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The File: A Personal History
When Timothy Garton Ash graduated from Oxford in 1978, he went to live in Berlin, ostensibly to research and write about Nazism. But once there, he gradually immersed himself in a study of the repressive political culture of East Germany. As if to return the favor, that culture--in the form of the dreaded East German secret police, the "Stasi"--secretly began studying him. As was Stasi's practice, over the years its study produced a considerable paper trail. After the fall of the East German communist regime, a government apparatus was established to allow those targeted to see their Stasi files, and Garton Ash discovered and pored over his. He then set about to interview the people who made this gross intrusion possible, the several case officers, and the numerous regular-citizen informers. The result is nothing short of a journey into the darkest recesses of the totalitarian mind, taking its place honorably alongside 1984 and Darkness at Noon.
256 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1997
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About the author
Timothy Garton Ash
51Ìýbooks253ÌýfollowersTimothy Garton Ash CMG FRSA is a British historian, author and commentator. He is Professor of European Studies at Oxford University. Much of his work has been concerned with the late modern and contemporary history of Central and Eastern Europe.
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July 18, 2019
I've never read a book quite like this before, a truly extraordinary personal history. Garton Ash lived in East Germany in the early 1980s and after the Berlin Wall fell decided to investigate his secret police file. While I was vaguely aware that the Stasi files were made available to their subjects, this is the first book I’ve read to convey what that actually meant in practise. Garton Ash compares his recollections with the surveillance records in his file and tracks down all those mentioned in it: friends, informants, and secret police. The result is a very powerful account of life in East Germany’s surveillance state and the moral compromises made by its citizens. Taking a personal, ethnographic approach allows Garton Ash to convey the nuance, complexity, and depth of emotion involved. This book was first published in 1997 and its conclusions are still important today. As the 2008 afterword discusses, surveillance is now automated by technology and its significance downplayed. Every train I take tells me to report anything that “doesn’t look right�, without any indication of how I should make that judgement. This has become part of the background noise of daily life, without consideration of what that means. ‘The File� forced me to think about these matters and, honestly, it wasn’t very comfortable.
A friend and I were recently discussing how ‘normal� people can participate and be complicit in acts of horrifying evil, likely prompted by the images of the concentration camps in America. Garton Ash has a great deal of insight to offer here. He was researching the Gestapo’s files while the Stasi kept a file on him:
There is no simple answer, but the book comes up with much more complex insights. Garton Ash examines his fascination with the glamour of spying in light of the sordid reality of East Germany’s informer army:
Garton Ash discovered from his file that five informers had reported on him and tracked each down to ask them about it. Their reactions are revealing and alarming. The woman codenamed Michaela was thrown into confusion:
Garton Ash was left unsettled by all these meetings, as well he might be. It’s very difficult to establish the direct harm caused by informers like Michaela, as most of their material was petty, seemingly harmless detail. Yet in combination, reports like hers were used to justify exile, prison, even death sentences. In return, the informers gained little privileges, like freedom to travel. Informers weren’t necessarily volunteers, however. Another of those he traced, only to find he’d died, was blackmailed by the Stasi into informing after being denounced for hitting on a male student. A third, a British communist married to a German woman and living in East Germany, told Garton Ash he’d been threatened by the Stasi into informing. His self-justifications are striking:
Subsequently interactions with Garton Ash suggested he'd abstracted his informing in order to elide his personal responsibility for it. The ambivalence and rationalisations of the informers aren’t entirely different to those of the Stasi officers Garton Ash also traced, although the latter discussions are more chilling. After interviewing Kurt Zeisweis, deputy head of the Stasi in Berlin:
It wasn’t quite as simple as that for several of the more junior Stasi officers, but the same theme predominated. And once the regime had fallen:
I’m quoting a great deal because I found Garton Ash’s writing so compelling and powerful. He points out that East Germany is in a unique position, with the horrors of two very different regimes to reckon with, one of which is now passing out of living memory:
Although Garton Ash editorialises in the first person, in places his approach reminded me of : quoting people’s reflections on what they did in the past, which collectively prove both moving and revealing. This kind of personal narrative history seems very fitting for the historical topic of personal surveillance. I wonder what kind of memoirs will be written in the future on how electronic surveillance has damaged lives under repressive regimes. The technology might have changed, but I don't think the psychological impacts are so very different:
Garton Ash states firmly that only the victims of the Stasi have the right to forgive, or not. Rather than wondering what we might have done had we been born into totalitarian regimes of the past, it seems better to consider what we’re doing today. We can judge the past with comfortable detachment, but should not forget that the future will judge us too.
A friend and I were recently discussing how ‘normal� people can participate and be complicit in acts of horrifying evil, likely prompted by the images of the concentration camps in America. Garton Ash has a great deal of insight to offer here. He was researching the Gestapo’s files while the Stasi kept a file on him:
Amidst the ghosts of secret Germany I was searching for the answer to a personal question. What is it that makes one person a resistance fighter and another the faithful servant of a dictatorship? This man a Stauffenberg, that a Speer. Today, after years of study, and after knowing personally many resisters and many servants of dictatorships, I am searching still.
There is no simple answer, but the book comes up with much more complex insights. Garton Ash examines his fascination with the glamour of spying in light of the sordid reality of East Germany’s informer army:
In 1988 - the last ‘normal� year of the GDR - the Ministry of State Security had more than 170,000 ‘official collaborators�. [...] The Ministry itself had over 90,000 employees, of whom less than 5,000 were in the HVA foreign intelligence wing. Setting the total figure against the adult population in the same year, this means that about one out of every fifty adult East Germans had a direct connection to the secret police. Allow just one dependent per person, and you’re up to one in twenty-five.
The Nazis had nothing like as many.
Garton Ash discovered from his file that five informers had reported on him and tracked each down to ask them about it. Their reactions are revealing and alarming. The woman codenamed Michaela was thrown into confusion:
She is buffeted by conflicting thoughts and emotions. One moment she says, “Really, it’s good that you’ve shown me this.� The next, “Ah well, perhaps I can sue you and I’ll win a lot of money� No, no, sorry, that was only a joke� But perhaps there is some protection.�
“We repressed so much� Why didn’t I apply to see my file? Because I didn’t want to know what was in it� and about my husband� Who knows what else there is� I think this was the only time I reported so extensively on private matters. I thought it was dienstlich [official?] but� Well, I hope if you do write you’ll try to explain the subjective as well as the objective conditions. How it was then. But probably that’s impossible. Even I can’t really remember now…�
Garton Ash was left unsettled by all these meetings, as well he might be. It’s very difficult to establish the direct harm caused by informers like Michaela, as most of their material was petty, seemingly harmless detail. Yet in combination, reports like hers were used to justify exile, prison, even death sentences. In return, the informers gained little privileges, like freedom to travel. Informers weren’t necessarily volunteers, however. Another of those he traced, only to find he’d died, was blackmailed by the Stasi into informing after being denounced for hitting on a male student. A third, a British communist married to a German woman and living in East Germany, told Garton Ash he’d been threatened by the Stasi into informing. His self-justifications are striking:
He thought of the Stasi as a channel of communication with the state. In a small way, he says, he was trying to [...] get a political message to the top. The trouble with a communist state like East Germany was that it had ‘no civil society framework�. He was making up for that lack.
Subsequently interactions with Garton Ash suggested he'd abstracted his informing in order to elide his personal responsibility for it. The ambivalence and rationalisations of the informers aren’t entirely different to those of the Stasi officers Garton Ash also traced, although the latter discussions are more chilling. After interviewing Kurt Zeisweis, deputy head of the Stasi in Berlin:
When he has left, Werner and I look at each other, shake our heads and start quietly laughing. Otherwise we would have to cry. Here, in that chair, sat before us a perfect textbook example of a petty bureaucratic executor of evil. A good family man. Proud of his correctness, loyalty, hard work, decency - all those ‘secondary virtues� which have been identified as key to collaboration with Nazism (and which the Prussian Association now hopes to revive). He is incapable of acknowledging, to this day, the systemic wrong of which he was a loyal servant, yet filled with remorse for having stolen a couple of Matchbox cars.
It wasn’t quite as simple as that for several of the more junior Stasi officers, but the same theme predominated. And once the regime had fallen:
So everyone I talk to has someone else to blame. Those who worked for the state say ‘it was not us, it was the Party�. Those who worked for the Party say, ‘it was not us, it was the Stasi�. Come to the Stasi, and those who worked for foreign intelligence say, ‘it was not us, it was the others.� Talk to them, and they say, ‘it was not our department, it was XX�. Talk to Herr Zeisweis from department XX and he says, ‘but it wasn’t me�.
