Conclusion Knowledge as Resistance—Revealing the Public Secret

In almost all cases, we see that this knowledge is fragile, partial, uncertain and—as revealed after the Wende—sometimes simply wrong. The authors we interviewed frequently admitted that they suspected and trusted the wrong people. Nonetheless, this partial knowledge was crucial for the very ability of the “Szene” (scene) and other oppositional groupings to function as such; for networks of individuals critical of the state to emerge despite the widespread (justified) paranoia that was the result of living in the panopticon. In such a context, trust is crucial—those in the underground needed to trust one another even when they could never know for sure that such trust was well-placed. Heuristic and second-hand knowledge underpinned that trust, which in turn made resistance and “countersurveillance” possible. Knowledge—however uncertain—allowed critical writers to assert a small amount of power over one of the most powerful organs of the authoritarian state. It allowed them to call out the public secret of the Stasi’s presence by addressing them directly, bringing them coffee, sending them champagne, ridiculing them, taking legal action against them, and—of course—writing about them. The acquisition of knowledge then became a form of resistance that is based on revelation.

In Wagner’s “Stube und der Herr,” the “Herr” describes secrecy as being the root of every dictatorship:

We noted in the Introduction to this book the role that secrets—and “public secrets”—play in society, creating insiders and outsiders, those “in the know” and those who are excluded. In this way, secrecy—especially the “public secret”—is also closely connected to power. Taussig cites Elias Canetti’s dictum that “‘secrecy lies at the very core of power’” and Foucault’s analysis in History of Sexuality that secrecy is indispensable to the operation of power.2Taussig, Defacement, 57. In his analysis of “secret societies,” Georg Simmel sees these as emerging especially in contexts of “public unfreedom, of a policy of police regulation, of police oppression” and as appearing dangerous for those in power precisely because of its secrecy.3Simmel, “The Sociology of Secrecy,” 483. The extensive observation of and efforts to control critical intellectuals operating in the East German underground scenes of the 1980s suggests that the Stasi saw these groupings as a “secret society” in Simmel’s terms. Using their own secret means, the Stasi sought to uncover their membership, actions, motives and intentions with the aim of dissolving the perceived threat that these critical intellectuals represented.

And yet, despite the central role secrecy played in their lives, our analysis in this book demonstrates that the subjects of Stasi observation were, in fact, less interested in secrecy than in knowledge and revelation. Of course, that does not mean they did not have secrets—secrets designed to protect those operating in a way that put them at risk of arrest, secret manuscripts that were shared with only a very small group (or not at all), and secrets about their personal lives that they wanted to keep to themselves. A very particular group in the “scene”—the informants—had secrets that they kept from friends and colleagues but shared with the Stasi. Nonetheless, as this book has shown, critical intellectuals in the GDR knew only too well that their operations were not secret, that the Stasi infiltrated events and friendship groups, intercepted post, and stole unpublished manuscripts or made recordings of readings from them. They saw value in gathering and sharing knowledge about the Stasi’s operations. This knowledge—partial, fragmented, and created and disseminated within the specific social context—allowed them to trust when trust should not have been possible and supported counter- and sousveillance.

Countersurveillance, which we have described as a form of agency, was thus frequently centred on the revelation of the secret: as Kolbe described in the interview with Windsor, the effect of saying “Guck mal, die da” (look at them over there) was to diminish the threat that the Stasi represented.4Interview with Uwe Kolbe, June 1, 2021. The forms of agency described in this book are different expressions of “look at them over there”—from the casual pointing towards the Stasi officers present at a reading, to the decision to take the MfS to court. The artistic output of these critical intellectuals, including their literary fiction, is a particular mode of saying “look at them over there.” It is one that can create alternative worlds, condense experience into its core components that can reveal knowledge not only about the GDR, but also create “standards of representation” that give the reader insight into secrecy, paranoia, resistance, oppression, and dictatorial control beyond the immediate context in which the text was written.5Gibson, Fiction and the Weave of Life, 79. As we saw in chapter 4, critical writers also used their literary fiction to explore the concepts of secrecy and knowledge and the complex entanglement of revelation and concealment. We see the construction and circulation of partial, unreliable, intuitive knowledge described in the interview material reflected in the attempts of literary characters to navigate worlds dominated by secret police control. The type of knowledge conveyed by these texts was determined and transformed by the situation and scale of the readership they reached. The political context(s) in which they circulated and the audience’s familiarity with codes and reading practices, whether in East or West, affected the revelatory potential of literary fiction.

