Introducing the Case Studies

The singer-songwriter and poet Bettina Wegner (b. 1947) was a prom­inent critic of the party and state in the GDR cultural scene, both independ­ently in her own artistic work and alongside the writer Klaus Schlesinger (1937–2001), to whom she was married from 1970 to 1982. Before her marr­iage to Schlesinger, Wegner had a brief relationship with the regime-critical poet, Thomas Brasch. Wegner’s clashes with the state and experiences with the MfS began in earnest when she was arrested at the age of 20 and subjected to Stasi interrogation for distributing pamphlets that criticised Soviet intervention and the GDR’s involvement in suppressing the Prague Spring in 1968 (Brasch had also been arrested the previous day for the same activity). As a result, she lost her place at acting school and was convicted of “staatsfeindliche Hetze” (agitation hostile to the state) receiving a suspended prison sentence of one year and seven months.1Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung and Robert-Havemann-Gesellschaft, “Bettina Wegner.” In the mid-1970s, Wegner and Schlesinger organised two series of musical and literary performances, “Eintopp” (or “Eintopf,” Stewpot) in the Berliner Haus der Jungen Talente (House of Young Talent) and “Kramladen” (Junk Shop) in Berlin Weissensee, both of which were monitored by the Stasi and eventually banned. The Stasi pursued both Wegner and Schlesinger as “feindlich-negative Personen” (hostile-negative individuals), often treating them differently, and actively intervening in their marriage with tactics of “Zersetzung.”2See “Bettina Wegner,” in Bundesstiftungaufarbeitung, Wer war wer in der DDR? and Wegner’s biography on her personal website <http://www.bettinawegner.de/vita.html> (accessed August 12, 2024). See also Köhler, Klaus Schlesinger. Wegner’s public concerts were increasingly curtailed in the aftermath of the Biermann affair and her own involvement in those subsequent protests, forcing her to rely on covert advertising strategies and word of mouth to circumvent the state’s restrictions. After her breakthrough in West Germany in 1978, she was able to travel across the inner-German border to perform. While Schlesinger left the GDR for West Berlin in 1980, Wegner remained in East Berlin until 1983, reluctantly opting to leave when the state began proceedings against her for alleged customs and currency offences related to her earnings in the West. Wegner has given numerous public interviews about her life and experiences as an artist in the GDR, and was the focus of a recent documentary film that premiered at the Berlinale film festival in 2022.3Bettina, dir. Pehnert.

Klaus Schlesinger, referred to by his biographer as “der sanfte Rebell,”4Köhler, Klaus Schlesinger, book blurb. began his writing career at the Neue Berliner Illustrierte and published his first novel Michael with the East German publishing house Hinstorff in 1971 and his first collection of short stories Alte Filme (Old Films) in 1975.5Schlesinger, Michael and Alte Filme. Michael also appeared as a licensed edition in 1972 with the Swiss publisher Benziger under the title Capellos Trommel and Alte Filme as a licensed edition with the West German S. Fischer Verlag in 1976. He took a distance course at the Johannes R. Becher literary institute in 1972, before joining the official Writers’ Union in 1973. He was a prolific writer of prose fiction, essays, radio plays and screenplays.6For a full list of Schlesinger’s works see “Gesamtbibliografie zu Klaus Schlesinger (1937–2001),” <http://www.klaus-schlesinger.de/files/gesamtbibliografie_schlesinger.pdf> (accessed May 31, 2025). Following the publication of his collection of stories Berliner Traum (Berlin Dream) in 1978—“his then most controversial work,” according to Edith Toegel—Schlesinger described himself as a socially critical writer who wanted to be integrated into the system he critiqued.7Toegel, “Terrible Alternatives,” 17–18. The anthology of Berliner Geschichten (Berlin Stories), which Schlesinger, Ulrich Plenzdorf, and Martin Stade planned to publish independently without interf­erence from official publishing houses, was the subject of an MfS “Operativer Schwerpunkt Selbstverlag” (Operational Focus Self-Publishing) from 1975 to 1976. Its publication was ultimately abandoned until 1995, after the opening of the files revealed the Stasi’s surveillance of the project.8Plenzdorf, Schlesinger, and Stade, Berliner Geschichten. In 1976, Schlesinger co-organised and signed the declaration of protest against the expatriation of Wolf Biermann and was one of nine prominent writers excluded from the official Writers’ Union of the GDR in 1979 (Wegner also resigned her mem­bership), after they wrote a letter to Erich Honecker in protest against legal meas­ures taken against Stefan Heym under the so-called “Devisengesetz” (Foreign Exchange Law) following the publication of his (Heym’s) novel Collin in West Germany.9Goldstein, Writing in Red, 117–22. See also “Klaus Schlesinger,” in Bundesstiftung Aufarbeitung, Wer war wer in der DDR?. After he left the GDR in 1980, Schlesinger was involved in the West Berlin squatter scene, and continued to publish in both West and East. In the early post-Wende years, rumours circulated that Schlesinger had been an informant for the Stasi, which were ultimately disproved with the opening of the files.10Argelès, “‘Das waren wir nicht!’”. His post-Wende writings—notably his 1998 essay collection Von den Schwierigkeiten, ein Westler zu werden (On the Difficulties of Becoming a Westerner)—reflect extensively on the impact of Stasi surveillance and the diffic­ulties of dealing with East German identities and biographies after the coll­apse of the GDR.11Schlesinger, Von der Schwierigkeit, Westler zu werden. His essay “Macht, Literatur, Staatssicherheit” also previously appeared in Feinderklärung: Literatur und Staatssicherheit, edited by Heinz-Ludwig Arnold (29–35). See also his autobiographical work, Fliegender Wechsel (Flying Change), as well as his works of fiction Die Sache mit Randow (The Thing with Randow), Trug (Deception), and his posthumous fragment Die Seele der Männer (The Soul of Men), which was republished alongside his other short stories in 2011.