When the communists seized power in central Europe, they talked of using ‘salami tactics� to cut away the democratic opposition, slice by slice. Here, after communism, we have the salami tactics of denial.
I’m quoting a great deal because I found Garton Ash’s writing so compelling and powerful. He points out that East Germany is in a unique position, with the horrors of two very different regimes to reckon with, one of which is now passing out of living memory:
Only the new Germany has done it all. Germany has had trials and purges and truth commissions and has systematically opened the secret police files to each and every individual who wants to know what was done to him or her - or what he or she did to others. This is unique. Apart from anything else, what other post-communist country would have the money to do it? The Gauch Authority’s budget for 1996 was DM234 million - about £100 million.
[...]
It must be right that the Germans, and not just the Germans, should really understand how in the second half of the twentieth century there was again built, on German soil, a totalitarian police state, less brutal than the Third Reich, to be sure, far less damaging to its neighbours, and not genocidal, but more quietly pervasive in its domestic control. How this state exploited the very same mental habits, social disciplines, and cultural appeals on which Nazism had drawn.
Although Garton Ash editorialises in the first person, in places his approach reminded me of : quoting people’s reflections on what they did in the past, which collectively prove both moving and revealing. This kind of personal narrative history seems very fitting for the historical topic of personal surveillance. I wonder what kind of memoirs will be written in the future on how electronic surveillance has damaged lives under repressive regimes. The technology might have changed, but I don't think the psychological impacts are so very different:
But I can understand each of the informers on my file, and the officers too, even Kratsch. For when they tell their stories you can see so clearly how they came to do what they did: in a different time, a different place, a different world.
What you find here, in the files, is how deeply our conduct is influenced by our circumstances. How large of all that human hearts can endure, that part which laws or kings can cause or cure. What you find is less malice than human weakness, a vast anthology of human weakness. And when you talk to those involved, what you find is less deliberate dishonesty than our almost infinite capacity for self-deception.
If only I had met, on this search, a single clearly evil person. But they were all just weak, shaped by circumstance, self-deceiving; human, all too human. Yet the sum of their actions was a great evil.
Garton Ash states firmly that only the victims of the Stasi have the right to forgive, or not. Rather than wondering what we might have done had we been born into totalitarian regimes of the past, it seems better to consider what we’re doing today. We can judge the past with comfortable detachment, but should not forget that the future will judge us too.
May 4, 2015
A terrific read for anyone who likes history, especially that of the Cold War, and does not mind a different sort of narration of it.
In this book, Garton Ash examines the file that the Stasi built on him between 1978 and 1989, which he was able to access after the fall of East Germany. I loved this book, because it is not only a (very good) history book, but it's also a reflection about memory and about human nature.
The author meets most of the people who either informed the Stasi on him during his stay in Germany, as well as the people who worked on his file, and reports how the meetings go. He also tells us about his life in Berlin in the late 70's, and what happened when he left. He does all this while sharing acute observations of how people look, talk and think while he is with them, as well as his reflections on the possible motives that brought them to inform on him.
I very much appreciated this unusual take on history, and the humanity with which Garton Ash observed and did not just blindly condemn, but tried to understand the deeds of the people around him. Recommended!
In this book, Garton Ash examines the file that the Stasi built on him between 1978 and 1989, which he was able to access after the fall of East Germany. I loved this book, because it is not only a (very good) history book, but it's also a reflection about memory and about human nature.
The author meets most of the people who either informed the Stasi on him during his stay in Germany, as well as the people who worked on his file, and reports how the meetings go. He also tells us about his life in Berlin in the late 70's, and what happened when he left. He does all this while sharing acute observations of how people look, talk and think while he is with them, as well as his reflections on the possible motives that brought them to inform on him.
I very much appreciated this unusual take on history, and the humanity with which Garton Ash observed and did not just blindly condemn, but tried to understand the deeds of the people around him. Recommended!
January 24, 2015
A dull account of tedious snitching during a pivotal time in history. I expected more.
December 15, 2009
Timothy Garton Ash's The File: A Personal History is an exploration of the author's own file that was kept on him by the East German secret police, the State Security Service, "the Stasi." Mr. Ash lived in East Berlin for a few years in the late 70s and early 80s, ostensibly to finish his Ph.D. thesis on the German Communist resistance to the Nazis (Mr. Ash, a British citizen, was getting his doctorate from St. Antony's College at Oxford), but actually to report, as a journalist, on the East German dictatorship. Therefore, Mr. Ash was indeed a spy, albeit a "spy" for the media, rather than for MI5 or MI6.
Upon the reunification of Germany, the Stasi's files were largely thrown open to the public. A staggering number of people have applied, and been granted permission, to see their own files. Upon reading them, they have found unwelcome and sometimes horrible truths -- wives finding that their own husbands informed on them for the Stasi, for example. Mr. Ash tells the story of delving into his own file, and comparing the informers' reports with his own memory, or, indeed, with his diary entries from that time or with articles he then published under a pseudonym in West Berlin. Mr. Ash then tracked down, and interviewed, most of the informants in his file. He questioned their motives for choosing to become Stasi informers, and compared those motives and choices with his own: he came close to joining MI6 at one time, and he himself chose to clandestinely gather information and report it, although not to any secret police or government agency. Mr. Ash also draws necessary and unsettling parallels between the East German citizenry's acquiescence in and participation in the communist dictatorship and the German people's in the Nazi regime.
While I was reading this book, I was absolutely staggered by one of the numbers Mr. Ash quoted: 1 in 50 East Germans were informers for the Stasi. When I told this to my husband, he said, "Steph, don't be such a hypocrite -- the FBI and the American people are just as bad." Now, I know in my bones that this is not so, and I set out to prove him wrong. I submitted a FOIA request (Freedom of Information Act request) to the FBI, seeking a compilation of the numbers of FBI informants during the years J. Edgar Hoover was the director of the FBI (the darkest period, in my estimation), whether expressed as raw numbers or as a percentage of the American population. "Hah!" I thought, "For one thing, there was no such thing as a FOIA request in East Germany."
While I waited for the results of my FOIA request, I finished the book. And Mr. Ash explored just that same territory, in Britain, that I was attempting to explore here in the U.S.: that is, to compare the workings of the state security service in a democracy with the workings of the Stasi in the East German dictatorship. And the results were not altogether heartening. I was also astounded to learn that in Britain, there is no such thing as a FOIA request: British citizens cannot request to see the files that MI5 or MI6 hold on them. Mr. Ash learned that MI5 maintained a file on him through interviewing a gentleman at MI5, and by asking the question point blank. The gentleman, in his discretion, chose to answer, although he could rightfully have chosen to neither confirm nor deny the existence of a file on Mr. Ash.
And then when I got the results of my FOIA request, I was further disheartened. This is what I got: "The FOIA does not require federal agencies to answer inquiries, create records, conduct research, or draw conclusions concerning queried data. Rather the FOIA requires agencies to provide access to reasnably described, nonexempt records. The questions posed in the referenced letter are not FOIA requests becasue they do not comply with the FOIA and its regulations." Now, I know damn well that my request was broad enough to describe at least one document that certainly must already exist in the FBI's files; there must be, at least in the FBI's accounting records, line items of the moneys paid out year by year to confidential informants, and such a document would provide me with the information I sought, in addition to other, irrelevant (for my purposes) information. If I were litigating, and not merely doing a FOIA request in order to prove a point in a discussion with my husband, I would fight this denial and I would win. If I were personally a litigious person, I would investigate federal law to confirm whether I could sue and recover damages for the FBI's failure to comply with FOIA. But the FBI's response to my FOIA request is an answer of a different sort: by narrowly interpreting my request and denying me the existing records I asked for, the FBI is undermining the scope and reach of FOIA and on the spectrum ranging from "democracy" to "dictatorship," is edging itself further to the right, that is, closer to the Stasi.
And one passage from Mr. Ash's book has stayed with me: "The domestic spies in a free country live this professional paradox: they infringe our liberties in order to protect them. But we have another paradox: we support the system by questioning it." I support my free country, the United States, by questioning it and by submitting my FOIA request. I would be a greater supporter, and a truer patriot, if I were to pursue my FOIA request and fight the FBI's denial.
