Knowledge, Secrecy, and Revelation

The socially constructed nature of knowledge also means that it is unevenly distributed in any given society and subject to relations of power. That is, knowledge goes hand-in-hand with secrecy: “the distribution of knowledge creates categories of the knowledgeable and the ignorant.” 7Crick, “Anthropology of Knowledge,” 304. It is here that the literature on secrecy can help us unpack how knowledge about the Stasi could be constructed and shared—or revealed—in a soc­iety such as the GDR. Different categories of experience created different forms of (partial) knowledge: informants, those who the Stasi attempted (and failed) to recruit, and those who were the subjects of observation were initiated into the secrets of the Stasi to different extents and with diff­erent results. Notably, individuals could occupy more than one of those positions, as the Stasi frequently observed its informants and attempted to recruit its victims.

Of particular interest in the context of the GDR literary sphere is the relationship between secrecy and revelation. The writer, as the supposed purveyor of Öffentlichkeit (publicness) in the GDR,8Herminghouse, “Literature as ‘Ersatzöffentlichkeit’?” was viewed with deep suspicion and fear on the part of the state who therefore sought to control them through censorship and through intense infiltration and observation by the Stasi. In both processes, there was a complex interweaving of revealing/concealing. Literature by its nature works with metaphor, allusion, allegory and poetic language which both reveals “truths” and conceals them. The censors sought to unveil coded “truths” in order to re-conceal them; that is, have them removed from the text before it was made available for public consumption.

Similarly, through their mechanisms of control, the Stasi attempted to uncover the “secrets” of the literary intellectuals who they assumed to be harbouring oppositional intent, and at the same time ensure that these secrets did not enter public knowledge. The Stasi’s tactics—for example, the recruitment of literary informants and “open” observation—also meant that in their efforts to reveal secrets, the Stasi were required to reveal some of their own. In this way, the literary sphere represents a potentially very fruitful case study for an exploration of Michael Taussig’s concept of the “public secret” as an “unstable and uncapturable blending … of concealment and revelation.”9Taussig, Defacement, 50. Gallinat also describes the Stasi as a kind of “public secret.” See Gallinat, “Power and Vulnerability.” The existence of the Stasi, their infiltration of the private and public spheres, the use of informants, phone tapping, and similar measures was known, but not in full and not openly. This feature of the Stasi as a known-unknown has also been understood as a crucial element in the power that the agency held over the GDR pop­ulation. Lutz Rathenow—an oppositional writer who later headed up the regional office of the Stasi Records Office in Saxony—described the Stasi as “zombie,” against which the only remedy was a radical opening of the files. Such a flood of knowledge would, Rathenow argued, destroy the power of an organisation sustained by its own legend.10Rathenow, “Akteneinsicht als Therapie.”

Indeed, the texts written by literary authors in the immediate post-Wende period, shortly preceding or following the opening of the Stasi files, are shot through with discourses of knowing and not knowing. In the early 1990s, as the Stasi files revealed the extent of the involvement of the secret police in the GDR literary sphere (and indeed elsewhere), much of the discourse appeared to centre on what was known by those accused of functioning as informants and, at the same time, the extent to which they concealed the secret of their coll­aboration. Perhaps the most prominent example is the case of Christa Wolf. Wolf defended her decision not to reveal her brief spell as informant between 1959 and 1961 with the explanation that she did not know, because she had forgotten or had not understood the nature of her encounters with officials in that period. The language she uses with reference to the files is the language of revelation: the files “aus dem ich erfuhr” (from which I discovered), “das traf mich völlig unvorbereitet” (I was completely unprepared for that). At the same time, she asserts that her behaviour was not in fact secret—“keineswegs geheim” (not at all secret)—or that it was part of a public secret: she meets with a “Genosse R. … der hauptamtlicher Mitarbeiter der Stasi und als “Betreuer” für den Mitteldeutschen Verlag eingesetzt war, was jeder wußte” (Comrade R … a regular employee of the Stasi and positioned within the Mitteldeutscher Verlag as “super­visor,” which everyone knew).11Wolf, “Eine Auskunft.” Hermann Kant—erstwhile informant and head of the Writers’ Union—pleads a similar case, despite the fact that the Stasi files (made public by the Spiegel) showed that he had acted as an IM over more than two decades. He describes himself as “so geheim wie der Marx-Engels-Platz” (about as secret as Marx-Engels Square), stating “ich war, was ich war, und es war bekannt” (I was, what I was, and it was known).12Kant, “‘Rede’ in Marburg.” Kant works with a complex interweaving of concealment and revelation: revealing what was already known (the “public secret” of his semi-official conversations with the Stasi as head of the Union) and yet concealing his “unofficial” contacts with the MfS.

