Germans' Trouble With The Recent Past
MonsieurEvil
Join Date: 2002-01-22 Member: 4Members, Retired Developer, NS1 Playtester, Contributor
Join Date: 2002-01-22 Member: 4Members, Retired Developer, NS1 Playtester, Contributor
in Discussions
<div class="IPBDescription">Anger over a book</div> Hi guys - I haven't posted in Disc. for a long time but this article really caught my eye. After a few years of endless inundation about how scumbag dictators all come from Bagdhad (or Washington DC, if you're some of the posters here <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo--> ), this article and its subject book points out that Europe hasn't lost its edge in crushing the citizenry. It's interesting to see just how far buried heads can get in the sand. For many of our posters here, much of this happened right around the time of your birth, and that often leaves a gap in education; the same applies to me where I have no real knowledge of disco and bell bottoms <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo--> .
Anyhoo...
<a href='http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/06/11/1086749895470.html?from=storylhs' target='_blank'>http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/06/11/...l?from=storylhs</a>
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Silent fury for author who lifted stones of Germany's past
By Malcolm Knox, Literary Editor
June 12, 2004
After 23 publishers' rejections and a warning to "wear a flak jacket", Anna Funder was understandably apprehensive - actually "scared senseless" - about launching her book Stasiland in Germany this year.
The launch in March was at Leipzig's Runde Ecke, the former Stasi building where Funder had first thought of writing about the victims of the Ministry for State Security in East Germany. The Australian-born lawyer and documentary film-maker had lived in West Berlin in the 1980s, then returned after the wall fell and Stasi archives were opened.
In 1994 she visited the Runde Ecke, which overnight had been turned into a museum of Stasi artefacts. A story told by the museum director led Funder to one Stasi victim, then another. She helped it along by placing a newspaper advertisement inviting ex-Stasi operatives to contact her.
"The phone rang hot," she said, with calls from "men of varying degrees of self-importance, self-justification and creepiness".
Published two years ago in Australia, then in Britain and the United States, Stasiland has enjoyed a growing readership and critical reputation. This week Funder, 37, is in London for the awarding of the Heinemann and Samuel Johnson prizes, for which she has been nominated.
But in Germany, the road to publication was rockier. One publisher told her: "This is the best book by a foreigner on this issue. But unfortunately, in the current political climate, we cannot see our way to publishing it."
A small independent publisher eventually took the gamble. Funder first sensed east German hostility when she was attacked during phone interviews early this year, but its full extent only hit home at the Runde Ecke launch.
Funder's publisher made a short speech titled "Betrayal", saying that the German Democratic Republic, like the Nazi Reich that preceded it, was a police state based on citizens spying on each other. It was received in silence.
Then Funder read from Stasiland, which tells the stories of people whose lives were ruined by the Stasi, and also of some ex-Stasi agents. When she finished, there was more silence until a woman asked: "Who gave you the right to write about us?"
Funder retorted: "From what authority should I have sought permission?" She remains puzzled by the questioning of a writer's "right" to choose her subject.
"I did a two-week publicity tour of Germany ... and it was all about me being Australian," she said. "It was as if a Martian had come and written about them. They found it extraordinary that an Australian would do this. Why would anybody be interested in the GDR?"
She detected a "totalitarian" censoriousness. Her response, apart from the truism that writers can write whatever they want, centred on the essence of Stasiland: "In the book I'm just helping people tell their stories. It's about them, not me."
The hostility, however, was targeted very much at her.
"Old east Germans were very annoyed at me. The people complaining were often ex-Stasi and [Socialist] party members, who have an interest in having that state remembered as benign."
The deeper reasons for denial, she says, were cloaked by the personal attacks.
"When they read my book, people in the East are not proud of themselves. They'd rather not be reminded that other people were braver than they were. So there is a huge force to pretend that the Stasi regime was not as bad as it was."
As her tour moved into the former West Germany, Funder found a more balanced interest - "people laughed and reacted with concern, whereas in the east it was all silence and furious scribbling". There was also a greater appreciation of her outsider's perspective.
"I really think it was a boon to be an Australian writing there in the 1990s, precisely because I came from so far away," she said. "People like Miriam and Julia [two of the Stasi victims in the book] wouldn't have told their stories to a fellow German."<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm sure Nem will chime in with some comments as it's his neck of the woods, but I welcome conversation from all. The Germans have (for the most part) been quite mature and contritious about WW2 and their genocides, but it seems this is less the case with the next 45 years of behavior...