Upon the reunification of Germany, the Stasi's files were largely thrown open to the public. A staggering number of people have applied, and been granted permission, to see their own files. Upon reading them, they have found unwelcome and sometimes horrible truths -- wives finding that their own husbands informed on them for the Stasi, for example. Mr. Ash tells the story of delving into his own file, and comparing the informers' reports with his own memory, or, indeed, with his diary entries from that time or with articles he then published under a pseudonym in West Berlin. Mr. Ash then tracked down, and interviewed, most of the informants in his file. He questioned their motives for choosing to become Stasi informers, and compared those motives and choices with his own: he came close to joining MI6 at one time, and he himself chose to clandestinely gather information and report it, although not to any secret police or government agency. Mr. Ash also draws necessary and unsettling parallels between the East German citizenry's acquiescence in and participation in the communist dictatorship and the German people's in the Nazi regime.
While I was reading this book, I was absolutely staggered by one of the numbers Mr. Ash quoted: 1 in 50 East Germans were informers for the Stasi. When I told this to my husband, he said, "Steph, don't be such a hypocrite -- the FBI and the American people are just as bad." Now, I know in my bones that this is not so, and I set out to prove him wrong. I submitted a FOIA request (Freedom of Information Act request) to the FBI, seeking a compilation of the numbers of FBI informants during the years J. Edgar Hoover was the director of the FBI (the darkest period, in my estimation), whether expressed as raw numbers or as a percentage of the American population. "Hah!" I thought, "For one thing, there was no such thing as a FOIA request in East Germany."
While I waited for the results of my FOIA request, I finished the book. And Mr. Ash explored just that same territory, in Britain, that I was attempting to explore here in the U.S.: that is, to compare the workings of the state security service in a democracy with the workings of the Stasi in the East German dictatorship. And the results were not altogether heartening. I was also astounded to learn that in Britain, there is no such thing as a FOIA request: British citizens cannot request to see the files that MI5 or MI6 hold on them. Mr. Ash learned that MI5 maintained a file on him through interviewing a gentleman at MI5, and by asking the question point blank. The gentleman, in his discretion, chose to answer, although he could rightfully have chosen to neither confirm nor deny the existence of a file on Mr. Ash.
And then when I got the results of my FOIA request, I was further disheartened. This is what I got: "The FOIA does not require federal agencies to answer inquiries, create records, conduct research, or draw conclusions concerning queried data. Rather the FOIA requires agencies to provide access to reasnably described, nonexempt records. The questions posed in the referenced letter are not FOIA requests becasue they do not comply with the FOIA and its regulations." Now, I know damn well that my request was broad enough to describe at least one document that certainly must already exist in the FBI's files; there must be, at least in the FBI's accounting records, line items of the moneys paid out year by year to confidential informants, and such a document would provide me with the information I sought, in addition to other, irrelevant (for my purposes) information. If I were litigating, and not merely doing a FOIA request in order to prove a point in a discussion with my husband, I would fight this denial and I would win. If I were personally a litigious person, I would investigate federal law to confirm whether I could sue and recover damages for the FBI's failure to comply with FOIA. But the FBI's response to my FOIA request is an answer of a different sort: by narrowly interpreting my request and denying me the existing records I asked for, the FBI is undermining the scope and reach of FOIA and on the spectrum ranging from "democracy" to "dictatorship," is edging itself further to the right, that is, closer to the Stasi.
And one passage from Mr. Ash's book has stayed with me: "The domestic spies in a free country live this professional paradox: they infringe our liberties in order to protect them. But we have another paradox: we support the system by questioning it." I support my free country, the United States, by questioning it and by submitting my FOIA request. I would be a greater supporter, and a truer patriot, if I were to pursue my FOIA request and fight the FBI's denial.
July 20, 2021
Imagine reading your own secret police file and then getting to go confront the people who tattled on you!!! I mean in a way, what a dream. Even better, he has his own diaries to compare versions of the events. The Stasi were wrong a surprising amount!
Super interesting commentary on the culture of East Germany and the efforts towards transparency after the “Wende.� Some beautiful meditations on memory and how the very act of calling up your memory and digging through ephemera changes the memory itself.
Super interesting commentary on the culture of East Germany and the efforts towards transparency after the “Wende.� Some beautiful meditations on memory and how the very act of calling up your memory and digging through ephemera changes the memory itself.
October 17, 2019
After East Germany granted a few students from non-communist countries entry to study in the late 1970s, Tim Garton Ash, fresh out of Oxford, decided to study there. Ostensibly, he was studying Nazi history, but in fact, he was fascinated by the closed nature of East German society and its effect on the psyche and daily life.
After the Wende, when the Stasi files were opened, he decided to request his file, track down every informant who reported on him, and have an uncomfortable but fascinating conversation with each about what motivated their decision to inform, how they felt about him then, and how they feel looking back on East Germany a few years after reunification.
As you might expect, as a foreigner from a capitalist country, his files were comprehensive, with multiple denunciations and unsettling instances of casual street surveillance by the Stasi.
I loved the way Garton Ash writes about trying to reconcile his own lack of memories about these (to him) mundane moments when he was being surveilled with the details in the surveillance reports. I also really enjoyed the revealing conversations with the informants, whose motives varied from desire to travel abroad to fear of governmental reprisal for being a gay man. There are also plenty of moments so absurd they are darkly humorous, such as when one informant denounces a waiter who she feels gave her poor service to the Stasi because she feels he is a poor steward of East Germany.
Of course, Garton Ash had the fortune not to be permanently stuck behind the Berlin Wall. I would enjoy reading a similar reckoning with the contents of one's file from an East German citizen's perspective. I wish I could read more about the life story of Vera Lengsfeld, whose file contained the bombshell that her husband of twenty years was a Stasi informant on her throughout their marriage, and may have married and had children with her at the behest of the Stasi.
After the Wende, when the Stasi files were opened, he decided to request his file, track down every informant who reported on him, and have an uncomfortable but fascinating conversation with each about what motivated their decision to inform, how they felt about him then, and how they feel looking back on East Germany a few years after reunification.
As you might expect, as a foreigner from a capitalist country, his files were comprehensive, with multiple denunciations and unsettling instances of casual street surveillance by the Stasi.
I loved the way Garton Ash writes about trying to reconcile his own lack of memories about these (to him) mundane moments when he was being surveilled with the details in the surveillance reports. I also really enjoyed the revealing conversations with the informants, whose motives varied from desire to travel abroad to fear of governmental reprisal for being a gay man. There are also plenty of moments so absurd they are darkly humorous, such as when one informant denounces a waiter who she feels gave her poor service to the Stasi because she feels he is a poor steward of East Germany.
Of course, Garton Ash had the fortune not to be permanently stuck behind the Berlin Wall. I would enjoy reading a similar reckoning with the contents of one's file from an East German citizen's perspective. I wish I could read more about the life story of Vera Lengsfeld, whose file contained the bombshell that her husband of twenty years was a Stasi informant on her throughout their marriage, and may have married and had children with her at the behest of the Stasi.
April 9, 2023
L'argomento sarebbe anche interessante, ma la scrittura e' noiosa quanto i relativi rapporti della Stasi.
Ho resistito fino al 50% del libro poi ho pensato che stavo invecchiando sopra un libro che non mi piaceva, e sono passata oltre!
Ho resistito fino al 50% del libro poi ho pensato che stavo invecchiando sopra un libro che non mi piaceva, e sono passata oltre!
July 20, 2021
I read this memoir for research purposes.
Here, the eminent former journalist and historian explores in detail the file the Stasi built up on him during his time in the DDR in the early 1980s. He tracks down those who informed on him and the officers who oversaw his case. He also relates the experience of others who found themselves under Stasi surveillance (dissidents, for the most part). It makes for fascinating reading.
The victors write the history books, of course. Ah, the god that failed. Garton Ash tells us that he wanted communism to fall, and fall it did. Instead, he says, he wished to see liberal democracy prevail, without ever really explaining why that might be a good thing. My undergraduate dissertation was about the threats to liberal democracy in Peru. My marker pointed out that I'd not made clear why this mattered. We've made the same gaff, Timbo. It goes without saying that police states aren't good. Apparently, the superiority of turb0-capitalism goes without saying too.
His interviewees talk about the positives associated witht the DDR, the full employment, the lack of crime and drugs, the security offered by the state... Garton Ash is dismissive. That's easy for him. Educated at Sherborne (one of the leading public schools in England - for 'public' read private and expensive), and thus up to Oxford, driving around the communist East in a new Alfasud, spending his grandfather's bequest. Such a background suggests no need of the safety nets upon which others depend.
