Familiarity and Frolleagues: (Semi-)Professional Networks and the Role of Reputation

While he claims he had not given it much thought at the time, Kolbe’s further reflection on the mechanisms of trust in the interview with Windsor reveal his recognition that the decision to trust had in fact required “bestimmte Indizien, bestimmte Sachen” (particular indicators, particular things). Precisely because the question of trust had been so “kiztelig” (tricky), it was important that there had been “irgendwo einen Punkt des Vertrauens … Also einen Grund: Der und der ist okay, weil der …” (a point of trust somewhere … A reason: so and so is okay, because …).4Interview with Uwe Kolbe, June 1, 2021. As we shall see in this section, those points or indicators of (presumed) trust were sometimes based on personal inference or professional appreciation, but they also depended on social environment and context as well as reputation and recommendations. If suspicions were spread through hearsay and rumour, then word-of-mouth could also establish common ground and trust. According to Kolbe, for example, “man hörte natürlich von diesen und jenen und wenn ich jemanden kennenlernte, von dem ich schon mal gehört hatte über Freunde oder so, dann war ja alles gut. Dann war das vorbereitet” (you of course heard of this or that person and if I met someone I’d already heard about from friends or so, then everything was fine. Then the ground was prepared.)5Interview with Uwe Kolbe, June 1, 2021. In this light, assumptions about a person or group’s trustworthiness were themselves often based on a kind of second-hand knowledge, reliant on the judgement and endorsement of others, which in turn required trust in the authority of their knowledge about the presumed integrity of the new or common acquaintance(s) in question.

In the unofficial literary scene, shared experiences and the circumstances in which people met were an important factor in establishing trust; in Kolbe’s recollection, at parties, for instance, or in other private, if not “illegal” contexts.6Interview with Uwe Kolbe, June 1, 2021. Wagner recalled sensing a generalised distrust “in größeren anonymen Versammlungen” (larger anonymous gatherings), whether in the official Writers’ Union or church circles.7Interview with Bernd Wagner, October 20, 2020. Despite his awareness that even in closer informal settings there was always the possibility that someone was “dabei,” he felt a greater sense of security around the writers and artists he met who lived and worked “unter gleichen, ähnlichen Bedingungen … sich so durchgeschlagen haben, illegale Ausstellungen gemacht haben … Also dass da unbedingt, also da eine vergleichbare Lebenserfahrung und ein einfacheres Einverständnis war, als zum Beispiel der jüngeren Generation gegenüber” (under the same or similar conditions … who struggled along, took part in illegal exhibitions … That there was certainly comparable life experience and a simpler mutual understanding than with the younger generation, for example).8Interview with Bernd Wagner, October 20, 2020. Since freelance writers did not have work colleagues in a more conventional sense, personal introductions within these networks were crucial: in Kolbe’s words, for example, “die Einführung durch einen Freund, durch einen andern Vertrauten. Das war natürlich das Einfachste dann. Also wenn der und der sagte: ‘Der ist okay,’ oder: ‘Das lohnt sich,’ oder so, dann klar! Dann knüpft man auch den Kontakt” (so an introduction through a friend, through another confidante. That was the simplest way. If so and so said: “He’s okay” or “it’s worth it” or similar, then sure! Then you also make the contact.)9Interview with Uwe Kolbe, June 1, 2021. This was particularly important because, in Kolbe’s view, “Freundschaft war das Grundsätzliche, der grundsätzliche Umgang miteinander” (friendship was fundamental, the fundamental way of interacting with each other):10Interview with Uwe Kolbe, June 1, 2021. other than familial ties, the “wir”11Interview with Uwe Kolbe, June 1, 2021. (or “in-group,” to borrow Hosking’s term)12Hosking, “Trust and Distrust,” 108. to which one belonged was mostly determined by friendship in contradistinction to “‘die’ da” (them out there),13Interview with Uwe Kolbe, June 1, 2021. i.e., the state and its various agencies. Existing contacts and friendships thus gave rise to further relationships of trust through which knowledge could be circulated.

