Acting Friendly, Performing Trust: Encounters with the Stasi

The building of friendly rapport and performance of trust are also evident in meeting reports contained in the file of Sascha Anderson, aka IM “David Menzer.” As we have noted, Anderson was one of the most notorious informants amongst the younger generation of writers. After quite erratic and sporadic meetings from 1975 onwards, Anderson began meeting more regularly with the Stasi from 1980. At one meeting in November that year, Anderson’s handler and the latter’s superior offered Anderson a glass of Sekt to acknowledge cooperation to date. According to the report, Anderson was noticeably surprised by this gesture, “was er auch zum Ausdruck brachte, da er, wie er sich äußerte, doch nicht viel getan hätte. Darauf wurde seitens des Genossen Major Schurz eingegangen mit dem Hinweis, daß es natürlich in Zukunft notwendig sei, daß sich die Zusammenarbeit in kontinuerlicher und inhaltlicher Richtung entscheidend verbessern muß” (which he also voiced, because, as he put it, he hadn’t yet done much. In response, comrade Major Schurz made the point that it would of course be necessary for future cooperation to show significant improvement in terms of continuity and content).6Report of meeting with IMS “David Menzer,” dated November 8, 1980, 79. The somewhat odd gesture of a celebratory glass of Sekt was therefore pre-emptive and loaded with further expectations of the informant. Nonetheless, the report indicates that the meeting also gave Anderson the opportunity to express doubt, perhaps even scepticism, and to seek clarification from the officers, thus gaining additional, albeit partial knowledge about the purpose of their collaboration:

Although the MfS failed in its attempts to recruit the writers interviewed for this study, those recruitment episodes are instructive of the performative nature of trust in the Stasi’s relationship with potential informants. We have explored these writers’ recollections of these attempted recruitments in chapter 1, reflecting on how intuitive or heuristic knowledge about the Stasi helped them respond to these approaches. Here we draw on the author interviews, Stasi files, and later written accounts to examine how the Stasi attempted to create bonds of trust in order to extract knowledge from these would-be informants. In their accounts of the Stasi’s attempts to recruit them when they were still teenagers, both Moog and Kolbe recall gestures made by the recruiting officers to give their potential young informants the impression of familiarity and respect, to buy their trust and flatter them into collaborating. In her interview with Windsor, Moog notes that the Stasi officers “versuchten sich auch so kumpelhaft zu geben” (tried to act like buddies) and offered her cigarettes, an act of informal rule-breaking given her young age (14) at the time. In later conversations with others affected, Moog identified this seemingly minor gesture as “[ei]ne Masche … so ‘Guck mal, bei uns darfst Du auch mal eine rauchen schon, was sonst gar nicht möglich ist’”10Interview with Christa Moog, August 25, 2021. (a ploy … like “look, with us you’re allowed to smoke, which is normally not possible.”) In her case, the gesture was misjudged; in fact, she described the scene and the Stasi officers’ performed chumminess retrospectively as “gruselig” (creepy), not least because she was disconcerted by how much they already knew about her and how she spent her free time. In a short story entitled “Es ist 15 Uhr” (It is 3 p.m.) which she later published based on this experience of attempted recruitment, Moog ties the gesture with the cigarette directly into this ominous sense of prior familiarity: “Er klopft die Zigaretten aus der Packung. ‘Sie rauchen doch sonst. In der Milchbar, nach der Schule.’”11Moog, “Es ist 15 Uhr,” 41. (He taps the cigarettes out of the packet. “You’re usually a smoker. In the Milk Bar, after school.”) In their efforts to recruit Moog to gain knowledge about her social circle, the Stasi officers tried to create a relationship of trust. However, the intuitive knowledge Moog holds about these kinds of approach (as described in chapter 1) makes these efforts to build trust on the basis of familiarity frightening and therefore counterproductive.

