, some as young as 9, who expressed views critical of the state...
Some who have seen their files are astounded less by the contents than by the sheer volume of a record so large that even the 90,000-member Stasi force could not handle it. "They were drowning in their own paper," said Werner Fischer, a former dissident who supervised the archives in early 1990 during the dismantlement of the hated ministry. In the Stasi's beige concrete former headquarters on East Berlin's Normannenstrasse, files lie in folders, binders, boxes and brown paper bags, stacked in five floors of rotating shelves a total of 125 miles long. Some papers...
...former East German spies and intelligence officials can be prosecuted for simply having done their jobs. The issue was brought before the court in July when a Berlin judge suspended proceedings against Werner Grossmann, Wolf's successor as chief of the Hauptverwaltung Aufklarung, the foreign-intelligence department of the Stasi secret police. It would be a violation of the German constitutional guarantee of equal treatment, the judge contended, to convict an eastern German spy for something that western German spies continue to do legally. Both a former chief of West German intelligence and a former Constitutional Court judge have echoed...