Anyhoo...
<a href='http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/06/11/1086749895470.html?from=storylhs' target='_blank'>http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/06/11/...l?from=storylhs</a>
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Silent fury for author who lifted stones of Germany's past
By Malcolm Knox, Literary Editor
June 12, 2004
After 23 publishers' rejections and a warning to "wear a flak jacket", Anna Funder was understandably apprehensive - actually "scared senseless" - about launching her book Stasiland in Germany this year.
The launch in March was at Leipzig's Runde Ecke, the former Stasi building where Funder had first thought of writing about the victims of the Ministry for State Security in East Germany. The Australian-born lawyer and documentary film-maker had lived in West Berlin in the 1980s, then returned after the wall fell and Stasi archives were opened.
In 1994 she visited the Runde Ecke, which overnight had been turned into a museum of Stasi artefacts. A story told by the museum director led Funder to one Stasi victim, then another. She helped it along by placing a newspaper advertisement inviting ex-Stasi operatives to contact her.
"The phone rang hot," she said, with calls from "men of varying degrees of self-importance, self-justification and creepiness".
Published two years ago in Australia, then in Britain and the United States, Stasiland has enjoyed a growing readership and critical reputation. This week Funder, 37, is in London for the awarding of the Heinemann and Samuel Johnson prizes, for which she has been nominated.
But in Germany, the road to publication was rockier. One publisher told her: "This is the best book by a foreigner on this issue. But unfortunately, in the current political climate, we cannot see our way to publishing it."
A small independent publisher eventually took the gamble. Funder first sensed east German hostility when she was attacked during phone interviews early this year, but its full extent only hit home at the Runde Ecke launch.
Funder's publisher made a short speech titled "Betrayal", saying that the German Democratic Republic, like the Nazi Reich that preceded it, was a police state based on citizens spying on each other. It was received in silence.
Then Funder read from Stasiland, which tells the stories of people whose lives were ruined by the Stasi, and also of some ex-Stasi agents. When she finished, there was more silence until a woman asked: "Who gave you the right to write about us?"
Funder retorted: "From what authority should I have sought permission?" She remains puzzled by the questioning of a writer's "right" to choose her subject.
"I did a two-week publicity tour of Germany ... and it was all about me being Australian," she said. "It was as if a Martian had come and written about them. They found it extraordinary that an Australian would do this. Why would anybody be interested in the GDR?"
She detected a "totalitarian" censoriousness. Her response, apart from the truism that writers can write whatever they want, centred on the essence of Stasiland: "In the book I'm just helping people tell their stories. It's about them, not me."
The hostility, however, was targeted very much at her.
"Old east Germans were very annoyed at me. The people complaining were often ex-Stasi and [Socialist] party members, who have an interest in having that state remembered as benign."
The deeper reasons for denial, she says, were cloaked by the personal attacks.
"When they read my book, people in the East are not proud of themselves. They'd rather not be reminded that other people were braver than they were. So there is a huge force to pretend that the Stasi regime was not as bad as it was."
As her tour moved into the former West Germany, Funder found a more balanced interest - "people laughed and reacted with concern, whereas in the east it was all silence and furious scribbling". There was also a greater appreciation of her outsider's perspective.
"I really think it was a boon to be an Australian writing there in the 1990s, precisely because I came from so far away," she said. "People like Miriam and Julia [two of the Stasi victims in the book] wouldn't have told their stories to a fellow German."<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm sure Nem will chime in with some comments as it's his neck of the woods, but I welcome conversation from all. The Germans have (for the most part) been quite mature and contritious about WW2 and their genocides, but it seems this is less the case with the next 45 years of behavior...
Comments
Time to bust a rhyme? Time to do a dime? Time to salt a lime?
I am confused already.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->The infamous Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, a.k.a. the Stasi, was established in April 1950. Similar in structure to the then- operating NKVD (predecessor to the KGB), the Stasi was the secret police force for the communist-controlled German Democratic Republic.
The Stasi used a huge network of informants to repress the citizens of East Germany. It was not uncommon for members of families to spy on each other for fear of blackmail, as a result of physical threats and even because of monetary rewards from the secret police force. In the late ‘80s, the Stasi had nearly 175,000 official informants on their books, roughly one informant for every 100 people. (Some estimate the size of the “unofficial” Stasi informant force as nearly 10 times this level.) The Stasi maintained a force of over 90,000 uniformed and plain-clothes agents.