Literary friendships were also established on the basis of professional admiration; as Kolbe recalled, “[a]lso wenn man jetzt nen Text von jemandem in die Hand bekommt, dann sagt man ja klar: ‘Oh, das ist was.’ … Und, oder: ‘Den möchte ich gern kennenlernen’ oder ‘die’” (when you get hold of someone’s text and then you say: “oh, that’s quite something.” … And/or: “I’d like to meet him or her”).14Interview with Uwe Kolbe, June 1, 2021. In her interview with Windsor, Gabriele Stötzer noted that she and Bernd Wagner had become friends after meeting at an exhibition and reading in Berlin, organised by and for the women she refers to as “die verlassenen Frauen” (abandoned wives).15Interview with Gabriele Stötzer, June 14, 2021. A report by IMB “Fritz Müller” (Sascha Anderson) on an event matching this description suggests that Stötzer had read a text reflecting on her experience in prison and several texts about gender relations.16Report by IMB “Fritz Müller” on an exhibition and two events in a Berlin apartment [name of host redacted], dated December 12, 1983. According to Stötzer, Wagner liked what he heard at the reading and immediately invited her to contribute to Mikado; later in the interview she also noted that Wagner was always most enthusiastic about precisely those texts based on her experiences in prison. After that first encounter, Wagner often visited her in Erfurt “[und hat] die ganze Szene auch mitkonsumiert, auch mit frei gefühlt” (and consumed the whole scene along with us, felt free with us).17Interview with Gabriele Stötzer, June 14, 2021. In this sense, personal respect and trust could be inferred or generated through aesthetic and political judgement, which led, in turn, to the expansion of networks and creative collaborations, sometimes across different cities and artistic scenes. We also see Stötzer’s willingness to share knowledge and personal experience of state repression through testimonial writing, something we explore more in chapter 3.

Underground publications like Mikado not only created opportunities for literary exchange away from state censorship but also emerged from and rested on relationships of trust amongst friends and mutual acquaintances. In his interview with Windsor, Wagner claimed he had not been “vernetzt” (networked) in a political sense, for example in the peace or environmental movements or in church circles, but that Mikado had been “ein Netz in dem Sinne, dass man sich gegenseitig getragen hat” (a network in the sense that we supported each other).18Interview with Bernd Wagner, October 20, 2020. In Kolbe’s recollection, the decision to work with Wagner and Trolle to expand the underground publication he had initially produced alone as “Der Kaiser ist nackt” (The Emperor’s New Clothes) had come about in an informal setting, “eines Tages mit denen, ich weiß nicht, wir haben Skat gespielt, irgendwas gemacht” (one day I was, I don’t know, playing skat with them, doing something).19Interview with Uwe Kolbe, June 1, 2021. Together, they covered different literary genres,—poetry, prose, and drama, respectively—and each collected texts “aus seinem Freundeskreis” (from his circle of friends),20Interview with Bernd Wagner, October 20, 2020. which they discussed and collated at editorial meetings, literally assembling and folding each issue themselves. In the foreword to a West German collection of selected Mikado texts, the editors noted that this kind of collective work had been a new experience for them, motivated in part by their common search “nach einer erfrischenderen Form des Zusammenlebens, die hinausgeht über trostloses Zusammensitzen in Kneipen, über unnützes Herumdiskutieren hinter verschlossenen Türen” (for a more refreshing form of coexistence that extended beyond dismally sitting around together in pubs, beyond fruitless discussions behind closed doors).21Kolbe, Trolle, and Wagner, “Mikado 1–12,” 8. The practical production of these journals also required help from wider networks: Wagner mentions a pressman who lived in his apartment block who helped print the covers (each designed by a different artist) and a friend of Kolbe’s who secretly made 100 copies of each issue by smuggling thousands of pieces of paper in and out of the ministry he worked at where he had rare access to a copy machine.22Interview with Bernd Wagner, October 20, 2020. Kolbe, in turn, noted that he knew the printer through Bärbel Bohley.23Interview with Uwe Kolbe, June 1, 2021.