Having trained first as a bricklayer and then as a teacher, the prose writer Bernd Wagner (b. 1948) published his first collection of short stories with the Aufbau publishing house in 1976, the same year that he also signed a protest against Biermann’s expulsion from the GDR. With the support and mentorship of the poet Sarah Kirsch, Wagner became a member of the off­icial East German Writers’ Union. Despite this official recognition, he was also an outspoken critic of the regime. After the Stasi attempted to recruit him as an informant in 1983, Wagner wrote a letter of complaint to Hermann Kant, president of the Writers’ Union, and in 1985 he addressed another letter directly to Erich Mielke when he was denied permission to travel to the West (see also chapter 3). He was observed and then picked up and interrogated by the Stasi in 1984 for his involvement in planned protests against the detonation of the Prenzlauer Berg gasometer.12See Wagner and Wüllenkemper, “Etwas auf die Beine stellen.” See also Wagner’s biography on his personal website: <http://www.berndmaxwagner.de/biografie.html> (accessed August 13, 2024). From 1983 until he left the GDR in 1985, Wagner co-edited the underground publication Mikado together with Uwe Kolbe and Lothar Trolle.13Kolbe, Trolle, and Wagner, Mikado oder Der Kaiser ist nackt. Wagner has written numerous works of fiction and non-fiction, many of which deal directly or indirectly with the Stasi. These include his pre-Wende collections Reise im Kopf (Journey in the Head, published in the GDR),14Wagner, Reise im Kopf. Ich will nicht nach Österreich (I Don’t Want to go to Austria), and Der Griff ins Leere (Grasping at Thin Air, published in West Germany),15Wagner, Ich will nicht nach Österreich; Wagner, Der Griff ins Leere. as well as his post-Wende collection Die Wut im Koffer (Anger in the Suitcase—first published in 1991 and then reissued and extended in 1993 after Wagner had read his Stasi file—and his novels Paradies (Paradise) and Die Sintflut in Sachsen (The Deluge in Saxony).16Wagner, Paradies; Die Sintflut in Sachsen. Most recently, he published a creative memoir and chronology of his life from 1974 to 1989, Verlassene Werke (Abandoned Works), which includes notes and previously unpublished fragments.17Wagner, Verlassene Werke.