Aside from their internal operations, the Stasi, in coordination with the KGB, collected external intelligence. (During the early ,80s, the new President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, then a KGB operative, participated in this type of intelligence gathering.) The key targets of the Stasi’s external efforts were the U.S. occupational forces in Berlin, U.S. and NATO forces in West Germany, the West German government and military and political bodies of other Western European countries.
The operations of the Stasi, the uniforms they wore and the geographical situation of East and West Berlin made them the perfect ever-present “bad guys” of many Cold War spy novels. However, their portrayal in print was only a shadow of their true and far-reaching influence.
In 1990, when West and East Germany were reunited, the Stasi was dissolved. Many sought retribution for the pain, suffering and even loss of life caused by the East German secret police through the court system. However, a final decision by the unified German court in 1995 stated that former Stasi officials could not be prosecuted for taking part in or conducting Cold War espionage against the West.
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm not surprised that they would be upset, it wasn't a force above them, it was a part of them. Very 'Big-Brother'ish. Just goes to show that everyone has something to hide and even those who seem fair minded will react badly when their dirty laundry is aired.
Every country is the same.
It's just one of those funny etiquette things.
We English still 'hate' the French for the 100 years war... maybe even the Battle of Hastings! (1066).
And we aren't even renowned for being particularly patriotic, if the Anthem came on the radio I'd change the station, not stand up.
As most of you will know, Germany experienced tremendous re-configurations after the end of the Third Reich: The victorious allies seperated the areas annexed by Hitler (among them Austria, big parts of Poland, or parts of Czechya) as well as all formerly German land east from Oder and Neisse (the two rivers nowadays seperating Poland and Germany) from Germany. The remaining land was subdivided into four OZs - Occupation Zones, one headed by the USA, one headed by de Gaulles new French government (I'm actually writing these lines in the city the French administration used first as a military HQ), one headed by Great Britain, and, in the east, one headed by the Soviet Union.
When the alliance of Hitlers foes started to crumble and the Cold War began, the three western Zones merged very fast first into the Bi-Zone and then the Tri-Zone, which should later become the Federal Republic of Germany, the state I was born in. The FRG was oriented after its three 'founding nations' - our constitution is in essence a fusion of influences from the Bill of Rights, the French democratic tradition, and the remnants of the first feeble German democracy, the Weimar Republic, which had been overthrown by Hitler.
The Soviet Occupation Zone did not follow into this union. Instead, its administrators pointed at the deep-running and in many aspects truly glorious tradition of the socialistic workers movements in Germany and claimed to wish to found a nation based on these tendencies, widely independently from the Soviet Unions lead. This endeavour held an immense attraction to a big amount of exiled intellectuals who saw themselves in the socialistic tradition, which led people as proficlic as the famous writer Berthold Brecht to immigrate into the slowly forming 'German Democratic Republic'. The people believing in this independent, peaceful, neutral socialistic state were betrayed.
In reality, Stalin had inserted a small group of totalitarian, stalinistic refugees, headed by a man named Walter Ulbricht, into the head of the forming domestic GDR adminstration. What followed can be summed up with a famous Ulbricht-quote: "It has to look democratic, but we must stay in total control."
The GDR became another stalinistic sattelite-state to the Soviet Union. When worker riots about intolerable workloads broke out in the early fifties, they were literally gunned down.
Any kind of dissent was monitored, controlled, and ultimately, silenced, by the quickly assembled 'Staatssicherheistsdiesnt', in short: Stasi, a domestic secret service that would in the end outmatch even its two 'idols', KGB and Gestapo, in its deadly precision.
The GDR became one of the most totalitarian states in human history.
I hope that this, as I now realize not really 'short', summary makes it obvious why it's difficult to speak of 'the Germans' in any context regarding the last sixty years: In that time, two 'nations' formed themselves. One that would, after a series of internal struggles with its past that lasted into the 70s, become renowed as one of the most stable western democracies on Earth, and one that was so restrictive and isolated a police state that it had to fortify its borders - not against an attack, but against its citizens trying to leave. Depending on which side of the divide you stood on, you have a completely different understanding of your history.