And what of the one god that remains standing, capitalist liberal democracy? Has that been a resounding success? Last time it was totted up, nine billionaires owned wealth equivalent to that of the poorest half of humanity (3.7 billion people). We have entered a new era of mass extinction, presided over by capitalist industry and imperialism. The planet is frying in greenhouse gases. Oh, and the global economy has facilitated the rapid spread of deadly diseases, both to us and to the trees... Hmm. To cite that powerful piece of Cree wisdom: Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish been caught, and the last stream poisoned, will we realize we cannot eat money. As one of his interviewees notes, a former Stasi officer who'd become disillusioned with what he saw, communism wasn't the answer but nor was capitalism.
To be fair to Prof GA, he strikes a much more balanced note towards the end of the book, acknowledging his privileged position and that many of us in the informers' shoes would have behaved the same. In an afterword from 2009, he also notes that the world of the 21st Century has become significantly less liberal and that our own secret police might just have a political agenda.
Entertaining and providing plenty of food for thought - well worth reading.
Here, the eminent former journalist and historian explores in detail the file the Stasi built up on him during his time in the DDR in the early 1980s. He tracks down those who informed on him and the officers who oversaw his case. He also relates the experience of others who found themselves under Stasi surveillance (dissidents, for the most part). It makes for fascinating reading.
The victors write the history books, of course. Ah, the god that failed. Garton Ash tells us that he wanted communism to fall, and fall it did. Instead, he says, he wished to see liberal democracy prevail, without ever really explaining why that might be a good thing. My undergraduate dissertation was about the threats to liberal democracy in Peru. My marker pointed out that I'd not made clear why this mattered. We've made the same gaff, Timbo. It goes without saying that police states aren't good. Apparently, the superiority of turb0-capitalism goes without saying too.
His interviewees talk about the positives associated witht the DDR, the full employment, the lack of crime and drugs, the security offered by the state... Garton Ash is dismissive. That's easy for him. Educated at Sherborne (one of the leading public schools in England - for 'public' read private and expensive), and thus up to Oxford, driving around the communist East in a new Alfasud, spending his grandfather's bequest. Such a background suggests no need of the safety nets upon which others depend.
And what of the one god that remains standing, capitalist liberal democracy? Has that been a resounding success? Last time it was totted up, nine billionaires owned wealth equivalent to that of the poorest half of humanity (3.7 billion people). We have entered a new era of mass extinction, presided over by capitalist industry and imperialism. The planet is frying in greenhouse gases. Oh, and the global economy has facilitated the rapid spread of deadly diseases, both to us and to the trees... Hmm. To cite that powerful piece of Cree wisdom: Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish been caught, and the last stream poisoned, will we realize we cannot eat money. As one of his interviewees notes, a former Stasi officer who'd become disillusioned with what he saw, communism wasn't the answer but nor was capitalism.
To be fair to Prof GA, he strikes a much more balanced note towards the end of the book, acknowledging his privileged position and that many of us in the informers' shoes would have behaved the same. In an afterword from 2009, he also notes that the world of the 21st Century has become significantly less liberal and that our own secret police might just have a political agenda.
Entertaining and providing plenty of food for thought - well worth reading.
June 21, 2019
3.5. I read some of Timothy Garton Ash’s analysis of postwar Germany many (many!) years ago as an undergraduate, and was intrigued more recently to come across his now over twenty year old memoir. Its focus is narrow: as a young man in the late 70s/early 80s, he spent time doing research and writing in East Germany. After the Berlin Wall came down, Garton Ash learned that he, like so many East Germans, was the subject of a Stasi file, and that a number of people with whom he interacted were informers for the East German secret service. He applies to see his file, matches up what appears in it with his patchy memories and his diaries, visits his informers and the Stasi officers involved in his surveillance, and thinks about the socio-historical and moral implications of the whole thing.
I found the author’s visits to informers and officers, and his thoughts about the big picture very interesting. And it’s quite amazing, the extent to which the reunified Germany opened up the Stasi files. He muses interestingly about the effect on the staffers of the agency tasked with permitting individuals access to their files “However sober-minded and responsible the people, the procedures and the whole atmosphere, there is still a voyeuristic thrill to knowing such intimate details of other people’s lives.� And later, “How to work with poison every day and not yourself be poisoned?� These were passages that resonated significantly for me.
Garton Ash’s memories of the time when he was under surveillance were less gripping - Stasi surveillance extended so broadly that the fact one was being watched doesn’t necessarily make what one was doing at the time all that interesting!
I found the author’s visits to informers and officers, and his thoughts about the big picture very interesting. And it’s quite amazing, the extent to which the reunified Germany opened up the Stasi files. He muses interestingly about the effect on the staffers of the agency tasked with permitting individuals access to their files “However sober-minded and responsible the people, the procedures and the whole atmosphere, there is still a voyeuristic thrill to knowing such intimate details of other people’s lives.� And later, “How to work with poison every day and not yourself be poisoned?� These were passages that resonated significantly for me.
Garton Ash’s memories of the time when he was under surveillance were less gripping - Stasi surveillance extended so broadly that the fact one was being watched doesn’t necessarily make what one was doing at the time all that interesting!
July 30, 2011
That's right. I tagged this as "memoir" and "thriller." It's an unlikely combination, but then The File chronicles an unlikely moment in history. Not the police state of former East Germany. Police states are a dime a dozen. Nope, the unlikely bit is the moment in the mid-1990s when a newly re-unified Germany allowed everyone to apply to see the file that the East German secret police, the Stasi, kept on them.
For all that the KGB were designated by Hollywood as the Big Bad (in today's television parlance), the Stasi kept more records, kept more thorough records, and compromised a greater percentage of their country's population. Family informed on family, neighbors on neighbors, husbands and wives on their wives and husbands. Everyone got a code name. Everyone got a handler. Everyone got a file - everyone who informed, and everyone who was informed-upon.
When I read this for the first time in early 2001, carrying out academic research in Prague, The File already felt like an anachronism, a peculiar book documenting a particular moment in history. Then came 9/11. Then came the Patriot Act, and the War on Terror, and a mere 8 months later, the book felt like a cautionary tale.
In The File, documents how he retrieved his own file and methodically interviewed all of the people who had informed on him, people he barely knew, people he considered confidantes and friends. He interviews members of the Stasi, a branch of the military, as far up the chain of command as he can go and gives them a voice even as he explores his own misgivings.
Historically speaking, from the perspective of the U.S., the Warsaw Pact were the Big Bad. But for the Stasi themselves, they were protecting their country. They were doing what our CIA do, ferreting out dangers to the country, to the society, to their heritage as they saw it. He explores the inherent tension between freedom and law enforcement, and individual freedom versus national self-defense.
Inevitably, the greatest damage done by the police state driven to protect itself is to society and to the relationships between citizens. Garton Ash himself betrays the trust of a former girlfriend who did something he never understood. On the verge of making love one night, she threw back the curtains on the French doors of her apartment and turned the light on. She is not listed in his file as an informant, but the circumstances have always puzzled him. When he asks her about the event, she is deeply hurt that he could imagine she would have tried to set him up to be spied upon. "I don't remember opening the curtain," she says, "but yes I turned on the light. I wanted to see your face."
For all that the KGB were designated by Hollywood as the Big Bad (in today's television parlance), the Stasi kept more records, kept more thorough records, and compromised a greater percentage of their country's population. Family informed on family, neighbors on neighbors, husbands and wives on their wives and husbands. Everyone got a code name. Everyone got a handler. Everyone got a file - everyone who informed, and everyone who was informed-upon.
When I read this for the first time in early 2001, carrying out academic research in Prague, The File already felt like an anachronism, a peculiar book documenting a particular moment in history. Then came 9/11. Then came the Patriot Act, and the War on Terror, and a mere 8 months later, the book felt like a cautionary tale.
In The File, documents how he retrieved his own file and methodically interviewed all of the people who had informed on him, people he barely knew, people he considered confidantes and friends. He interviews members of the Stasi, a branch of the military, as far up the chain of command as he can go and gives them a voice even as he explores his own misgivings.
Historically speaking, from the perspective of the U.S., the Warsaw Pact were the Big Bad. But for the Stasi themselves, they were protecting their country. They were doing what our CIA do, ferreting out dangers to the country, to the society, to their heritage as they saw it. He explores the inherent tension between freedom and law enforcement, and individual freedom versus national self-defense.