Such approaches might be (and have been) dismissed as an effort by these authors to deflect the accusations of complicity being made against them. However, these responses can hint towards the position of the literary IMs between knowing and not knowing. The debate around IMs in the literary sphere in the early 1990s sometimes appeared to be a debate about termin­ology: the IMs did not necessarily (or even usually) know that they were named as such in the files, that the person they were talking to was their hand­ler, that they were part of an extensive network, or what would happen to the information that they shared.13See Walther, Sicherungsbereich Literatur, 480; Jones, Complicity, ­Censorship and Criticism, 44–45. They were given the sense of being initiated into a secret, but also excluded from full knowledge of that secret. Graham Jones points out that “secrets produce value through both the exclusion of outsiders and the inclusion of insiders.”14Jones, “Secrecy,” 54. In their retrospective accounts, the literary IMs seem to have occupied a position between those two poles. For some it was the incorporation into the “secret society” of the Stasi that held appeal (the fantasy of being an undercover agent in the Cold War); however, the Stasi handlers generally concealed the wider context for their activity—or revealed it piecemeal and strategically. Here we see in practice Simmel’s observation that the sociological meaning of secrecy can be both external (relationship between those who have the secret and those who do not) and internal (the relationship between those who share the secret). In the latter case, “that relation of exc­lusion toward the uninitiated exists here also with its special gradations”:15Simmel, “The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies,” 470. the IMs were both inside and outside.

The moment of recruitment of an IM was a dangerous one for the Stasi in terms of the risk of revelation of knowledge about the MfS.16Something that the Stasi were aware of. See Walther, Sicherungsbereich ­Literatur, 477. Lutz Rathenow claims “jeder Oppositionelle in der DDR wurde einmal angeworben” (every oppositional actor was courted by the Stasi at some point).17Rathenow, “Akteneinsicht als Therapie,” 93. As we will see, this included several of the case studies in this book (Kolbe, Moog, Schlesinger, Wagner). After the Wende, writers often presented this experience as evidence that being recruited was not inevitable and could be resisted, or (more generously) recognition that it was easy to be sucked into the system of informing through fear. Nonetheless, reading these accounts through the lens of secrecy can provide hints that knowledge about the Stasi was both gained and deployed in these moments of contact.

In most cases, the officers are described as revealing themselves: that is, they presented themselves as who they were. However, they attempted to conceal the real intent behind their visit—writers, especially critical writers, were viewed as particularly “sensitive” and were not therefore to be confronted directly with a request to collaborate.18Walther, Sicherungsbereich Literatur, 474–75 for a discussion of the “Besonderheiten ‘literarischer’ IM” (peculiarities of literary informants). A common Legende (or cover story) used by the MfS was that of “protection.” For example, as we will see in chapter 1, the officer attempting to recruit Wagner claimed that they intended to protect the critical writer against attempts by Western forces to use him in a “Provokation” (provocation) during his planned visit to West Berlin.19Wagner, “Stasi-Gift,” 8. We see something similar in the attempted recruitment of, for example, Uwe Kolbe (see Kolbe, Die Situation, 9) and Günter de Bruyn (de Bruyn, Vierzig Jahre, 190–202.) What is interesting in our context is that these accounts suggest that even at the time, the deception was at least in part recognised. Wagner throws the Stasi officers out and “trotz des Schweigegebots” (despite being sworn to secrecy) speaks with friends, at which point it occurs to him that this was an attempted recruitment.20Wagner, “Stasi-Gift,” 8. Wagner thereby hints that it was knowledge dispersed within his networks that helped him to defend himself against the Stasi’s efforts and that it is the relationship of trust with his friends that allows him to gain that knowledge—an aspect that will be explored in more detail in chapter 2. It is also interesting to note that Wagner—in his account—did not conceal his plan to speak about their visit from the Stasi officers. Openness and revelation are used here as a weapon against the power of the secret: a tactic that we will see throughout the course of this book and which we focus on in detail in chapter 3.

Rathenow recalls that the Stasi deliberately circulated false information about who was an informant within oppositional groups and indicates that the networks in which he was involved were aware of these tactics at the time. Here again we see a complex interplay between revelation (the Stasi “reveal” the “public secret” that there are informants) and concealment (they lie about the identity of those informants, that is, the “true secret”).21We are aware that Taussig disputes that true secrecy is possible; however, this is a useful term to understand different levels of secrecy at play. This environment of half information, (mis)information, gossip and rumour might have been protective as it resulted in caution based on fragmented knowledge; however, it also produced, in Rathenow’s words “Neurotiker” (neurotics).22Rathenow, “Akteneinsicht als Therapie,” 94. As we will see in chapter 1, it also fostered the use of (unreliable) heuristic knowledge or “rules of thumb” to identify informants. Such knowledge fomented distrust and was often wrong; however, it also made possible the formation of trust in a “low-trust” society, trust that, as chapter 2 shows, was crucial for the diss­emination of knowledge.