In Kolbe’s case, the gestures made by the MfS were primarily related to his nascent career and quest for independence as a young poet on the cusp of adulthood. From the Stasi’s point of view, this made him potentially exploitable, whether as a collaborator or opponent of the state. The files indicate that Kolbe had come to their attention earlier in 1975 after a poetry reading at the “Haus der jungen Talente”—likely the one described by Kolbe in Die Situation, as discussed in chapter 1. A report on the reading claimed it had included texts “mit sehr zweifelhafter Aussage und fragwürdigem politisch-ideologischen Wert und Inhalt” (very dubious messaging and questionable political-ideological value and content).12Information report on reading at “Haus der jungen Talente,” dated March 13, 1975, 3. Another slightly later report notes that Kolbe held contradictory attitudes, opposing his school’s rigid structures and methods, on the one hand, but demonstrating a strong class consciousness, on the other.13Investigation report on Uwe Kolbe, September 19, 1975, 6–7. The same report illustrates an awareness that Kolbe had problems in his parental home related to his literary pursuits and that his intellectual confidence led to constant confrontations with his mother and stepfather, as Kolbe also intimated in the interview with Windsor. The Stasi’s knowledge of Kolbe’s fraught home life may have made him seem attractive and susceptible as a candidate for recruitment: according to Betts, “[c]hildren from broken homes were easy recruits” while the “children of Stasi agents were particularly favoured recruits for restocking the ranks of informers, since they were seen as already being inured to the cardinal virtues of trust and secrecy.”14Betts, Within Walls, 46. Kolbe arguably fell into both these categories. By the time the MfS approached him, however, he was already in his late teens and known to be “sehr schwer von einer vorgefaßten Meinung abzubringen” (very difficult to dissuade from a preconceived opinion).15Investigation report on Uwe Kolbe, September 19, 1975, 6.

Kolbe’s invitation to the FDJ “Poetenseminar” (Poetry Seminar) in Schwerin in the summer of 1975 can be seen as one of the Stasi’s gestures to draw him into their trusted network. Participation at such an event was certainly double-edged. As seen in chapter 1, Kolbe recalled being surprised about the invitation and speculated in his interview with Windsor that his biological father, a Stasi officer, must have had a hand in it.16Interview with Uwe Kolbe, June 1, 2021. In his 1994 essay Die Situation, Kolbe acknowledges that it gave young writers the opportunity to meet with prominent experienced authors such as Heinz Kahlau and Stephan Hermlin to learn writing techniques and workshop their own texts. At the same time, he notes that the “Jungens von der Sicherheit standen durchaus penetrant zur Seite der Veranstalter oder waren identisch mit ihnen” (the chaps from the [state] security stood quite obtrusively alongside the organisers or were identical with them) and describes the Poetenseminar as a “Bestandteil langfristiger pädagogischer Stasi-Bemühungen” (component of the Stasi’s long-term pedagogical endeavours).17Kolbe, Die Situation, 8. According to Kolbe, it was therefore not a coincidence that a man claiming to represent the cultural department of the Berlin municipal authorities had visited his home in the same week he was attending the seminar, showing interest in his work.18Kolbe, Die Situation, 8. Kolbe also recalled the city officials’ conspicuous curiosity about his personal interests and problems and their “nette materielle Offerte, ja, der Köder” (nice material offering, the bait).19Interview with Uwe Kolbe, June 1, 2021. At this stage, he took up the offer and asked them for a typewriter, which, according to the MfS, Kolbe had been particularly pleased to receive, since it afforded him a much needed degree of independence in writing his poetry without the need for support from his family.20Report on a further conversation with Uwe Kolbe, dated December 8, 1975, 20. Yet Kolbe’s prior, intuitive knowledge about state surveillance made him immediately suspicious that the typewriter might be bugged, even before his would-be recruiters had revealed themselves as Stasi agents and the purpose of their encounters; he hid the typewriter on a ledge in his bathroom and later returned it having never made use of it, indicating that their attempt to buy his trust (with a view to buying his knowledge) had failed.21Kolbe, Die Situation, 9–10; Interview with Uwe Kolbe, June 1, 2021.