Inevitably, the greatest damage done by the police state driven to protect itself is to society and to the relationships between citizens. Garton Ash himself betrays the trust of a former girlfriend who did something he never understood. On the verge of making love one night, she threw back the curtains on the French doors of her apartment and turned the light on. She is not listed in his file as an informant, but the circumstances have always puzzled him. When he asks her about the event, she is deeply hurt that he could imagine she would have tried to set him up to be spied upon. "I don't remember opening the curtain," she says, "but yes I turned on the light. I wanted to see your face."
November 15, 2013
Not that any of us wants to be watched by secret police... but if you were, wouldn't you want to read the file they kept?
After Germany was reunified, the files of the East German Stasi (secret police) were made available to the file subjects. Timothy Garton Ash is a Briton who lived in East Germany as a student and journalist. He wasn't a spy but managed to make the Stasi nervous enough to open a file.
When the records were opened, he obtained his Stasi file and compared it to his fairly detailed diary. He found that the file was reasonably accurate in reporting his activities. But the Stasi's institutional paranoia caused it to misinterpret his motives and intentions.
In the file, it's pretty easy to figure out who informed on him; the question is why. He locates and interviews several people who informed on him and some former Stasi staff who were assigned to his file.
For the most part, they have the usual, lame rationalizations: "It was my job," "We were under constant attack by the West," "I didn't tell them anything important," "Someone else did the really bad stuff--not me." No surprises there.
More interesting are the moral dilemmas that Garton Ash has to face. Publicly identifying a former collaborator can turn the informer into an unemployable social pariah. It can destroy family ties and friendships. It changes the nature of memories. In Garton Ash's case, the informers did him little real harm. Do they deserve that kind of payback? And what if the file is incorrect or is misinterpreted? How much investigation is required before an accusation is made?
This is what happens when a state encourages its people to violate basic trust. This is how difficult it is to clean up the mess.
After Germany was reunified, the files of the East German Stasi (secret police) were made available to the file subjects. Timothy Garton Ash is a Briton who lived in East Germany as a student and journalist. He wasn't a spy but managed to make the Stasi nervous enough to open a file.
When the records were opened, he obtained his Stasi file and compared it to his fairly detailed diary. He found that the file was reasonably accurate in reporting his activities. But the Stasi's institutional paranoia caused it to misinterpret his motives and intentions.
In the file, it's pretty easy to figure out who informed on him; the question is why. He locates and interviews several people who informed on him and some former Stasi staff who were assigned to his file.
For the most part, they have the usual, lame rationalizations: "It was my job," "We were under constant attack by the West," "I didn't tell them anything important," "Someone else did the really bad stuff--not me." No surprises there.
More interesting are the moral dilemmas that Garton Ash has to face. Publicly identifying a former collaborator can turn the informer into an unemployable social pariah. It can destroy family ties and friendships. It changes the nature of memories. In Garton Ash's case, the informers did him little real harm. Do they deserve that kind of payback? And what if the file is incorrect or is misinterpreted? How much investigation is required before an accusation is made?
This is what happens when a state encourages its people to violate basic trust. This is how difficult it is to clean up the mess.
July 13, 2023
What do you do? You're a son, and discover years after the fact that your own mother had been providing information to the East German Secret Police about your concerning political leanings. Or you are a teacher, and learn of a similar accusation regarding a favorite student. This was the type of challenge facing millions of East Germans in the years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when Stasi records were made available to those on whom files were created because of the word of friends, family members, coworkers, students, teachers, doctors, priests, neighbors, passers-by.
The result of the archived files being released has raised countless philosophical questions, many of which are posed and scrutinized by Timothy Garton Ash, the author of this spectacular book. A British journalist, he learns of a file bearing his name (and his Stasi-assigned pseudonym) through a friend, and makes the fateful decision to have a look. Reading about his life through events 15 years after they occurred by people he felt he could trust was jarring all by itself - perhaps, at times, a bit embarrassing as well. But as a journalist he felt obliged to look further than the files; he was able to determine (at times, outright told) who the others were that had informed on his movements, and felt it might be interesting to track them down, perhaps determine what their motivation was. As a human being, he also recognized that, as the files were more and more broadly becoming known and informants were being outed, he might also be ripping open old wounds. With the clear understanding that many informants were coerced into spilling the beans on loved ones, was his desire for answers worth the potential pain?
I picked this book up because it promised to show me a reflection of Berlin in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a time when I, too, was a young inhabitant of the divided city. Once I started reading, I realized I was in for far more than a travelogue. TGA is the perfect sounding board for his own doubts regarding his goals and objectives and the consequences of following them through to the end. Great book.
The result of the archived files being released has raised countless philosophical questions, many of which are posed and scrutinized by Timothy Garton Ash, the author of this spectacular book. A British journalist, he learns of a file bearing his name (and his Stasi-assigned pseudonym) through a friend, and makes the fateful decision to have a look. Reading about his life through events 15 years after they occurred by people he felt he could trust was jarring all by itself - perhaps, at times, a bit embarrassing as well. But as a journalist he felt obliged to look further than the files; he was able to determine (at times, outright told) who the others were that had informed on his movements, and felt it might be interesting to track them down, perhaps determine what their motivation was. As a human being, he also recognized that, as the files were more and more broadly becoming known and informants were being outed, he might also be ripping open old wounds. With the clear understanding that many informants were coerced into spilling the beans on loved ones, was his desire for answers worth the potential pain?
I picked this book up because it promised to show me a reflection of Berlin in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a time when I, too, was a young inhabitant of the divided city. Once I started reading, I realized I was in for far more than a travelogue. TGA is the perfect sounding board for his own doubts regarding his goals and objectives and the consequences of following them through to the end. Great book.
August 4, 2024
I love the personal history lens and how it makes nonfiction so much more accessible and engaging - he is also just an amazing writer and has so many lines that I had to stop and highlight. However some sections were too drawn out and abstract for me
January 8, 2010
Fantastic personal account of what it is like to read your Stasi file. Beautifully written, and a compelling mix of memoires and history, which brought me to tears during more then one passage.
"I place a compact disc in the computer's CD-drive, and click the 'play' button on screen. From a loudspeaker somewhere behind the text I have just typed there comes the voice of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, recorded in 1958, at the height of the Cold War, singing Schubert's great dark song. Can any father hear it and not be moved?
Through night and wind the father rides, his child in his arms. He holds him fast, he keeps him warm. The voice is strong and firm. Then the elf king comes out of the night, and woos the child with such beuatiful lines: about those bright flowers, golden robes and great games, about his daughters who will cradle you and dance with you and sing to sleep. And if you're not willing - the voice is suddenly harsh - he must then use force. Against the music's threatening insistence, the child cries out: 'Oh father, father, he's seizing me now.' The father rides for dear life. He reaches home at last. The voice sinks almost to nothing: 'In his arms . . . the child . . . was dead.'"
p. 226 - 227
"I place a compact disc in the computer's CD-drive, and click the 'play' button on screen. From a loudspeaker somewhere behind the text I have just typed there comes the voice of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, recorded in 1958, at the height of the Cold War, singing Schubert's great dark song. Can any father hear it and not be moved?
Through night and wind the father rides, his child in his arms. He holds him fast, he keeps him warm. The voice is strong and firm. Then the elf king comes out of the night, and woos the child with such beuatiful lines: about those bright flowers, golden robes and great games, about his daughters who will cradle you and dance with you and sing to sleep. And if you're not willing - the voice is suddenly harsh - he must then use force. Against the music's threatening insistence, the child cries out: 'Oh father, father, he's seizing me now.' The father rides for dear life. He reaches home at last. The voice sinks almost to nothing: 'In his arms . . . the child . . . was dead.'"
p. 226 - 227
February 23, 2019
3.5 stars. A very interesting, quick-reading little book. Timothy Garton Ash seems like he might be a little insufferable in real life but he's tolerable enough in 200-odd pages that it didn't get on my nerves enough to wreck the book. And it's a fascinating little history. Highly recommend if you're at all interested in the Stasi and/or Cold War intelligence/surveillance.
December 15, 2021
In The File: A Personal History, the author shares with the reader the experiences he had upon returning to what was once East Germany in the immediate post-Cold War years of the early 1990s from a series of visits he made to the Federal Authority for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). The purpose of these visits: to examine and analyze a secret file that had been kept on Timothy Garton Ash by the GDR secret police (the Stasi) who had unknowingly been surveilled during the late 1970s and early 1980s, when, as a young Oxford graduate, he had lived and worked in East Berlin.