It's difficult to explain to 'outsiders' such as you or myself just how totalitarian the GDR really was. Let me thus give you a personal example:
My family moved to Saxony (former Eastern Germany) in the early 90s. My parents both work in the prison system, which had to be, let's call it 'rebuilt', in all of Eastern Germany. Coming there, we bought a house. The former owner never showed up, apparently, he had moved into the West, as many had, hoping for better start chances in the economically more stable part of united Germany. Neighbours made some strange allusions regarding the previous owner, but everything so nebulous that we finally simply decided he had been a little bit of a nutjob.
Until a carpenter we had hired to get our stairs in order opened a wooden wall panel - and found an assortment of cables leading from a big microphone there into a small chamber in the roof, whichs walls were literally isolated with cables from all parts of the house.
The previous owner of the house had been a secret agent of the Stasi, and not only had he spied on his neighbours (which had noticed that, but did not even dare to speak openly about it to the people who moved into the same house after the Stasi agent, mistrusting us newcomers <i>despite</i> the official and irreversible end of the GDR), but also <i>his own family</i>. The Stasi paid tens of thousands of people throughout the country to spy on their own families, in their own houses.
This kind of constant fear of denounciation, which was endured not only for twelve years, but 40 years, enough time for a whole generation to grow up in this kind of atmosphere, made the people suspicious of each other. You had to trust each other, simply to get everything you needed to live (the GDR was an economical wreck for the biggest part of its existence), but at the same time, everyone, <i>every</i> one around you might give the authorities a hint that would bring you into one of the Stasis prisons - of which I won't bore you with details; sufficient to say that my visit to the Stasi prison Berlin is only second to my visit in Buchenwald on my personal hitlist of devastating experiences. Can you imagine living in such a situation and not changing? If you wanted to survive in the GDR, you adopted. You did not voice your opinion openly, <i>never</i>. You hid your viewing of western TV channels even from your best friends. And you never, ever, talked about <i>them</i>, because <i>they</i> might take offense.
Now imagine this all ending. Imagine getting a few glimpses of what this system you had feared had done to ordinary people. Imagine realizing that it could just as well have hit <i>you</i>. And then imagine realizing that you 'covered' these people - looked the other way when strange figures opened your neighbours appartment, gave a short, hopefully not too helpful clue to a person you did not entirely trust, gossiped about a co-worker who was then later arrested. Imagine how you would feel if you realize you looked aside, for the whole of your life.
Most people in Eastern Germany were victims of the system that tyrannized them, but many feel a certain guilt nonetheless. This kind of feeling doesn't look lightly upon people 'sticking their nose where it doesn't belong'.
Something similiar happened in Western Germany. Throughout the 50s, WW2 was an absolute taboo. It was better now, and that was all that was to it. And besides, those were bad times. Whatever one might have done back then was ones own business.
This kind of thinking dominated the whole of the Federal Republics culture into the late 60s. Only the students revolts of 1968 and the accompanying emancipation of a young generation not involved with the Third Reich managed to break the taboo, and if Mons can say that "the Germans have (for the most part) been quite mature and contritious about WW2 and their genocides", that hopefully means they were successful.
It'll take some more time until Eastern Germany gets its 68, carried out by the people of my generation, which lived often enough not in the West, or in the East, but somewhere in-between, not caught in the positions towards the GDR its parents are still locked in.
--
I hope this attempt of an explanation of why it's still so difficult to talk about the Stasi era with former Eastern German citizens is understandeable. I had countless experiences regarding this - history teachers refusing to talk about the nation they grew up in, the resentment of people used to mistrust outsiders towards myself and my family - and thus it is, as you might have noticed, a topic quite important to me, so please excuse the rather excessive length.
It's just one of those funny etiquette things. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
I have to agree... you will always find people who react with hostility to critism about their government, their country's past and so on. Of course such reactions always make for a good story...
There are a few lines in the original text that kinda bug me:
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->
"When they read my book, people in the East are not proud of themselves. They'd rather not be reminded that other people were braver than they were. So there is a huge force to pretend that the Stasi regime was not as bad as it was."
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think this is a cliche, just like "The french don't talk about war because it reminds them of all the times they ran away". I know a couple of people from the old GDR (mostly relatives of my grandma) and they all have different oppinions about the times of the StaSi regime. Some still say they liked the old times, stating they had all they needed and felt quite secure. Others told me they felt oppressed and sometimes even feared for their lives. I think everyone from the old GDR has things he liked in the old system and things he didn't... just like people has in every country all the time. However I newer had the impression that one of them said "it was good" because they did not want to be reminded of being "slaves" to a totalitarian regime.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->
When she finished, there was more silence until a woman asked: "Who gave you the right to write about us?"