The infiltration of the literary sphere by IMs was thus a known unknown—the subject of rumour, gossip, and allusion. It is also clear from post-Wende accounts that this information was passed on. Ernst-Pieter Wieckenberg, an erstwhile West German publisher who dealt frequently with GDR authors, writes in an article entitled “Wir wußten sehr viel…” (We Knew a Great Deal…): “wer als Geschäftspartner von DDR-Firmen nicht wußte, daß es in jeder von ihnen ein paar Stasi-Vertreter gab, der hatte entweder kein Gehör für die mehr oder weniger versteckten Warnungen einiger Kollegen in der DDR, oder er wollte, aus welchen Gründen auch immer, die Wirklichkeit nicht wahrnehmen” (any business partner of a GDR company who did not know that in every firm there were a few Stasi representatives either could not hear the more or less hidden warnings of some colleagues in the GDR, or he did not want—for whatever reason—to recognise reality).23Wieckenberg, “Wir wußten sehr viel…,” 98.

The targets of the Stasi’s observations also recount the experience of “open observation” in which the Stasi revealed its methods in order (presumably) to promote fear: an interweaving of revelation (“we are watching you”) with concealment (“you don’t know why”). Stefan Heym describes in his pre-Wende autobiography (published in the West in 1988) the methods of “open observation”: parking directly in front of the target’s house, following him at a conspicuously short distance. Heym’s reaction—in this account—was to bring those observing him coffee.24Heym, Nachruf, 806. This is a striking example of agency. Such a response would indeed be an effective antidote to the power of the secret: by acknowledging their presence, Heym effectively speaks out loud the public secret that dissidents are the targets of secret police intimidation.

These responses stand in contrast to the intentions of the Stasi to intimidate and to the response of others who were subject to open observation. Notably, Christa Wolf’s Was bleibt (first published in 1990 but written in 1979) recounts the fear experienced by a critical writer of Wolf’s generation who must live with the Stasi stationed outside her house and following her every move. As described above, Wolf’s text caused controversy on its publication, in part because of its delayed appearance. In effect, Wolf was criticised for concealing the public secret of Stasi observation, suggesting that (for some at least) it was viewed as her role to reveal it. Indeed, the motif of the secret police is present in several works by established GDR authors, including texts by Heym and Wolf. However, as we will discuss in detail in chapter 4, here too we see a complex interplay between revealing and concealing. The secret police is revealed in the text, but often concealed through the use of literary devices such as myth (e.g., Wolf’s Kassandra (Cassandra), 1983) or resetting in a different time (Heym’s Der König David Bericht (The King David Report), 1972). Texts that were more explicit in their representation could not be published in the GDR (e.g., Heym’s Collin, 1979 and Ahasver (published in English translation under the title The Wandering Jew, 1981), but were published in West Germany, weaving in another level of revelation and concealment as the works were smuggled back and consumed in the East.

Writing shortly after the Wende, Rathenow (1990) acknowledges that this was the power of the writer and the reason that they were feared by the SED and Stasi: “sie [the Stasi officers] hatten immer Angst … vor jeder versuchten Öffentlichmachung der Machtmechanismen” (they (the Stasi officers) were always afraid … of any attempt to reveal the mechanisms of power).25Rathenow, “Akteneinsicht als Therapie.” Indeed, the particular function of literature as Öffentlichkeit means that the literary sphere is a unique site for the study of the public secret. Literary authors produced and circulated knowledge about the Stasi and methods of resistance within their networks; that is, using the tools of gossip, rumour and veiled language that we may find is common to the other groups in the GDR. However, their role as critical intellectuals also entailed “speaking truth to power,” that is, speaking out loud the public secret of the Stasi in their literature. The Stasi, along with those involved in the censorship mechanisms in the GDR, anticipated this and attempted to prevent it. That Öffentlichkeit was expected of literary authors in their relationship to power—at least on the part of observers in the West—is seen in the reception histories of critical texts and, perhaps most tellingly, in the fierce criticism of GDR authors after the collapse of the GDR. Taussig argues that being a “purveyor of public secrecy”—in this context, keeping to yourself your knowledge of the authoritarian regime and the activities of its secret police—implicates you in the political system in the same way that corruption does.26Taussig, Defacement, 71. This is akin to the accusation levied against critical intellectuals in the immediate post-Wende period that they sustained the dictatorial regime by being not quite open enough.