The book goes on to chronicle the trek Garton Ash undertook to find out who the people were (many of whom were friends or associates of his during his time in the GDR) who had spied on him (i.e. acted as informers or IMs) and the Stasi officers who were responsible for keeping him under observation. Many of these people Garton Ash was able to interview. It proves to be a very revelatory experience, shedding light on how living in a totalitarian country by a secret police that, as a matter of routine, kept checks on virtually every citizen in the GDR. What I was surprised to learn was that, given a country of its size, the Stasi in the GDR had a much more extensive number of people working for it than the Gestapo had in Nazi Germany!
At first, I wasn't sure that I was going to like this book because it started off a bit slow. But as I became more immersed in the story, it was fascinating to be reminded --- as someone who had lived through the last 25 years of the Cold War --- of what the atmosphere was like in Europe in the late 1970s and 1980s. For anyone with an interest in Cold War history, I recommend reading "The File: A Personal History."
The book goes on to chronicle the trek Garton Ash undertook to find out who the people were (many of whom were friends or associates of his during his time in the GDR) who had spied on him (i.e. acted as informers or IMs) and the Stasi officers who were responsible for keeping him under observation. Many of these people Garton Ash was able to interview. It proves to be a very revelatory experience, shedding light on how living in a totalitarian country by a secret police that, as a matter of routine, kept checks on virtually every citizen in the GDR. What I was surprised to learn was that, given a country of its size, the Stasi in the GDR had a much more extensive number of people working for it than the Gestapo had in Nazi Germany!
At first, I wasn't sure that I was going to like this book because it started off a bit slow. But as I became more immersed in the story, it was fascinating to be reminded --- as someone who had lived through the last 25 years of the Cold War --- of what the atmosphere was like in Europe in the late 1970s and 1980s. For anyone with an interest in Cold War history, I recommend reading "The File: A Personal History."
May 31, 2023
Kolayca 5 yıldız. Kimi kitap oluyor, son kısmında artık sayfaları daha hızlı çevirmeye başlıyorsun bitsin diye. Bu tersine, son paragrafını bile büyük bir dikkatle okutturdu.
Her ne kadar kitabın öznesi Doğu Alman iç istihbaratı olsa da, bunu "ay komünizm zamanında şöyleymiş" diye değerlendirmemek lazım: kitapta mesajı sıklıkla verildiği üzere, teknikleri ve yaygınlığı Stasi kadar saldırgan ve yaygın olmasa da, tüm devletler, ekonomik rejimleri, ve "özgürlükçü"lüklerinden bağımsız olarak, legal ve illegal her türlü işi çeviriyorlar. Bu eserde Stasi'nin masaya yatırılmış oluşu, sovyetlerin çöküşünün getirdiği radikal bazı değişimler sonunda arşivlerin kamuya açılmasının yarattığı bir tesadüf. Yoksa ABD'deki "whistleblower"ler sayesinde öbür tarafta yenen bokları da işitiyoruz.
Aslında konu, Arendt'ın meşhur kitabında olduğu gibi, makinanın kendisinden ziyade, dişlileri diyebilirim.
Yazar, eserde kendi kişisel dosyasının izini sürüyor olsa da, kitapta kendisinden çok bu "ispiyonlama" sisteminin aktörlerini, istihbarat servisi elemanlarını, birbirini ispiyonlayan sade yurttaşları ("yoldaşları" da diyebiliriz), duvarın yıkılması ile bu belgelerin kamuya açılmasının ahlaki vaziyetini sorguluyor. Ash'ın konuyu anlatırken kendi açısından gelişmeleri, duygularını ve iç dünyasını özellikle öne çıkartarak aktarıyor oluşu, yazarla empati kurmayı kolaylaştırıyor. Timothy Bey, herkesin ispiyoncu olabileceği bir dünyada insanların birbirinden devamlı şüphe ettikleri ve ilişkilerin sahte olması ihtimalinin yarattığı gerilimi da çok yerinde vurgulamış.
Yazarın kitabın sonundaki genel değerlendirmesi ve aile kurumu ile ilgili kanaati de okunmaya değerdi bana göre.
Bir de: "he travels fastest who travels alone". Bu lafı çok sevdim.
Son olarak, Almanya'da olan biten olaylar dendiği zaman (haklı olarak) akla ilk önce Üçüncü Reich dönemi gelse de, neredeyse 30 yıl evveline kadar bu ülkenin içinde olduğu durumu ne çabuk unuttuğumuzu da hatırlamak lazım.
Her ne kadar kitabın öznesi Doğu Alman iç istihbaratı olsa da, bunu "ay komünizm zamanında şöyleymiş" diye değerlendirmemek lazım: kitapta mesajı sıklıkla verildiği üzere, teknikleri ve yaygınlığı Stasi kadar saldırgan ve yaygın olmasa da, tüm devletler, ekonomik rejimleri, ve "özgürlükçü"lüklerinden bağımsız olarak, legal ve illegal her türlü işi çeviriyorlar. Bu eserde Stasi'nin masaya yatırılmış oluşu, sovyetlerin çöküşünün getirdiği radikal bazı değişimler sonunda arşivlerin kamuya açılmasının yarattığı bir tesadüf. Yoksa ABD'deki "whistleblower"ler sayesinde öbür tarafta yenen bokları da işitiyoruz.
Aslında konu, Arendt'ın meşhur kitabında olduğu gibi, makinanın kendisinden ziyade, dişlileri diyebilirim.
Yazar, eserde kendi kişisel dosyasının izini sürüyor olsa da, kitapta kendisinden çok bu "ispiyonlama" sisteminin aktörlerini, istihbarat servisi elemanlarını, birbirini ispiyonlayan sade yurttaşları ("yoldaşları" da diyebiliriz), duvarın yıkılması ile bu belgelerin kamuya açılmasının ahlaki vaziyetini sorguluyor. Ash'ın konuyu anlatırken kendi açısından gelişmeleri, duygularını ve iç dünyasını özellikle öne çıkartarak aktarıyor oluşu, yazarla empati kurmayı kolaylaştırıyor. Timothy Bey, herkesin ispiyoncu olabileceği bir dünyada insanların birbirinden devamlı şüphe ettikleri ve ilişkilerin sahte olması ihtimalinin yarattığı gerilimi da çok yerinde vurgulamış.
Yazarın kitabın sonundaki genel değerlendirmesi ve aile kurumu ile ilgili kanaati de okunmaya değerdi bana göre.
Bir de: "he travels fastest who travels alone". Bu lafı çok sevdim.
Son olarak, Almanya'da olan biten olaylar dendiği zaman (haklı olarak) akla ilk önce Üçüncü Reich dönemi gelse de, neredeyse 30 yıl evveline kadar bu ülkenin içinde olduğu durumu ne çabuk unuttuğumuzu da hatırlamak lazım.
December 29, 2015
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the meticulous files that the German Democratic Republic's Ministry for State Security, or Stasi, kept on many of its citizens and foreigners became open to the public. The main archive for these files, Timothy Ash tells us, is located in the same building complex that once housed the Stasi's central archive. The archive is often called the Gauck Authority, after the priest who runs it, and being vetted for a job in part by having one's name sent to the GA is known colloquially as being "gaucked."
Ash explains that in post-communist Germany, the initials IM have become infamous. They stand for Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter, or "unofficial collaborators." "According to internal records", he says, "in 1988- the last 'normal' year of the GDR- the Ministry for State Security had more than 170,000 'unofficial collaborators.' Of these, some 110,000 were regular informers, while the others were involved in 'conspiratorial' services such as lending their flats for secret meetings or were simply listed as reliable contacts...this means that about one out of every fifty adult East Germans had a direct connection with the secret police." But what do those numbers mean, in reality? That's primarily the question Ash, who's British and was a student in both west and east Berlin in the late 70s and early 80s, tries to answer in this book. In addition to being a foreign student in the GDR, Ash made trips to Poland and the Gdansk shipyards while the Solidarity movement was going on. Naturally, he was placed under surveillance by the Stasi. In this book, he tells us about looking through his file and confronting the people who informed on him.
