Word: stasis
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...address, his last name. As far as Dieter is concerned, the only fact that has any meaning these days is that until a few months ago, he was a member of the Staatssicherheitsdienst, the now defunct secret-police force known and reviled by East Germans as the Stasi. Once employment by the elite Stasi was a way of life. Now it is the curse of Dieter's existence. "Everybody has forgotten that we worked to make this country safe," he says. "We were the true believers, and now we are left with no jobs, no security, no safety...
Though the Stasis propped up an unpopular Communist regime for more than four decades and were notorious for their disregard of privacy and occasional beatings of prisoners, Dieter cannot understand why so much loathing is aimed his way. He insists he was only a maintenance man in a Stasi center, a mere speck in an elaborate organization that not only offered full-time employment to 85,000 people but also provided pocket money to a network of 109,000 citizens who snooped on their neighbors and co-workers...
...Stasi has been disbanded, although a few dozen former officials remain on the payroll to help a 100-member citizens' oversight committee supervise storage of dossiers on an estimated 5 million individuals. The supervision has not been leakproof: two prominent politicians were ruined by disclosures that they served as Stasi informants, and ex-agents are suspected of providing the damaging leaks. There are also rumors that a ring of former Stasi agents is using the files to blackmail ex-informers...
...most of his former colleagues, Dieter has found work -- this time as a regular policeman in East Berlin. He has started walking a beat, and earns a monthly wage of 1,600 East German marks, which is worth about $330 in buying power and is almost equal to his Stasi pay. (A few former agents have even found employment as policemen in West Germany.) But Dieter has lost a packet of coveted perks, among them paid vacations at choice resorts along the Baltic coast. Because the Stasis were in a special category set apart from the typical East German civil...
...Maiziere, a lawyer, says that in his own legal work he was forced to have some contact with the Stasi while defending dissidents. The Stasi stain could spread to other parties, including the SPD. There are charges that as many as 40 of the 400 new deputies may have been in the service of the secret police. If any of these men are forced to resign as a result of their past activities, warns Manfred Stolpe, a top East German churchman, "this would be a terrible blow for our young democracy...