Finding the Stasi: Rules of Thumb and Knowing whom to Suspect

What we see in the interview is, once again, the development of rules of thumb—based on personal experience or experiences of others in the network—that were used to inform decisions on who could and could not be trusted. For example, Moog remembers that the apparent receipt of privileges was viewed as particularly suspicious: for example, if a friend or acquaintance suddenly started driving a Wartburg or Skoda—cars that the average person had to wait decades to purchase—they were instantly suspected of working for the Stasi: “Dann konnte das leicht sein, dass derjenige dann, dass der Verdacht aufkam, der ist bestimmt bei der Stasi” (then it could easily be that the person was suspected of being in the Stasi).2Interview with Christa Moog, August 25, 2021. Or if a painter was suddenly able to show their works, despite the highly controlled public sphere, Moog admits to thinking: ‘“Ach, der kann ausstellen, da seine Sachen. Bestimmt ist der mit der Stasi”’ (“oh so, he can exhibit his material. He must be with the Stasi”).3Interview with Christa Moog, August 25, 2021. These rules of thumb were built from the knowledge gained from direct contact with the Stasi (as in the attempted recruitment described by Moog) and through knowledge dissemination within literary networks. In both cases, the knowledge was partial, unreliable, and frequently wrong: as Moog notes, “das traf dann sicher auch manchmal Leute, so ganz zu Unrecht traf die das” (certainly sometimes people were targeted, so completely unjustifiably targeted).4Interview with Christa Moog, August 25, 2021.

Bettina Wegner similarly indicates the importance of gut feelings and rules of thumb for acquiring and circulating (partial) knowledge of the Stasi. In retrospect, in the interview with Windsor, Wegner claims to have known a great deal about the Stasi’s operations, but recognises at the same time the flawed nature of that knowledge:

Indeed, Maaß points towards both the regularity with which these rules of thumb were applied and the potential threat they posed. He states that they tried not to be suspicious of one another, but that:

But what were the “rules of thumb,” or heuristics used by individuals in the literary scene to determine who might be working with the Stasi? The following passage in the interview with Wegner can provide some initial insights in this regard. Wegner was asked by a young man after a concert in a church whether she thought that the Stasi had been present:

Wegner appears to recall this incident as something playful and as an example of the artist asserting agency by refusing to be intimidated by knowledge of the presence of the Stasi and potential threat that they posed. However, it is also clear from the anecdote that the presence of informants was a topic of discussion within the network and that the act of informing was viewed as morally reprehensible. Gigerenzer and Gassmeier note that “an example of a moral heuristic is an intuitive search rule that looks for information that could reveal whether one has been cheated in a social contract.”11Gigerenzer and Gassmeier, “Heuristic Decision Making,” 473. Rules of thumb relating to who might be an informant could be understood as just such a form of “moral heuristic.” In the interview, in a similar way to Maaß, Wegner states that she tried not to suspect people of being informants without evidence, but that “dann kam irgend’n Verdacht auf, weil einer so sich verhalten hat” (then you started to become suspicious, because someone behaved in a particular way).12Interview with Bettina Wegner, August 23, 2021. For Moog, we have seen that such indicators included having a new car, or being allowed to exhibit your artwork. When asked by Windsor what kinds of behaviours would arouse suspicion for her, Wegner elaborates: not taking part in conversations on particular topics, not being present when arrests or interrogations took place, or simply being quieter than others. Like Moog, Wegner notes that these forms of knowledge were uncertain and unreliable, but also that the network relied on these kinds of gut feelings to operate in an environment where other forms of knowledge were not available: “Also, wenn einer ’n Verdacht hatte—manchmal stimmte es ja leider auch—dann hat er auch den anderen dit gesagt” (so, if one of us had a suspicion—sometimes it was true, unfortunately—then he told the others as well).13Interview with Bettina Wegner, August 23, 2021. Indeed, reluctance to share experiences of the Stasi with others in the network—for example, following a search of one’s home or arrest—was another heuristic that others might use to determine if one was an informant: “Also, man hat sich untereinander immer allet erzählt. Und wer nicht so viel erzählte, der hätte schon unter Verdacht fallen können” (well, we always told each other everything. And anyone who didn’t share so much could be viewed as suspicious).14Interview with Bettina Wegner, August 23, 2021.

In contrast to Gigerenzer’s adaptive heuristics, the rules of thumb applied to determine who might be an informant were highly unreliable: like Moog, Wegner notes that innocent people were suspects, and some of the guilty were not suspected at all. Nonetheless, these heuristics appear to have been drawn from knowledge (or at least belief) within the network about how the Stasi operated (they are in churches, they infiltrate friendship groups) and to have played a role in allowing that network to persist in a context of high uncertainty. Wegner’s recollections suggest that such rules of thumb worked to provide the sense that the secrecy of the Stasi was penetrable, that the unknown—who was an informant—could be partially known. It is not clear if the reliability of the knowledge created through these heuristics was greater than would be provided by the game of chance in Wegner’s story of the informant in the church concert. However, according to Wegner’s account, it provided people with a way of navigating the unknowability of this aspect of their environment. Wegner states that she tried not to allow these gut feelings to affect her behaviour, but others adapted their actions, paying attention to what they said and to whom. In her interview with Windsor, Gabriele Stötzer states that one of the “Gesetze” (laws or rules) followed in the underground arts scene was that you could only meet in private apartments or in the church.15Interview with Gabriele Stötzer, June 14, 2021. The concept of “Gesetze” speaks directly to the idea of a heuristic built not on detailed knowledge of who might be an informant, or the extent to which the Stasi might already know about an event, or even be interested in it, but on a generalised understanding of how the Stasi operated constructed on the basis of the experiences of those in the network or scene.