He finds a variety of explanations. People were coerced into cooperating in a variety of ways- plied with the promise of trips abroad, or threatened. And if a representative of the Stasi comes and asks me to inform on a friend, might it not make more sense to agree to do so, and then give them innocuous details? There's no question that some people did this, and count towards that 170,000. But it's also true that many people- including some of those Ash interviews- were and still are true believers. One former colonel tells Ash, "The state was threatened by Western agents...the State Security Service gave ordinary people security, and they look back to it with longing now, when there's so much insecurity: crime, unemployment, drugs. Yes, there was a minority who suffered for their political views. But that's normal." Earlier, a former East German General explains to Ash that he found himself listening in to interrogations of captured western spies. Why? He wanted to know why they'd done it. And why had they? "Partly for money", the General says. "Partly the thirst for adventure. And then there was what they called 'ideology.' They did it for freedom, as they would say." It's really a fascinating moment in the book: the reasoning of the captured western dissidents seems just as incomprehensible to the General as his will seem to most readers (or seems to me, at any rate). Ash is generally careful not to exonerate or condemn, but in a few individual cases he's able to provide us with the context to somewhat understand how someone in postwar Germany might have been able to grow up and believe in the GDR.
The book is not terribly well-written. Ash can be a dry writer at times. Additionally, someone who has no prior knowledge of the subject will probably not get, from this book, a good understanding of just how brutal and savage the GDR and the Stasi were. It seems like a bit of an oversight in a book like this, that's asking how people could do the things they did, to not explicitly talk much about those things. But the compelling subject matter makes up for these flaws.
Ash explains that in post-communist Germany, the initials IM have become infamous. They stand for Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter, or "unofficial collaborators." "According to internal records", he says, "in 1988- the last 'normal' year of the GDR- the Ministry for State Security had more than 170,000 'unofficial collaborators.' Of these, some 110,000 were regular informers, while the others were involved in 'conspiratorial' services such as lending their flats for secret meetings or were simply listed as reliable contacts...this means that about one out of every fifty adult East Germans had a direct connection with the secret police." But what do those numbers mean, in reality? That's primarily the question Ash, who's British and was a student in both west and east Berlin in the late 70s and early 80s, tries to answer in this book. In addition to being a foreign student in the GDR, Ash made trips to Poland and the Gdansk shipyards while the Solidarity movement was going on. Naturally, he was placed under surveillance by the Stasi. In this book, he tells us about looking through his file and confronting the people who informed on him.
He finds a variety of explanations. People were coerced into cooperating in a variety of ways- plied with the promise of trips abroad, or threatened. And if a representative of the Stasi comes and asks me to inform on a friend, might it not make more sense to agree to do so, and then give them innocuous details? There's no question that some people did this, and count towards that 170,000. But it's also true that many people- including some of those Ash interviews- were and still are true believers. One former colonel tells Ash, "The state was threatened by Western agents...the State Security Service gave ordinary people security, and they look back to it with longing now, when there's so much insecurity: crime, unemployment, drugs. Yes, there was a minority who suffered for their political views. But that's normal." Earlier, a former East German General explains to Ash that he found himself listening in to interrogations of captured western spies. Why? He wanted to know why they'd done it. And why had they? "Partly for money", the General says. "Partly the thirst for adventure. And then there was what they called 'ideology.' They did it for freedom, as they would say." It's really a fascinating moment in the book: the reasoning of the captured western dissidents seems just as incomprehensible to the General as his will seem to most readers (or seems to me, at any rate). Ash is generally careful not to exonerate or condemn, but in a few individual cases he's able to provide us with the context to somewhat understand how someone in postwar Germany might have been able to grow up and believe in the GDR.
The book is not terribly well-written. Ash can be a dry writer at times. Additionally, someone who has no prior knowledge of the subject will probably not get, from this book, a good understanding of just how brutal and savage the GDR and the Stasi were. It seems like a bit of an oversight in a book like this, that's asking how people could do the things they did, to not explicitly talk much about those things. But the compelling subject matter makes up for these flaws.
June 12, 2008
Well, I made it to page 87, not quite halfway through, and decided to stop. I found myself wanting to be done with the book, which is never a good sign. I have too many books on my "to read" list to waste time on a book I'm not enjoying or finding interesting at least.
The book's premise was interesting: an English journalist and researcher who spent time in East and West Germany and Poland gets hold of his Stasi file after the Berlin Wall comes down. He compares the file to his own personal diary and seeks out those who informed on him. I had hopes for this book, and at first I settled in, thinking I would learn a great deal about East Germany and the Stasi.
But as I was wading through the plodding details of way too many people and not enough background, I felt that I was reading a recitation of facts. It didn't keep my interest well enough to want to read on.
If I compare this book to others I've read about China or the Cultural Revolution, or other nonfiction about other countries, the writing pales in comparison. It seems to be an academic recitation of facts, without any insights. It wasn't horrible, but it just wasn't good enough to keep my interest.
Onto more interesting books!
The book's premise was interesting: an English journalist and researcher who spent time in East and West Germany and Poland gets hold of his Stasi file after the Berlin Wall comes down. He compares the file to his own personal diary and seeks out those who informed on him. I had hopes for this book, and at first I settled in, thinking I would learn a great deal about East Germany and the Stasi.
But as I was wading through the plodding details of way too many people and not enough background, I felt that I was reading a recitation of facts. It didn't keep my interest well enough to want to read on.
If I compare this book to others I've read about China or the Cultural Revolution, or other nonfiction about other countries, the writing pales in comparison. It seems to be an academic recitation of facts, without any insights. It wasn't horrible, but it just wasn't good enough to keep my interest.
Onto more interesting books!
March 22, 2016
I came to read this because of my interest in memoir. And there is memoir here, as the author moves between the things he discovers in the Stasi file kept on him during his time "behind the wall" in East Berlin during the early 1980s and his own journal of the period. The writing here moves from the odd records of these files and his own journal entries, which he then follows with his attempts to track down the Stasi (secret service) informers now living in various states of retirement or obscurity who kept the file on him. This was written in 1997, and Garton Ash's detailing of computer technology seems dated at this point, but his reflections on the tensions between a secret service in a communist dictatorship and secret services in liberal democracies raise questions about protecting freedoms and the right and need for privacy in a way that has a peculiarly current ring (Edward Snowden, Apple's courtroom battle with the FBI over accessing a terrorist's cell phone records). It is also interesting that he ends by reflecting on the lack of a father figure in the lives of many of the informants who followed him.
February 10, 2021
A quite good memoir centered on Garton Ash’s examination of the file kept on him by the STASI. What I found interesting was a question that isn’t really addressed: how stupid the domestic surveillance was, not just in the petty details (a lot of which are simply wrong - they can’t even spell proper nouns! - as well as open to interpretation) but in the sheer magnitude of the effort, the preoccupation of time and resources to surveillance. Totalitarianism was an end in itself, not a means. It’s an example of Vaclav Havel’s pinpointing the stupidity of totalitarian language. There’s also TGA’s dispiriting conclusion that people became complicit simply out of weakness and self-deception.
May 4, 2010
a classic for anyone interested in the cold war, east germany, stasi, polish solidarity, spies and intrigue, AND what it means to write history. match with "stasiland" by anna funder for a very insightful look into western madness.
December 5, 2020
As interesting as it was to read about Stasi surveillance methods and listen to interviews with former Stasi officers and informers, I was left feeling that Garton-Ash is (rightly) very critical of Eastern European systems of government while not taking seriously enough damage done by the West. Garton-Ash has made his career offing his readers excellent analysis and critic of dictatorial governments and freedom movements in Eastern Europe. However, the longer I live and think the more I see the judgments of human rights abuses by Western powers, including the U.S. as a way of deflecting from our legacy of harm from colonialism.
April 6, 2021
“Quello che si scopre qui, nei dossier, è quanto profondamente la nostra condotta sia influenzata dalle circostanze. Quanto sia grande, di tutto ciò che il cuore umano può sopportare, la parte che legge o re può creare o curare. Quello che si scopre non è tanto la malvagità , quanto l’umana debolezza, una vasta antologia di umane debolezze. E quando si parla alle persone coinvolte, non si trova una deliberata disonestà ma la nostra quasi infinita capacità di autoinganno�.
November 1, 2023
Um retrato tão fascinante como inquietante de um historiador que vai consultar o seu próprio processo nos arquivos da polÃcia secreta da RDA, Stassi.
Compara esse relato com o seu próprio arquivo pessoal e procura e entrevista todas as pessoas que deram informações ou relataram acontecimentos constantes no referido processo.
Entre hermenêutica das fontes, acesso e direito à memória, mas também ao esquecimento.