Funder retorted: "From what authority should I have sought permission?" She remains puzzled by the questioning of a writer's "right" to choose her subject.
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
There are usually two points of view: Some say a complete strager is the right person to write about the past because he is not affected by emotions and his personal past, so he can be most objective. Others say that only someone who's "been there, done that" can write an authentic piece about history, because a stranger would never be able to know how people felt during their time, what their inner motivations were and so on. Of course you can always use one of the two points to tell someone that he's either not objective or too distant.
I think this article puts to much weight on the word "right" in this context - basically it's "only" a way to say "You haven't been there. How can you think you really know what happened?", a reaction you can see quite often in such situations.
I've never liked terms like "the Germans", especially in connection with discussions about people think or react. There can be no "German reaction" to a book, neither can there be a "East Germans' reaction" to things, simply because we're always talking about a group of individuals with different thoughts, views and an individual past each.
I have not read the book, so this is only a guess, but the title "StaSiland" ("Land of the StaSi") makes me think the book could describe the GDR by only referring to what the StaSi did and how it affected the life of the people. I think noone can deny that the StaSi really DID affect people's life, but also I can understand people not liking their past (both as country and people) being meassured by the political system. I don't think US citizens would like a German like me to write a book titled "Napalmland" about the USA during 1964-75, telling the people all about how women and children were killed during the vietnam war, but not mentioning all the demonstrations "back home" in the US, all the young men fleeing to canada ecause their feared to be forced to go to Nam and so on.
But as I said before, I don't know the real content of the book, so that is only a guess!
Well, to summarize:
Someone writes a book about people. Some of the people the book is about don't like it. Such things happen all the time everywhere. No big deal and not worth a title like "silent fury...". Let people have their opinions, don't conclude that a whole country shares the opinions of some of it's citizens and you're fine. And in the end I actually think the majority of people here have never heared of that book and don't give a damn.
just my 2 (?-)cents
/Hyper
The socialist government was indeed a one-party-system not tolerating any political opposition and trying to control it's citizens. This applies to nearly every socialist state in the 20th century, unfortunately. But the "trademark" "one of the most totalitarian states in human history" is such an extremely offensive and exaggerating statement, that it makes many people who are actually former GDR citizens offended.
It was another system, contrary to the FRG and human crimes were comitted. But what is now happening is the general accusation of any GDR citizen who was somehow involved in political and social life of that state. Crimes against humanity were done, on both sides of the wall (do you remember mass imprisonments in the 70's in Western Germany, loss of jobs if you were too critical, general persecution of students living near RAF-members?).
I myself lived the most part of my life in the Soviet Union and I'm glad to be in a more democratic country now. I experienced how bad life was there, and when comparing the GDR to the Soviet Union, then the former was way much better off than the latter. Yet, listening to accusations from citizens of Western countries who have never experienced social and political life in a socialistic state is a nuasance most of the time. The ideas those people have are from the time of the cold war, from the time where both sides were trying to give the other side an extremely bad reputation, where lies and propaganda covered every news report about it's enemy. So in effect, it is often the case that western people hate the GDR much more than GDR citizens do themselves.
And this is also why hardly anyone from the east wants to talk about the past now. The West was victorius and it's ideas (opposed to socialist ideas) have to be adapted. There is a lot of accusation and offense and thus people feel extremely intimidated and just don't share their views.
There have been many informal StaSi agents spying on people on their work and friends. But what Germany is party doing today reminds of a witch-hunt against their former enemies. The Stasi, for example, cannot be compared to the SS which was responsible for Milliones of deaths. The SED-Government cannot be compared to horrible totalitarian states like Hitler's and Stalin's which were responsible for Milliones of deaths. During the time of the GDR, there have been about 50 political murders, which is not excusable, yet not comparable to other cases in recent history. (Just remember that there have been political deaths in Western Germany, in comparison)
Was it as terrible as the Third Reich, as the Soviet Union, or as the Peoples Republic during the Cultural Revolution? Not by any stretch of imagination. If I made that impression, I've got to apologize.
