Talking to the Stasi: Mobilising Trust as Reciprocal Strategy
The Stasi’s performance of trust and familiarity was sometimes met with reciprocal tactics by potential recruits or targets themselves, enabling them to strategically acquire or withhold knowledge. This could transpire in quite unlikely ways. In a slightly different kind of encounter with the Stasi, Ekkehard Maaß recalled allowing a Stasi officer to visit him at home on a few occasions in the mid-1980s after the latter had approached the former on the street and offered him a lift home after a concert. Interestingly, Maaß brought this episode up in his interview with Windsor following a question about trust. He framed his recollection not only as a “delikate Geschichte” (delicate story) but also in terms of a general sense of familiarity and friendliness in the GDR—“Wir haben uns auch gleich geduzt, in der DDR duzen sich alle” (we immediately addressed each other with the familiar “Du,” everyone uses “Du” in the GDR)—and his own personal disposition to openness towards others: “Als ich in meine Wohnung eingezogen bin, hab’ ich als erstes außen eine Klinke angebracht. Also, meine Türe ist immer offen” (When I moved into my apartment, the first thing I did was put a handle on the outside. So, my door is always open).
1Interview with Ekkehard Maaß, July 30, 2021. Although he was not initially suspicious of his visitor, Maaß recalls quickly understanding that the man was from the MfS when he placed a box of tea on the table. In this case, Maaß interpreted the gesture not as a ploy or a bribe, as we saw with Moog and Kolbe above, but as a form of compensation, “als wolle er sich für seinen Besuch entschuldigen, damit hat er sich enttarnt” (as though he wanted to apologise for his visit, and in doing that he broke his cover).
2Interview with Ekkehard Maaß, July 30, 2021.In fact, Maaß’s experience of the Stasi officer appealed to his own sense of openness, goodwill, and mutual interest and understanding. According to Maaß, the officer explained that the MfS, as an organisation, was not united in approach and that his aim was to prove to the Stasi leadership, whom he described as Stalinist hardliners, that the artistic scene he had been observing for years was politically harmless, if not irrelevant:
Ihr macht künstlerische, literarische Veranstaltungen. Ihr lest Euch Gedichte vor, ne. Selten, dass diese Gedichte politisch sind, wie die von Wolf Biermann, oder so, also vordergründig. Ok, die passen jetzt nicht so gut in den sozialistischen Realismus, aber ihr seid doch keine Aufwiegler. Ihr wollt doch nicht Erich Honecker stürzen.
3Interview with Ekkehard Maaß, July 30, 2021.[You put on artistic, literary events. You read poems to each other, right? It’s rare that these poems are political, like Wolf Biermann’s, or something like that, I mean outwardly. OK, they don’t fit in well with socialist realism, but you’re not agitators. You don’t want to overthrow Erich Honecker].
An over-determination of the apparently apolitical nature of the scene is evident here, reminiscent of the accusations that one of Sascha Anderson’s key roles as IM was to depoliticise the scene.
4Kulick, “Entpolitisieren, Entsolidarisieren, Kontrollieren.” Indeed, the Stasi officer’s frank assessment, including his critique of his superiors, might be seen as a further tactic to perform trustworthiness and gain Maaß’s trust and cooperation in return. Notably, this tactic involved proffering knowledge about (claimed) internal disputes within the MfS and its covert activities within the underground literary scene as a method to construct trust, presumably in the hope that such a willingness to share information would be reciprocated.
Yet Maaß’ recollection suggests that this was not a simple scenario of Stasi manipulation versus his own naivety (even though he seemed to agree with his visitor’s assessment of the scene). Rather, it illustrates a kind of cautious mobilisation of trust on both sides. According to Maaß, the Stasi man was also strategically open about his need to speak to people within the scene, “damit ich das meinen Offizieren, meiner Führung klarmachen kann, dass ihr gar nicht diese politischen Feinde seid, für die ihr gehalten werdet” (so that I can make it clear to my officers and my leadership that you are not the political enemies that you are thought to be).
5Interview with Ekkehard Maaß, July 30, 2021. In this context, Maaß was prepared to talk, but not to inform:
Eigentlich hätte man ihn gleich rausschmeißen können. Aber man kann ja nicht über sein Wesen. Ich bin von meinem Wesen her ein sehr freundlicher Mensch, und der war auch sympathisch, ne. Und ich fand das auch interessant, mit dem zu reden. Aber ich sagte, ich gebe nichts preis über Andere.
6Interview with Ekkehard Maaß, July 30, 2021.[Actually, I could have thrown him out straight away. But you can’t overcome your nature. I’m a very friendly person by nature, and he was also likeable. And I also found it interesting to talk to him. But I said I won’t give anything away about others.]
For Maaß, the episode was built around his apparent inclination to trust, on the one hand, but an awareness of the need to keep the conversation in check—that is, not to respond to knowledge-sharing with knowledge-sharing—on the other. Importantly, these encounters also presented an interesting opportunity for Maaß to learn more about “was die Stasi so denkt” (what the Stasi thinks).
7Interview with Ekkehard Maaß, July 30, 2021. The extent of the Stasi officer’s honesty about his purportedly honourable intentions is arguably less significant here than the respectful, if not friendly dynamic that seemed to develop between the two men and Maaß’s understanding of this situation as one that enabled him to extrapolate knowledge, however uncertain, from the Stasi through a tentative, yet strategic display of openness and trust.