Mikado was preceded by an earlier initiative of the poet Uwe Kolbe (b. 1957), who began collating and circulating the first samizdat (unofficial, self-published) publication Der Kaiser ist nackt (The Emperor’s New Clothes) in 1981. Kolbe came to fame as a young writer, under the tutelage of Franz Fühmann, publishing his first poems in Sinn und Form in 1976.18“Uwe Kolbe,” in Bundesstiftung Aufarbeitung, Wer war wer in der DDR?; Deloglu, “Dann verlieren sich die Vorschriften des Widerstandes.” Kolbe is perhaps best known for his debut volume Hineingeboren (Born into This), published by Aufbau in 1980; his second poetry collection, Abschiede und andere Liebesgedichte (Goodbyes and other Love Poems), appeared the following year.19Kolbe, Hineingeboren; Kolbe, Abschiede. From 1982, his collections were also published by Suhrkamp in West Germany. Despite early recognition and success, Kolbe voiced criticism of the GDR and its cultural policies in open letters and speeches. His poem “Kern meines Romans” (Heart of My Novel)—published in an anthology of debutant writers in 1981—contained a hidden poem composed of all capitalised letters in the main text, which, once decoded, was clearly derisive of the state and party (see chapter 4).20Kolbe, “Kern meines Romans.” At Fühmann’s instigation, Kolbe collaborated with Anderson on the ill-fated “Anthologie junger Autoren,” (Anthology of Young Authors) initially planned for publication by the Akademie der Künste (Academy of Arts) and blocked by SED officials in late 1981 (later published by Anderson and Elke Erb in the West).21Anderson and Erb, Berührung ist nur eine Randerscheinung. On the ­Stasi’s intervention with the volume, see Michael, “Eine verschollene Anthologie”; Costabile-Heming, “Surveillance and the GDR’s Cultural Sphere.” Having faced a de facto publication ban from 1982 to 1985, Kolbe was eventually able to publish a third volume of poetry with Aufbau22Kolbe, Bornholm II. and granted a continuous visa to travel to West Germany in 1986, before moving to Hamburg in 1988. Although he primarily publishes poetry, Kolbe has written several essays on his encounters with the Stasi—including his attempted recruitment aged 17 and his father’s role as an MfS officer23Kolbe, Die Situation (The Situation); Kolbe, Renegatentermine (Renegade Dates); Kolbe, Vinetas Archive; Kolbe, “Die Sache mit V.”—and published a semi-autobiographical novel, Die Lüge (The Lie), in 2014.24Kolbe, Die Lüge.

Before he left the GDR, Kolbe was a regular attendee at the unoff­icial literary salons, which the singer-songwriter and translator Ekkehard Maaß (b. 1951) hosted in his apartment in the famed Prenzlauer Berg district from 1978. With the support of established but critical writers such as Volker Braun, Elke Erb, Franz Fühmann, Heiner Müller, and Christa and Gerhard Wolf, these salons became a focal point in the develop­ment of the non-conformist literary and artistic “scene” in East Berlin. Artists from the Soviet republics and Eastern Bloc, as well as some intellect­uals from the West, also attended these gatherings.25See Böthig, “Vorbemerkung,” in Sprachzeiten. Maaß was a close friend of Wolf Biermann and lost his place at the Humboldt university for collecting signatures in protest against Biermann’s expulsion, an undertaking which also led to the opening of Stasi operative measures against him and a ban on his own public performances (he was known above all for performing the songs of the Georgian-Armenian musician Bulat Okudzhava). Maaß has written and given numerous public interviews about his experiences in the GDR and the Stasi’s observation and infiltration of his salons, not least in the context of his fraught relationship with Sascha Anderson.26For example, Maaß, “Vom Pfarrhaus in Schönburg zur Schönhauser Allee”; Maaß, “Und das ist geschehn”; Anderson, dir. Hendel. Peter Böthig’s recent documentation, to which Maaß contributed personal and archive material, offers a detailed chronology of the readings and overview of attendees, and includes extensive reproductions of documents from the Stasi files.27Böthig, Sprachzeiten, esp. 25–241.

Amongst the many writers who participated in Maaß’s literary salons was the prose writer Christa Moog (b. 1952). Like Kolbe, Moog had both refused Stasi recruitment as a teenager and later became a protégé of Franz Fühmann. Moog was one of the young authors whose work was intended for inclusion in the aforementioned anthology at the Akademie der Künste; she was also signatory to a letter addressed to Minister for Culture, Hans Joachim Hoffmann, protesting against the prohibition of its publication in the GDR.28Opening report of Operativer Vorgang ‘Dichter,’” February 9, 1982. Moog wrote numerous short stories and was well known in the literary scene while she was still in East Germany, but was only able to publish in earnest after she left for the West in 1984 (having waited several years for permission to leave the GDR in order to marry a British citizen). In 1985, her volume Die Fans von Union (The Union Fans) was published by Claassen, and included a story entitled “Die Fete” (The Party) about a group of friends who suspect a newcomer of spying for the Stasi, which had attracted the attention of the MfS before Moog left the GDR (see chapter 2).29Moog, Die Fans von Union. The following year, her short story “Es ist 15 Uhr” (It is 3 p.m.), a literary treatment of the Stasi’s attempt to recruit a young teenager, appeared in an anthology of East-West love stories.30Moog, “Es ist 15 Uhr.” See also Kabić, Ein Königreich für ein Kind, 235–39. Her semi-autobiographical novel, Aus tausend grünen Spiegeln (From a Thousand Green Mirrors), was published first by Claassen in 1988 and then reissued by Rowohlt in 1990/91.31Moog, Aus tausend grünen Spiegeln; Mundt, “Katherine Mansfield Revisited”; Lewis, “‘Foiling the Censor.’”