As Wagner recalls, the people who helped them produce Mikado were often at greater risk than the writers themselves, who were “einigermaßen geschützt, so durch [eine] gewisse Art von Popularität” (protected to an extent, by a degree of popularity).24Interview with Bernd Wagner, October 20, 2020. In addition to the mysterious appearance of one issue of Mikado on Kolbe’s father’s desk, which Wagner recalled in his interview with Windsor,25Interview with Bernd Wagner, October 20, 2020. the MfS was certainly aware of the underground publication via informants like Anderson. In Die Situation, Kolbe ridicules “Fritz Müller’s” technical observation about the offset printing used, and notes that such information could have had consequences for the printing press operator.26Kolbe, Die Situation, 39. The document in questions is a report by IMB “Fritz Müller” on a follow-up meeting of the “Zersammlung,” dated May 3, 1984. A similar point is made in Wagner, “Stasi-Gift,” 12; The “Zersammlung” (dis-meeting) was a “marathon reading” held over several evenings from March, 5–11, 1984, in Prenzlauer Berg, organised by the poets Bert Papenfuß and Stefan Döring. See Dahlke, “Underground Literature?,” 162. Nonetheless, Wagner notes in his interview with Windsor that no serious betrayal of trust or knowledge had occurred in their network: “das Beglückende beim Studium der Stasi-Akten [war], dass nicht einer aus diesem Kreis um Mikado herum Zuträger bei der Stasi war. Also das sprach für unser menschliches Gespür, oder die Intaktheit eines Freundeskreises” (when reading the Stasi files it was gratifying [to discover] that not a single person associated with the Mikado circle was a whistle-blower for the Stasi. That spoke for our human intuition, or the integrity of a group of friends).27Interview with Bernd Wagner, October 20, 2020. In this sense, their intuitive and collective knowledge about each other’s trustworthiness and reliability served as a protective measure to ensure certain knowledge remained concealed from the MfS. As we shall see in chapters 3 and 4, the networks surrounding samizdat publications like Mikado also enabled covert (and sometimes overt) resistance to state surveillance and transported knowledge about the Stasi in the form of literary fiction.

Trust was of course not guaranteed or unconditional even in situations where most of the fundamental conditions of a close-knit community based on mutual introductions and common interest and experience appeared to be met. In chapter 1 we saw Wagner’s claims that he had disliked Anderson even without knowing about his collaboration with the Stasi. Similarly, Kolbe recalls that in Ekkehard Maaß’s kitchen, “wo’s auch schön war und wo man sich traf und die Suppe aß oder so … trotzdem hab ich da nicht alle gemocht und nicht allen vertraut” (where it was nice and where we met up and ate soup and such … I still didn’t like and trust everyone there).28Interview with Uwe Kolbe, June 1, 2021. In another anecdote, Kolbe remembered feeling uneasy at a birthday party for Bärbel Bohley when Gerd Poppe made a general remark that “irgendjemand ist doch immer dabei” (someone or other is always one of them [i.e., working with the Stasi]). Because he and his then girlfriend were the only people present who did not know many others at the party, Kolbe (incorrectly) thought Poppe’s comment was directed at him: “Das Fatale in der Situation damals war, ich fühlte mich gemeint … plötzlich fühlte man sich schon angesprochen und dachte ‘Na der Affe!’” (the fatal thing about that situation back then was I felt like he was talking about me … You suddenly felt like you were being addressed and thought “what an idiot!”).29Interview with Uwe Kolbe, June 1, 2021.

A dynamic of uncertainty and suspicion towards a newcomer in a close circle of friends is captured in Moog’s short story “Die Fete” (The Party), which she wrote while she was still in the GDR but was not able to publish until she moved to the West.30Moog, “Die Fete.” Like the texts we explore in chapter 4, the story is permeated with themes of knowledge and secrecy. It paints a picture of a “Truppe von acht, neun Leuten, und wir kennen uns schon ’ne ganze Weile” (troop of eight or nine people, and we’ve known each other a good while).31Moog, “Die Fete,” 5. Moreover, the narrator claims that the friends share a similar mindset: “Ich meine, uns kann keiner was vormachen” (I mean, no-one can pull the wool over our eyes).32Moog, “Die Fete,” 5. However, this coherence and confidence is rattled when one of the friends, Moni, invites a new person, Stefan, to her party, taking pity on him because she sees him hanging around on his own. In contrast to the familiarity of the existing friendship group, Stefan stands out because he does not speak to anyone: “Er war schließlich das erste Mal da und kannte noch keinen richtig” (after all it was his first time being there and he didn’t really know anyone yet).33Moog, “Die Fete,” 9. When he leaves the room to use the bathroom, one friend voices unease and suspicion about Stefan; another claims “daß er’s sogar aus sicherer Quelle wüßte, daß der Verdacht … stimmt. Er hätte’s bloß noch nicht sagen wollen” (that he even knows from a reliable source that the suspicion … is right. He just hadn’t wanted to say anything yet).34Moog, “Die Fete,” 10. At no point is the Stasi named or spoken aloud by the characters but rather referred to implicitly as “die” (them)—just as Kolbe described in his interview. In Moog’s story, a conversation ensues about the signs, based on “rules of thumb” like those we saw in chapter 1, that may or may not be evidence of Stefan’s complicity and the Stasi’s tactics. Ultimately, Stefan is asked to leave the party; the narrator comments, “Irgendwie muß er die Situation aber doch gleich begriffen haben (somehow he must have grasped the situation immediately anyway), pointing to another form of intuitive knowledge, this time on the part of the accused.35Moog, “Die Fete,” 11. After he has left, the friends continue to discuss the importance of retaining a protected private sphere:

According to the Stasi files, Moog read a story fitting this description at a semi-private reading in Magdeburg in late 1982, attended by 60–70 people, which was overheard and (probably) mistitled “Vertrauen” (Trust) by “David Menzer” (Sascha Anderson).38In her interview with Windsor, Moog noted that she had never written a story entitled “Vertrauen” but confirmed that the story mentioned in Anderson’s report was almost certainly “Die Fete.” Interview with Christa Moog, August 25, 2021. In “Menzer’s” dismissive words, the story was about a person “innerhalb eines Freundeskreises” (within a circle of friends) suspected of working for the “Staatssicherheit” (state security) and “drückt in einer unfertigen und dilletantischen Form das Verhältnis zu Außenseitern in einer Gesellschaft aus” (expresses, in an incomplete and dilettantish way, a society’s relationship to outsiders).39Report by IM “David Menzer” on an exhibition in Magdeburg [host’s name redacted], dated December 8, 1982, 48. Interestingly, Moog’s reading also sparked a discussion amongst attendees about the importance of trusting each other and about addressing questions of trust openly. In the context of our study, Moog’s story and the ensuing discussion are not only good examples of how knowledge could be captured and circulated in the form of literary fiction, as we shall see in more detail in chapter 4, but also demonstrate that the relationship between interpersonal knowledge and trust was embedded and explicitly negotiated in everyday interactions and public consciousness.

In Kolbe’s recollection, the extent of mutual suspicion versus mutual trust amongst friends and colleagues depended greatly on the groupings and locations of different underground scenes. If he remained sceptical or cautious in Berlin—whether for personal or political reasons—he claims to have taken a more open approach to the connections and friendships he made in the Dresden scene—“interessanterweise … da bin ich vollkommen vertrauend reingegangen” (in Dresden, interestingly, I went in with complete trust). Kolbe attributed this to the way in which the contacts had come about (“aber das lag auch wieder über die, wie die Kontakte geknüpft worden sind”) suggesting that he had confidence in those relationships that was both instinctive and grounded in prior experience and trust.40Interview with Uwe Kolbe, June 1, 2021. Stötzer recalls her initial contact with Anderson came about through their mutual acquaintance, Ralf Kerbach, and that knowledge circulating in the underground scene about Anderson’s reputation as a non-conformist writer had led her to invite him to Erfurt: “wir wussten, das war im Untergrund so’n bisschn erzählt, der durfte nicht mehr lesen in der Öffentlichkeit, weil er einfach nicht konform geschrieben hat, also haben wir gedacht, wir geben ihm einen Raum und der sollte zur Ausstellungseröffnung von Kerbach lesen” (we knew, that was talked about in the underground scene, he wasn’t allowed to read in public because his writing didn’t conform, so we thought we’d give him a space and he should come to read at the opening of Kerbach’s exhibition.)41Interview with Gabriele Stötzer, June 14, 2021. As we saw in chapter 1, that contact soon turned to personal enmity and not only gave Anderson the opportunity to betray the knowledge he gained about Stötzer and her circles, but also to damage her reputation. However, Stötzer claims that she remained undeterred by Anderson’s attempts to discredit her:

We have seen that the decision to trust always involves a degree of semi-calculated risk-taking and that knowledge gained both intuitively and at second hand often remained unstable and incomplete but nonetheless informed GDR citizens’ negotiation of state surveillance and repression. This was also the case for assumptions made about trustworthiness based on professional reputation and personal contacts. As Misztal writes, “[a] person’s reputation, by shaping our anticipation of what a given type of individual should be, serves as a warrant for trust and as a measure of distanciation.”43Misztal, Trust in Modern Societies, 121. While reputation is certainly “open to manipulation and stereotyping,” Misztal also highlights that both reputation and trust can nevertheless “be seen as important means for reducing the complexity and ambiguity of social reality.”44Misztal, Trust in Modern Societies, 121. In the GDR, the instability of knowledge and potential for Stasi interference exacerbated that ambiguity yet also increased the importance of making assumptions or deductions about people based on reputation and other indicators of trustworthiness in order to navigate the complex realities of social life. The implications of this became especially acute in moments of heightened political tension. In early 1988, during a trip back to East Berlin from his temporary domicile in the West, Kolbe gave what he later called a “flammende Rede” (blazing speech) in the Gethsemanekirche.45Interview with Uwe Kolbe, June 1, 2021. In this speech, Kolbe criticised the GDR leadership and declared his solidarity with members of the group “Frieden und Menschenrechte” (Peace and Human Rights) who had been arrested at the infamous Liebknecht-Luxemburg demonstration on January 17. In doing so, he also pointed, subtly but openly, to the Stasi’s role in quashing vital debate and dissent, calling for “produktive[r] Konflikt anstelle von Rufmord und Staatssicherheitskampagne” (productive conflict in place of slander and state security crusades).46Declaration read in the Gethsemanekirche, Berlin on February 4, 1988, 9. The following day, Kolbe sent a copy of his declaration to the director of the Berlin City Library, Professor Heinz Werner, via a close personal contact who had previously worked with Werner at the library:

Unbeknownst to Kolbe, Professor Werner took possession of Kolbe’s letter and declaration “um die Sicherheitsorgane über deren Inhalt informieren zu können” (in order to inform the security services about their contents).48Information on Uwe Kolbe’s participation in “hostile-negative activities” [undated, Feb. 1988]. Indeed, a preceding memorandum suggests that Werner was probably also IM “Walther” (though the nature of the documentation means this cannot be said with full certainty).49Memorandum from Oberstleutnant Scholz to Gen. Oberst Schenk, dated February 9, 1988. It is clear, however, that Werner was prepared to inform his superiors in the Berlin municipality about this issue and that the documents ultimately landed with the MfS.50Information on Uwe Kolbe’s participation in “hostile-negative activities” [undated, Feb. 1988]. In its own documentation, the MfS surmised that Kolbe’s trust was partly based on his knowledge of Werner’s long-standing contact with a correspondent of the West German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) and with several diplomats at the “Ständige Vertretung” (Permanent Representation) of the Federal Republic in the GDR: “Möglicherweise zog daraus Kolbe die Schlußfolgerung, daß er durch Prof. W. die von ihm erhoffte Rückversicherung erwarten kann (It is possible that’s why Kolbe came to the conclusion that he could expect to receive the counter-insurance from Prof. W. he was hoping for).51Information on Uwe Kolbe’s participation in “hostile-negative activities” [undated, Feb. 1988]. Elsewhere, the MfS stated that Kolbe believed he would receive “gewisses Verständnis” (a degree of understanding) from “IM ‘Walther’ wegen dessen Liberalismus und der ihm bekannten Verbindungen (StV und FAZ-Korrespondent)” (because of the latter’s liberalism and known contacts [Permanent Representation and FAZ-correspondent].52Memorandum from Oberstleutnant Scholz to Gen. Oberst Schenk, dated February 9, 1988. In this sense, it seems that political reputation and social capital associated with particular networks and affiliations also played into Kolbe’s expectations of Werner’s trustworthiness. His mis-deciphering of Werner’s trustworthiness appears to have been shaped not simply by a lack of knowledge but also by certain “preconceptions” (or rules of thumb) which led him to misinterpret the “reputational information”53Misztal, Trust in Modern Societies, 126. he had at his disposal with regard to Professor Werner. As a result, Werner’s western contacts and their personal connection seemed to weigh more in Kolbe’s judgement than the likelihood of his connection with the MfS through his role as director of the city library. This, in turn, affected the nature of the knowledge Kolbe had shared on the basis of that presumed relationship of trust: Kolbe had entrusted his speech to Werner as a means of spreading knowledge about the repressive East German state. Moreover, by asking him to release the declaration and accompanying information of the backlash its author was expecting to face, Kolbe had also assumed that Werner would support his open confrontation with the state, something we will discuss in more detail in chapter 3. However, in Werner’s hands, the declaration remained incriminating evidence of Kolbe’s (perceived) dissidence.