Maaß’s discussion of this episode in the interview illustrates his lingering uncertainty about both the epistemological and the ethical implications of his apparently friendly engagement with a Stasi representative. On the one hand, Maaß shows an ongoing inclination to believe the Stasi officer’s claim that he was seeking knowledge to placate his superiors rather than incriminate Maaß and his acquaintances:
Also im Nachhinein, glaube ich, dass dieser Mann sogar ehrlich war. Also, dass er zwar natürlich bei der Stasi war, seine Arbeit gemacht hatte, das was er als Auftrag hatte. Aber ich glaube, dass er tatsächlich der Meinung war, man muss die Stasi-Obersten, Mielke und diese ganzen Stalinisten, die muss man davon überzeugen, dass hier eigentlich eine Künstlerszene wächst, die für die DDR ’ne Bereicherung sein könnte. Also, so ungefähr war sein Konzept. Genaueres weiß ich auch nicht.
8Interview with Ekkehard Maaß, July 30, 2021.[In retrospect, I believe this man was actually being honest. He was, of course, a member of the Stasi, and he did his job, did what he was assigned to do. But I believe he actually thought that the Stasi colonels, Mielke, and all those Stalinists, had to be convinced that an artistic scene was actually growing here that could be an asset to the GDR. So, that was roughly his concept. I don’t know the exact details either.]
On the other hand, as the final sentence of this quotation indicates, Maaß concedes that even his post-Wende knowledge of this Stasi officer’s intentions and integrity remains vague and ultimately unsubstantiated. Moreover, he still questions the overall wisdom of his trusting nature and actions in this case: “Im Nachhinein ist es auch so, dass ich nicht weiß, ob ich—Also Jürgen Fuchs, hätte ihn sofort rausgeschmissen. Aber, man ist eben so, wie man ist” (in retrospect it’s also the case that I don’t know—Well, Jürgen Fuchs would have thrown him out straightaway. But you are how you are.)
9Interview with Ekkehard Maaß, July 30, 2021. Ultimately, however, Maaß’s unhesitating disclosure of these encounters—“Ich hab natürlich darüber gesprochen” (of course I talked about it)—not only made him “nicht dicht” (not watertight) from the Stasi’s point of view but also points to an essential trust within his own circles that enabled him to reveal such knowledge about his semi-willing interaction with the Stasi, presumably with an awareness that this might be controversial: “es gab Leute, die das verurteilt haben. Die haben gesagt ‘Was? Du hast mit der Stasi geredet. Du bist’n Idiot. Also, mit solchen Leuten redet man nicht!’” (there were some people who strongly disapproved. They said “What? You talked to the Stasi. You’re an idiot. You don’t talk to people like that!”).
10Interview with Ekkehard Maaß, July 30, 2021. Unlike those who agreed to become informants, talking to the Stasi by no means prevented Maaß from talking about the Stasi.
According to Maaß, the Stasi man in question was called Mittelhäuser who, it was later revealed, had been the handler of several young writer-informants. Mittelhäuser’s willingness to offer testimony in an early post-Wende documentary film “Förräderi” (Betrayal) appears to have earned him a further degree of respect retrospectively; Maaß states that although Mittelhäuser neither showed his face nor said anything of great import in the film, it was good to have heard “eine Originalstimme eines Stasi-Mitarbeiters” (an original voice of a Stasi employee).
11Interview with Ekkehard Maaß, July 30, 2021. This is noteworthy given our general societal tendency to mistrust “perpetrator testimony,” as Sara Jones has explored.
12Jones, “Testimony through Culture.” In the context of our research, Maaß is not alone in his willingness to grant a degree of (retrospective) trust to former Stasi officers in order to understand how MfS employees navigated the system. In fact, Bettina Wegner mentions in her interview with Windsor that she has built a genuine friendship with a former Stasi officer who contacted her after the Wende to apologise for the part he played in the surveillance she and Schlesinger were subjected to. It was in this context that Wegner first addressed the issue of trust in the interview, without direct prompting. One key insight she has gained through this contact relates to the lack of trust and stable knowledge within the Stasi’s own structures: “Er hatte da nur eine einzige Kollegenperson, zu der er Vertrauen hatte … Also, die hatten untereinander noch mehr Misstrauen als wir die Beobachteten untereinander. Dit hab ick dann verstanden”
13Interview with Bettina Wegner, August 23, 2021. (He only had one colleague he could trust … So there was more distrust amongst them than amongst those of us who were under observation. I understood that then.) For our purposes, two aspects are illuminating here: firstly, that Wegner’s acquisition of and apparent trust in this knowledge has come about on the basis of an interpersonal relationship, in this case (an unlikely) friendship;
14Wegner’s post-Wende building of trust with and acquisition of knowledge from the former Stasi officer contrasts with Gabriele Stötzer’s account of an encounter in 2019 with “Gunter H.” the Stasi officer who had interrogated her in 1977. When asking him questions about her arrest, the interrogator repeatedly denied having knowledge, despite Stötzer’s offer to show him documents: “Ich weiß das nicht, ich bin ein kleines Licht gewesen … So ’ne Konstruktion gab es nicht, habe ich noch nie gehört … Den Namen habe ich nie gehört, und sowas hätte ich nie gemacht … Nein davon weiß ich nichts. Und ich will auch nichts sehen. Ich werde bestreiten, dass ich diese Berichte geschrieben habe und dass das meine Unterschrift ist.” (I don’t know, I was nobody of importance … That kind of structure didn’t exist, I’ve never heard that … I’ve never heard that name, and I wouldn’t have done anything like that … No I don’t know anything about that. And I don’t want to see anything. I’ll dispute that I wrote those reports and that that’s my signature.) In Stötzer’s recollection of their encounter, there is a conspicuous lack of trust and a corresponding lack of knowledge-sharing on Gunter H.’s part. See Stötzer, Der lange Arm der Stasi, esp. 278. and, secondly, the attention she draws to differing degrees of trust and distrust within the Stasi’s own apparatus and amongst their targets.