The rules of thumb about who was an informant may therefore have helped individuals navigate uncertainty, even if unreliably so. However, Wegner’s account also shows us that the Stasi were able to take advantage of this unstable knowledge to foment distrust. In the interview, Wegner recalls that for a period of time her then-husband, Klaus Schlesinger, was permitted to travel while she (and many other critical intellectuals) was not. She notes that this aroused suspicions that Schlesinger was working for the Stasi:

This manipulation points towards a further kind of gut feeling related to the operations of the Stasi and the infiltration of the secret police in their professional and personal lives. Wegner discusses the Eintopf (Stewpot) evenings in the Haus der jungen Talente (House of Young Talent), at which participants were invited to read their poetry. Wegner notes that it became increasingly difficult to organise these evenings and that they were put under pressure to vet the poetry before it was read (something she refused to do). The pressure came from the management of the Haus, but, Wegner notes: “Wer dann dahinter stand, wusste man. Dit mein ick, jeder wusste, es is’ die Stasi” (we knew who was behind it. I mean, everyone knew it was the Stasi).19Interview with Bettina Wegner, August 23, 2021. Wegner does not elaborate on how they knew it was the Stasi, suggesting that this was a hunch or kind of intuitive knowledge based on collective prior experience within the network. In contrast, other manipulations were and remain unknowable, even after the opening of the Stasi files. Wegner recounts reading her files with Schlesinger, after the Wende and long after their divorce. They learned that one of the aims of the Stasi’s ‘Zersetzung’ was to destroy their marriage: “[da] hat der Klaus gesagt, ‘Mensch, Tina, vielleicht haben die daran mitgewirkt,’ und da hab’ ick gesagt [laughs] ‘Ne, Klaus, das haben wir ganz alleene geschafft’” (then Klaus said, “Gosh, Tina, maybe they were involved,” and I said [laughs] “No, Klaus, we did it all by ourselves”).20Interview with Bettina Wegner, August 23, 2021.

This lack of certainty even after the opening of the files is similar to Kolbe’s continued uncertainty regarding the role of his father and Wagner’s puzzlement at why the Stasi thought he might consider becoming an informant. Kolbe’s description of his knowledge about who was an informant is similarly ambivalent. On the one hand, he states of the “Spitzel” (snitch) in his (undefined) group in the army: “da haben sie einen Spitzel—und das war deutlich—, sie haben einen Spitzel in diese Gruppe gesetzt, sozusagen für mich [laughs] ein Leibspitzel … Der Witz war, dass das eigentlich irgendwie jeder wusste” (they put a snitch—and that was clear—they put a snitch in this group, a personal snitch for me, so to speak [laughs] … The joke was that somehow everyone actually knew it).21Interview with Uwe Kolbe, June 1, 2021. Here we see him expressing certainty—not only he, but in fact “everyone” knew that this individual was an informant. We might ask if this certainty in retrospect is in part a result of the fact that the informant revealed himself on their final mission: “Hat er mir beim letzten Ausgang erzählt, dass er da jeweils immer über mich berichten musste und so weiter … Dann haben wir ein Bier getrunken und okay. War die Sache erledigt, ja” (he told me on the last outing that he always had to report on me and so on … Then we had a beer and it was okay. That was the end of it, yes).22Interview with Uwe Kolbe, June 1, 2021. This is a common theme in our interviews: if informants were open and honest about their behaviour, they could be forgiven, it was the secrecy that destroyed relationships.

When asked by Windsor how he could be so certain at the time that this individual was an informant, Kolbe says it related to his behaviour: “Der war, der hat so Dinge gemacht, der war nicht wie die andern [laughs]” (he was, he did things, he was not like the others [laughs]).23Interview with Uwe Kolbe, June 1, 2021. This included going to bed early, rather than staying up to play cards and drink illegal schnaps—a kind of rule of thumb that those displaying conformist behaviour were to be distrusted. It is when he describes this rule of thumb in the interview that Kolbe describes as uncertain knowledge something that he had previously described as certain. Where previously, as we have seen, he stated that “jeder wusste” (everyone knew) that this individual was an informant, he now states: “Es war, im Grunde war es nur ein Verdacht. Es war … Er tat Dinge, die man so nicht tut. Er hat mit den andern sich nicht gemein gemacht und gleichzeitig hat er immer, hat er auch blöde Nachfragen gestellt. Also, er war auffällig, ja?” (it was, basically it was just a suspicion. It was … He did things that you don’t do. He didn’t make fun of the others and at the same time he always asked stupid questions. So, he was conspicuous, right?).24Interview with Uwe Kolbe, June 1, 2021. As in the discussion of the attempted recruitment, we see Kolbe revising his statement of certainty as he is asked to explain that certainty. This speaks to this knowledge as a kind of intuition or heuristic, developed in the context of the environment in which Kolbe and his colleagues were working and used to navigate a society steeped in mistrust. Rules of thumb that made sense at the time no longer make quite as much sense to Kolbe when he narrates them from the posit­ion of the present. Indeed, Kolbe comes to realise that the process of the interview itself has made him realise how little he really knew:

While Wagner does not use language that suggests intuition or rules of thumb when it came to resisting the recruitment attempt, in his discussion of Stasi informants within this scene, this kind of knowledge does appear to have played a role. Regarding the prolific and high-profile informant, Sascha Anderson, Wagner recalls that he did not suspect Anderson: “ich wusste nichts, ob er bei der Stasi war, oder so—wer sollte das auch wissen, es gab auch keine, keine direkten Gerüchte oder sowas” (I didn’t know whether he was in the Stasi or anything—how could anyone know that, there were no direct rumours or anything like that).29Interview with Bernd Wagner, October 20, 2020. However, he nonetheless wanted nothing to do with Anderson, something that he also struggles to explain in retrospect: “ich hab gesagt mit Sascha Anderson mach ich nichts. So. Ich wusste nicht warum, aber mit dem wollte ich nichts machen” (I said I wouldn’t do anything with Sascha Anderson. I don’t know why, but I didn’t want to do anything with him).30Interview with Bernd Wagner, October 20, 2020. There is a risk here of projecting knowledge gained since the opening of the Stasi files back onto what were simply personal animosities; however, Wagner is not alone in finding Anderson in some way untrustworthy, despite his deep entanglement in the unofficial scene and his own public confrontations with the state (including his arrest and imprisonment).31For a (deeply problematic) account of Anderson’s complicity with the Stasi see his autobiographical text. Anderson, Sascha Anderson. Stötzer describes the animosity between herself and Anderson and her knowledge at the time that Anderson was attempting to isolate her, forbidding anyone to speak to her because she was a “Versagerin” (loser) and “furchtbare Emanze” (dreadful women’s libber). She states that she sought out others who avoided working with Anderson, including Kolbe, Wagner and Jan Faktor.32Interview with Gabriele Stötzer, June 14, 2021.

Where Wagner’s dislike of Anderson is described as intuitive—that is, as based on an instinctive response rather than articulable knowledge—Wagner is able to explain in more detail why he suspected a woman who had been “ununterbrochen an meiner Seite” (stuck to my side) for a week during a particularly intense period of activity relating to the magazine Mikado—including preparations for a demonstration against the demolition of gasometers in Prenzlauer Berg—and had subsequently disappeared. He notes that she was one of only three people who had access to an edition of the magazine that had found its way onto the desk of Kolbe’s (Stasi officer) father. He tells Windsor that he wrote about the woman in a text focusing on his experiences with the Stasi more broadly. In the work, Wagner plays on the woman’s name—Anastasia—to make the pun “Anna-Stasia.” He recounts that the woman approached him at a reading, furious at the accusations in the text and asserting her innocence:

In his post-Wende fictional text, “Stube und der Herr” (Stube and the Gentleman), published in 1991 in the collection Die Wut im Koffer, Wagner stages a conversation between “Stube” and a critical intellectual recounting his experiences in the GDR and after its collapse and the opening of the Stasi files. The “Herr” describes a special relationship between him and those he describes as the “Kanzlisten” (administrative clerks—here those serving power): “das ist vor allem eine Sache der Nasen. Man nimmt Witterung auf, wenn man sich begegnet, und dabei sticht jedem etwas Fremdes, ja Feindliches in die Geruchsknospen, und das Verhältnis ist ein für allemal festgelegt” (it’s primarily a matter of the nose. You pick up scents when you meet, and something foreign, even hostile, stings everyone’s olfactory buds, and the relationship is fixed once and for all).36Wagner, “Stube und der Herr,” 314. The “Herr” describes to Stube how he was not only observed by the Stasi, but also observed them, gathering his own “Archiv” (archive) consisting of “Erinnerungen, Vermutungen und Halluzinationen” (memories, suspicions and hallucinations). He adds that it is of little interest to him whether or not the one being observed was really in the Stasi, it was sufficient “wenn er sich so benommen hat, als ob er dabeigewesen sein könnte” (if he behaved as if he could have been with them).37Wagner, “Stube und der Herr,” 313. In this account, behaving as if one could be a Stasi informant or officer means behaving as if one might be complicit with state power. Here, Wagner not only indicates a kind of countersurveillance (a theme described in more detail in chapter 3); he also suggests that other forms of complicity with the SED regime were equally reprehensible.