A ler
Compara esse relato com o seu próprio arquivo pessoal e procura e entrevista todas as pessoas que deram informações ou relataram acontecimentos constantes no referido processo.
Entre hermenêutica das fontes, acesso e direito à memória, mas também ao esquecimento.
A ler
July 10, 2024
Currently obsessed with all his books.
January 13, 2014
This memoir, of one individual's personal experience with the Stasi and attempts to find out more about it after the fall of the Wall, started off really slow for me, despite my interest in the topic. I bought this at a second hand book store in a tiny town in the middle of Texas, and have been looking forward to reading it since. The slow start was a disappointment, because I expected to immediately be swept up in the story.
I do believe that one reason it took me a while to get absorbed in this book is because of the amount of technical information thrust at the reader all at once. At first I was focused on trying to keep the names of various individuals and Stasi departments separate, and wasn't as involved in the greater story. Once I got these things straightened in my mind, I was able to become more involved with the story, thus able to enjoy it more.
I like that the author combines excerpts from his file with his own journal entries and interviews with individuals who played a role in his life during his time in West and East Berlin, and also Poland. I was fascinated, and still am, with the idea of contacting and confronting individuals who were informing on you. I am glad the author decided to do so, but I also feel like more could have been done with the information. This story feels almost incomplete to me.
Of course, it's difficult to cram so many facts and personal recollections and feelings into a certain book. The author gave some great insight into a wide variety of topics that were pertinent to his overall reason for writing this. I enjoyed reading these insights and thinking about them myself. I just wish that after I finished reading it, I felt more of a sense of closure. Instead, I feel like the story has barely begun and there is much more to learn. Granted, I understand that what the author is able to write so long after the events occurred is limited, especially when individuals are unwilling to participate, or have since disappeared or passed away.
If you found this interesting, then I would also recommend watching the film, 'The Secret Lives of Others.' It is fictional, but I can't help but think there's an element of truth of much of what occurs in it.
I do believe that one reason it took me a while to get absorbed in this book is because of the amount of technical information thrust at the reader all at once. At first I was focused on trying to keep the names of various individuals and Stasi departments separate, and wasn't as involved in the greater story. Once I got these things straightened in my mind, I was able to become more involved with the story, thus able to enjoy it more.
I like that the author combines excerpts from his file with his own journal entries and interviews with individuals who played a role in his life during his time in West and East Berlin, and also Poland. I was fascinated, and still am, with the idea of contacting and confronting individuals who were informing on you. I am glad the author decided to do so, but I also feel like more could have been done with the information. This story feels almost incomplete to me.
Of course, it's difficult to cram so many facts and personal recollections and feelings into a certain book. The author gave some great insight into a wide variety of topics that were pertinent to his overall reason for writing this. I enjoyed reading these insights and thinking about them myself. I just wish that after I finished reading it, I felt more of a sense of closure. Instead, I feel like the story has barely begun and there is much more to learn. Granted, I understand that what the author is able to write so long after the events occurred is limited, especially when individuals are unwilling to participate, or have since disappeared or passed away.
If you found this interesting, then I would also recommend watching the film, 'The Secret Lives of Others.' It is fictional, but I can't help but think there's an element of truth of much of what occurs in it.
September 18, 2024
"Guten Tag. Lei ha un dossier molto interessante." Queste sono le parole che il britannico Timothy G. Ash si sente rivolgere presso gli archivi della Stasi (Ente Gauck) della neonata Germania Federale. Come con le madeleines di Marcel Proust, subito la sua mente ritorna agli anni Settanta, quando, da giovane dottorando della Oxford University, decide di intraprendere un viaggio di studi in una Berlino ancora divisa dal muro. "Sento ancora quel particolare odore di Berlino Est - rievoca quasi con nostalgia nelle pagine iniziali -, un miscuglio fatto del fumo di vecchie caldaie domestiche alimentate da mattonelle di polvere di carbone compressa, dei fumi di scarico dei motori a due tempi delle piccole Trabant, delle sigarette da quattro soldi dell’Europa dell’Est, di stivali umidi e di sudore." L’emozione iniziale scaturita a seguito della scoperta del fascicolo a lui dedicato - OPK-Akte, MfS, XV 2889/81 ‘Romeo� - cede ben presto il posto al desiderio di analizzare con accuratezza tutte le carte, al fine di ricostruire le dinamiche di quei giorni e soprattutto le motivazioni che avevano spinto l’MfS ad interessarsi personalmente a lui, uno straniero dimostrante "attitudini liberal-borghesi e nessun impegno nei confronti della classe operaia." Il resoconto finale che ne deriva offre, pertanto, un resoconto assolutamente dettagliato ed esaustivo della struttura, nonché del funzionamento del più efficace e paranoico sistema di sorveglianza governativa del secolo scorso.
May 15, 2020
El Ministeri de Seguretat de l'Estat de la RDA comptava en 1988 amb més de 90.000 treballadors a temps complet i més de 170.000 "col·laboradors no oficials". Un de cada cinquanta germanoorientals col·laboraren amb l'HVA (l'Stasi).
La RDA, doncs, fou un gegantesc estat policial. No debades, l'Stasi de manera oficial era l'«escut i espasa del partit» (comunista, clar). No és difÃcil imaginar el control i la pressió que patiren moltes persones davant d'esta maquinà ria brutal.
L'historiador anglés Timothy Garton Ash investiga i reflexiona a “L'expedient� a partir de l'accés que tingué al seu propi expedient policial. Entrevista a bona part dels responsables del seu espionatge i la gran majoria no mostra penediment d'haver col·laborat amb l'Stasi. De fet, no és senzill escapolir-se del control d'autoritarismes avançats (Garton Ash considera la RDA un totalitarisme, terme sobre el qual no hi ha precisament consens).
El llibre, publicat en 1997 en anglés, es traduà en castellà però estava exhaurit. La jove editorial valenciana Barlin Libros el reedità l'any passat. Tot i que és un llibre d'història escrit per un historiador professional, es llig quasi com una novel·la. Jo crec que paga la pena llegir-lo per a reflexionar sobre el paper dels servicis secrets en dictadures i democrà cies i l'amenaça que suposen per a les llibertats. #elsmeusllibres
La RDA, doncs, fou un gegantesc estat policial. No debades, l'Stasi de manera oficial era l'«escut i espasa del partit» (comunista, clar). No és difÃcil imaginar el control i la pressió que patiren moltes persones davant d'esta maquinà ria brutal.
L'historiador anglés Timothy Garton Ash investiga i reflexiona a “L'expedient� a partir de l'accés que tingué al seu propi expedient policial. Entrevista a bona part dels responsables del seu espionatge i la gran majoria no mostra penediment d'haver col·laborat amb l'Stasi. De fet, no és senzill escapolir-se del control d'autoritarismes avançats (Garton Ash considera la RDA un totalitarisme, terme sobre el qual no hi ha precisament consens).
El llibre, publicat en 1997 en anglés, es traduà en castellà però estava exhaurit. La jove editorial valenciana Barlin Libros el reedità l'any passat. Tot i que és un llibre d'història escrit per un historiador professional, es llig quasi com una novel·la. Jo crec que paga la pena llegir-lo per a reflexionar sobre el paper dels servicis secrets en dictadures i democrà cies i l'amenaça que suposen per a les llibertats. #elsmeusllibres
August 4, 2016
This book succeeds on the strength of its topic. It's voyeuristically fascinating, essentially a memoir about a man reading his own East Germany secret-police file and interviewing the people who informed on him. Comparing his own memories of bopping around Germany and Poland, totally unaware he was suspected of being a British spy. It's a place and time we don't address terribly often, but related enough to World War II and the Cold War that it seems significant, relevant to things we find significant.
I have to confess I ended up a bit bored, though. It's a small book, but it becomes repetitive. His interviewees aren't very forthcoming, so it's a string of requests for depth that end up unfulfilled. On the whole I think the book does provide some insight, though. Ash is sort of a journalist-historian, and I appreciated his understanding of memory. That's the main takeaway here -- Our memories are fallible for so many reasons, but one is that we can and will forget anything that doesn't support our self-images.
I have to confess I ended up a bit bored, though. It's a small book, but it becomes repetitive. His interviewees aren't very forthcoming, so it's a string of requests for depth that end up unfulfilled. On the whole I think the book does provide some insight, though. Ash is sort of a journalist-historian, and I appreciated his understanding of memory. That's the main takeaway here -- Our memories are fallible for so many reasons, but one is that we can and will forget anything that doesn't support our self-images.
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