But you have to admit that the GDR maintained the stalinistic doctrines of total stately involvement throughout the full span of its existence, which is a feat in which it is only rivaled by North Korea. Again, no statement regarding the states cruelty, but regarding its invasion of the citizens immediate life.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->But what is now happening is the general accusation of any GDR citizen who was somehow involved in political and social life of that state.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is unfortunately quite true, although I hoped that touching the duality of the SED (the German socialist party) in the summary would suffice to note that I do not share this sentiment - the later part of my post dealt exclusively with the Stasi and its reception of the GDRs general populace.
There is no doubt that a large amount of SED members had joined the party not so much out of sympathy towards its regieme, but simply as membership in the party was a pre-requirement for any kind of influence, be that on the highest, or on the local level where ideology was basically immaterial in any case. It is of course also true that a lot of people joining the SED were true ideologues, believing in the benefits of socialism and having genuinely benevolent intentions.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Crimes against humanity were done, on both sides of the wall (do you remember mass imprisonments in the 70's in Western Germany, loss of jobs if you were too critical, general persecution of students living near RAF-members?).<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well, me being born in '84, I'll have problems remembering the RAF-scare, but I read the Bader-Meinhoff Komplex and made note of the mistakes committed during the RAFs prosecution and the similiarities between the case and the contemporary 'War on Terrorism' in multiple threads you also participated in, so please don't label me as revesionistic pro-FRG goon just yet <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->And this is also why hardly anyone from the east wants to talk about the past now. The West was victorius and it's ideas (opposed to socialist ideas) have to be adapted. There is a lot of accusation and offense and thus people feel extremely intimidated and just don't share their views.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well, I have to say that I made contrary experiences myself (once our family found friends, it happened quite often that they shared their - often not conforming - opinions with us), and that the actively opposing attitudes that sparked the article contradict your interpretation, as well.
This is not to say that I do not agree that many will have a notion close to the one you described - as Hyper reminded us, it's impossible to assume uniformity when describing a nations populace - I'm just doubting that it is the predominant one.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->But what Germany is party doing today reminds of a witch-hunt against their former enemies. The Stasi, for example, cannot be compared to the SS which was responsible for Milliones of deaths.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It truly can't. The SS was a paramiltaristic organization, the Stasi was a secret service, and, as often noted, next to the Mossad one of the 'best' that ever existed. The proper Third Reich equivalent to the Stasi would be the pre-war Gestapo, which was in many aspects by far 'clumsier' than its GDR-counterpart: The Gestapos interrogation methods relied for example mostly on physical force, while the Stasi pioneered many forms os psychological interrogation.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->During the time of the GDR, there have been about 50 political murders, which is not excusable, yet not comparable to other cases in recent history.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm highly interested in how you arrive at that number. Is a suicide in a Stasi prison after year-long solitary confinement to be counted to it? Is an accidental death in one of the 'water chambers' introduced by the KGB and used in the first years of the GDR as interrogation tool by the Stasi a murder? There are well-documented cases of the Stasi exposing dissenters to severe X-rays for prolonged amounts of time. Does the number rise with the victims eventual cancer deaths?
Again, I do not question that the Third Reich was a by far crueler regieme than the GDRs Politb?ro, but the Stasis subtler strategies make a 'bodycount' highly difficult.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->(Just remember that there have been political deaths in Western Germany, in comparison)<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm a little bewildered. Whom do you have in mind? Bader?
[edit]Over-read this on the first go:
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Especially when considering the fact that you didn't live in the GDR yourself and just conclude about life there via Western Media.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I didn't live in the GDR, but I spent a rough third of my life - which included the biggest part of my politically aware life - in Saxony. In so far, I'd consider it unfair to simply label me 'Wessi' and then get it over with; hell, when in elementary school, I read schoolbooks still printed in the GDR.[/edit]
Hyper, my apologies for not responding to your points, but it's getting late and I'm developing a headache. Tomorrow <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
The number of political deaths was just some pseudo-officila number about deaths at the wall and during demonstrations, which I compared to persecution of students who were considered too radical, and deathgs like that of Ben Ohnsorg and Bader, which you pointed out yourself (and the sudden 'suicides' of all imprisoned RAF-members which haven't been clarified until now. I remember Schmidt's speech "I'm sorry, like every social democrat, for the death of any person. But we must not forget that those were TERRORISTS!").