The practice of dangling “enticements” and “carrots of inducement” before potential young recruits to “cajole” them into “spying on dissident adults or ‘hostile negative youth’” is well-known.22Betts, Within Walls, 46. In addition to their performed friendliness and material gestures discussed above, the Stasi sought to encourage Moog and Kolbe to take the chance to become part of an exclusive group. However disingenuous, the process of attempted recruitment also entailed signalling a willingness and desire to trust possible informants, which can be seen as a method of engendering and constituting the potential recruit’s trust­worthiness; a manipulation of the idea, often discussed in relation to educational settings, that showing someone “trust may create trustworthiness.”23Lahno, “On the Emotional Character of Trust,” 183. The recruiting officers tried to give Moog the impression, “dass ich sowas wäre, wie eine, die sie auserwählt hätten, und was auch, wenn man da zu denen gehörte, die sie da jetzt eben dafür bestimmt hatten, dass man da auch Vorteile hätte” (that I was someone they’d chosen specially and if you belonged to those who they’d identified [for the task], you’d also get benefits).24Interview with Christa Moog, August 25, 2021. Besides the possible material benefits, Moog described the sense that her cooperation would also carry less tangible rewards of greater freedom and room for manoeuvre, and membership of a privileged group: “Und das, also, sollte so sein, dass man da noch einen Raum vielleicht bekommen könnte, den sonst vielleicht gar keiner bekam, nur diejenigen eben, die da, ja, die sie eben, wie gesagt, so gewählt hatten” (And, well, it was supposed to be the case that you might get space that no-one else got, only those who, yes as I said, they’d selected).25Interview with Christa Moog, August 25, 2021. The rhetoric of belonging to an exclusive group chosen to carry out the special task of informing on others, in this case her classmates and above all members of the church group “Junge Gemeinde,” divided Moog and her peers into those who could (or might) be trusted by the state, and those who could not. By identifying her as specially chosen and by instilling in her the state’s confidence and willingness to trust her as a loyal and effective informant, the MfS arguably sought not only to test her trustworthiness but also to render her trustworthy. In their attempt to recruit Kolbe, the Stasi also deployed the common argument that talented writers like him might become “eine Zielscheibe des Gegners” (a target for the enemy).26Kolbe, Die Situation, 9. In his recollection, their pre-emptive approach was framed as a means of counteracting this threat and thus entailed initiating him into a trusted inner circle: they asked him to pass on information from his visits to the jazz bar “Große Melodie,” as well as the youth club where Bettina Wegner and Klaus Schlesinger held their “Kramladen” performance evenings and all cultural events and encounters “bei denen der Gegner tätig werden könnte, angesichts dessen sie ihrerseits, wie gesagt, nur tätig wurden, weshalb sie mich hiermit in ihr Vertrauen zögen …” (where the enemy might be operating, in view of which they were, as mentioned, only taking action themselves, which was why they were placing their trust in me …).27Kolbe, Die Situation, 9.

In both cases, the Stasi’s performance of familiarity and attempt to generate trust and trustworthiness backfired. According to Moog, the Stasi approached people who, like her, were known to be “kontaktfreudig … und interessiert” (sociable … and curious) and who spent plenty of time with wide circles of friends.28Interview with Christa Moog, August 25, 2021. However, instead of betraying these networks by joining the Stasi’s exclusive club of intelligence-gatherers, Moog was more inclined to mistrust the officers, based on her gut feelings and knowledge acquired in the familial setting, and immediately betrayed the Stasi to her parents and her best friend. In contrast to Moog, Kolbe initially considered attempting to double-cross the Stasi with the aim of exploiting their efforts to draw him into their risky operation of trust and mistrust to gain knowledge about suspected oppositional activity in the cultural scene. But after discussing the matter with his friends who advised him against his foolhardy plan to play such a “doppeltes Spiel” (double game), he also ultimately declined the MfS’s advances, giving the excuse that he did not, in fact, have the requisite nerves to be trusted as a reliable informant.29Interview with Uwe Kolbe, June 1, 2021. While Kolbe refers to this line of argument retrospectively as “feige” (cowardly) and “irgendwie peinlich” (somehow embarrassing),30Interview with Uwe Kolbe, June 1, 2021. it also shows an active reversal of the Stasi’s own “watchwords”31Betts, Within Walls, 46. of trust and reliability. Like Bernd Wagner, as we saw in chapter 1, both Moog and Kolbe not only blew their cover as potential informants by telling family and friends about the Stasi’s propositions but also inverted the Stasi’s regime of trust and distrust, passing knowledge in the opposite direction. Instead of agreeing to pass potentially incriminating knowledge about acquaintances vertically to the MfS, they spread knowledge about their encounters with the latter horizontally to others within their own communities of trust.