The experimental artist and writer Gabriele Stötzer (b. 1953) was a leading figure in the underground scenes in Erfurt and Berlin in the 1980s.32Different variations of her name appear in contemporary documents and texts. She was known by her married name Kachold until her divorce in 1979, then used the double-barrelled name Stötzer-Kachold, but returned to using her maiden name Stötzer after the Wende. She began writing and creating visual art after her imprisonment for in 1977—first in Stasi remand prison and then in the women’s prison at Hoheneck—after she was convicted of “Staatsverleumdung” (defamation of the state) for collecting signatures in protest against the expulsion of Wolf Biermann.33Geipel, Zensiert, verschwiegen, vergessen, 208–18. As a student, Stötzer had contact with Jürgen Fuchs and the literary scene in Jena. She had already clashed with the East German authorities, losing her place at the Pädagogische Hochschule in Erfurt a few months before the Biermann affair, having written a letter to Margot Honecker that was signed by 83 other students, opposing the exmatriculation of a fellow student.34Stötzer, Der lange Arm der Stasi, 166–67. After her release from prison, Stötzer wrote about her experiences in a piece entitled “Dabei sein und nicht schweigen” (Being Present and Not Silent), which she circulated amongst acquaintances, including Christa Wolf, who later depicted this encounter in her post-Wende novella Was bleibt and autobiographical text Ein Tag im Jahr (One Day a Year, 2003).35Horakova, “Learning from the Underground”; Wolf, Ein Tag im Jahr, 246. The alternative circles she moved in were subjected to particularly intense surveillance and investigation by the Stasi and other state authorities; in 1981, the Galerie im Flur, a private gall­ery and artistic meeting place, which Stötzer had been running for a year, was “liquidated,” and in subsequent years numerous events prohibited.36The surveillance of Stötzer has been the subject of a dossier compiled by the Stasi Record Archive: Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen der Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, “Eingeschränkte Freiheit.” She was a founding member of the Künstlerinnengruppe Erfurt, which was active from 1984, and in 1989, she co-founded the political group “Frauen für Veränderung” (women for change), who were the first to occupy the Erfurt Stasi headquarters in December that year.37Stötzer, Der lange Arm der Stasi, 220–33. On Stötzer’s involvement in the art scene, see also Richter, Das Gesetz der Szene.

Stötzer’s literary work only appeared in samizdat “publications” such as Mikado, Ariadnefabrik, and Und, and it was not until 1989 that a volume of her writings, zügel los (rein less), was published in the Aufbau-Verlag series “Außer der Reihe,” edited by Gerhard Wolf.38Walther, “Gabriele Stötzer”; Kachold [Stötzer], zügel los. On her underground publications, see also Dahlke, Papierboot, 141–52, 201–15. Her post-Wende publications include a collection of stories, Erfurter Roulette (Erfurt Roulette), about the lives of young artists in the GDR and a literary memoir, Die bröcklende Festung, based on her experiences in Hoheneck, which was published in 2002.39Stötzer, Erfurter Roulette. A collection of her prose and poetry dating from 1978 to 1989, appeared in 2005 as part of the series “Die Verschwiegene Bibliothek” (The Silenced [or Secret] Library) edited by Ines Geipel and Joachim Walther.40Stötzer, Ich bin die Frau von Gestern. Stötzer’s literary papers are housed in the Archiv unterdrückter Literatur. Like the other authors featured in this study, she has given numerous public accounts of her life in the GDR, often in the context of official memory work. Her most recent documentary publication, Der lange Arm der Stasi (The Long Arm of the Stasi), includes essays and an account of her meeting with one of her Stasi interrogators, as well as reproductions from the Stasi files and images of her work and acquaintances.41Stötzer, Der lange Arm der Stasi.