But that number I pointed out was rather artificial, so I take it back, especially because the counting of deaths is quite irrelevant and macaber. (I hope that word exists in english)
When I first read it, I thought that Germany was having problems with the Royal Air Force, but that really didn't make sense.
When I first read it, I thought that Germany was having problems with the Royal Air Force, but that really didn't make sense. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Glad you cleared that for me, Finch, I was wondering about that too. I vaguely remember some of that RAF stuff (disco bombings, right?) from my childhood, but I'm unclear on the controversy over them nowadays.
I just added <a href='http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1862075808/qid=1087069448/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-0323220-4764907?v=glance&s=books' target='_blank'>Stasiland</a> to my Amazon wishlist. Can anyone recommend any other excellent reading on this subject matter?
As a slight commentary on the discussion, I for one think the argument of 'if you didn't live through an experience, you are not qualified to speak on it' is pretty far off. No one can say they lived through the American Revolution, the WW1 trenches at the Somme, the NASA landings on the moon, or life on a South Carolina slave plantation; however, plenty of people have written excellent books about all of the above. Sometimes, being too close to a situation can taint or distort your views of it just as much as being too far...
<a href='http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1891620126/ref=pd_sim_books_4/104-6812101-8516741?v=glance&s=books' target='_blank'>Here</a>
Well, I didn't know that the RAf wasn't that famous abroad, but just as most of the American forum users like to use their own buzzwords and abreviations, I didn't remember to explain this one as well, sorry. The RAF emerged from the '68s student revolts, which was a terrorist group in West Germany that was responsible for several political murders and some kindnapping. There was a lot of national hysteria about them during the 70s and 80's, resulting in a lot of freedom cuts of the citizens of the FRG. The Disco bombing you mean is probably LaBelle in the late 80's in which 2 US soldiers were killed. This was not done by the RAf though, they were more or less inactive already by that time.
I didn't mean to say that nobody is qualified to speak about East Germany if they haven't lived there. My point was rather that people from the "ideological enemy" tend to have a wrong, or at least an extremely different view on processes on the other side, because the relation is filled with hatred and prejudice. Of course this doesn't apply to everybody, but since the Stasi only affected the people within the GDR, I find claims from GDR citizens more credible.
Everything I've ever seen, read, or been taught about the Cold War is that the main source of tension has been the people on one side of an ideology thinking that the other side wanted nothing less than to blow off the face of the Earth everyone bearing the likeness of their opposers.
I seem to remember from my history courses that one of the reasons the Cuban missle crisis did not trigger nuclear holocaust, was because several aides on both sides of the curtain who had spent time with those on the other side revealed to everyone rattling the saber that their opponents were, in fact, human, rational, and fallable.
"Knowing your enemy," I would think, is as important as Sun Tzu made it out to be.
<a href='http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1891620126/ref=pd_sim_books_4/104-6812101-8516741?v=glance&s=books' target='_blank'>Here</a>
Well, I didn't know that the RAf wasn't that famous abroad, but just as most of the American forum users like to use their own buzzwords and abreviations, I didn't remember to explain this one as well, sorry. The RAF emerged from the '68s student revolts, which was a terrorist group in West Germany that was responsible for several political murders and some kindnapping. There was a lot of national hysteria about them during the 70s and 80's, resulting in a lot of freedom cuts of the citizens of the FRG. The Disco bombing you mean is probably LaBelle in the late 80's in which 2 US soldiers were killed. This was not done by the RAf though, they were more or less inactive already by that time.
I didn't mean to say that nobody is qualified to speak about East Germany if they haven't lived there. My point was rather that people from the "ideological enemy" tend to have a wrong, or at least an extremely different view on processes on the other side, because the relation is filled with hatred and prejudice. Of course this doesn't apply to everybody, but since the Stasi only affected the people within the GDR, I find claims from GDR citizens more credible. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Ahhh good stuff there. I added that book to my wishlist as well!
The RAF *was* pretty well-known in the US, but at that time I was between 0 and 10 years old and consequently in that gray area we often go through where we know lots about things that happened before and after our brains really developed, and very little during. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
I understand your point better about qualifications to speak on the subject now, thanks for clarifying.
While we're on the subject, what has been done about the people who sold each other out, ran the Stasi, etc? Is everyone in jail? Sued into the poorhouse? Exiled to South America in shame? All of the above? I don't recall there being any Nuremburg-type trials in the 90's, but I was in college and probably hung over.