In Discipline and Punish, Foucault shows how knowledge and power are interconnected, forming the foundation of modern “disciplinary” systems—illustrated through the panopticon—the effects of which we have explored in chapter 3.6Foucault, Discipline and Punish. What we see in this book is a different kind of intertwining of knowledge and power, a power that is exerted through revelation. Critical intellectuals produced and circulated knowledge about the secret police and revealed it in different forums and through different media—from the literary reading to the literary text. In this way, these writers used what Taussig describes (following Canetti) as the “explosive” potential of revelation to resist the power of the public secret.7Taussig, Defacement, 57. That revelation could, however, only ever be partial. The Stasi never had complete access to all aspects of an individual’s life; however, the knowledge they gathered through extensive observation and the infiltration of “trustworthy” informants, meant that the MfS had more, and more reliable, knowledge about those they were observing than those subjects could ever have expected to have on the secret police. The knowledge produced by the Stasi was moreover recorded in minute detail, creating an archive that, as Jeffrey Wallen puts it, “incarnates a potential knowledge that exceeds our own” and “generates the suspicion that someone or something knows us better than we know ourselves.”8Wallen, “Narrative Tensions,” 270.

Before the collapse of the SED regime in 1989, the end of the GDR in 1990, and the opening of the Stasi files in 1992, the efforts of critical intellectuals to usurp the power of secrecy through revelation was incomplete. There was so much they did not know, or could not know for certain, and the archive’s knowledge surely exceeded their own. In this sense, we can see the drive after the Wende to make fully public the content of the Stasi files as a continuation of the practice of using knowl­edge and revelation as a form of resistance. Numerous critical intellectuals have published excerpts from the files as compilations (e.g., Reiner Kunze’s Deckname “Lyrik,” 1990; Erich Loest, Der Zorn des Schafes (The Wrath of the Sheep, 1990), integrated into short essays (e.g., in the various contributions to the StasiSachen volumes edited by Andreas Mytze, 1991–1996), or even interwoven into lengthier autobiographical works (e.g., Günter Kunert, Erwachsenenspiele (Games for Adults), 1997; Jürgen Fuchs, Magdalena, 1998).9Kunze, Deckname “Lyrik”; Mytze, StasiSachen 1–6; Kunert, Erwachsenenspiele; Fuchs, Magdalena. In a very early example, Stefan Heym reproduces in his 1988 autobiography Nachruf excerpts from the Stasi files that he found dropped (presumably) accidentally outside of his house.10Heym, Nachruf, 807–10.

As we saw in the Introduction, Lutz Rathenow describes this drive towards “radikale Offenlegung” (radical revelation) as being the only way of banishing the “Zombie Staatssicherheit” (Stasi zombie) to the “Reich der Geschichte” (realm of history) once and for all.11Rathenow, “Akteneinsicht als Therapie,” 94. Rathenow’s description suggests an assertion of power, a final act to destroy the hold that the Stasi—and the public secret that they represented—had over the lives of these individuals. That final victory can only take place through a radical act of countersurveillance, the radical revelation of the knowledge, the “true secret,” that the Stasi wanted to keep concealed. Barbara Miller notes that many victims of the Stasi had an ambivalent relationship with the files but hoped that they might be able to help them reconstruct the past—that is fill in gaps in their knowledge about what had happened to them and why.12Miller, “‘Wiederaneignung der eigenen Biographie,’” 372.

Several of the authors who are the focus of this study also turned to the Stasi files after unification. How they recount this experience demonstrates the impact of this final act of revelation. Together with a group of women from her artistic and feminist circles, Gabriele Stötzer was involved in the occupation of the Stasi headquarters and archive in Erfurt in December 1989, describing the occupiers’ decision as being based on a view that the files were the property of the people about whom they had been compiled. Stötzer saw this both as a collective undertaking and as a kind of personal revelation and calling: “Und ich hab da wirklich wie so’n Licht gesehen, das Licht des Knastes, das kam irgendwie auf mich zu und da dachte ich, die [the other women] sind bei mir wegen der Magie, ne?” (And I really saw a kind of light, the light of prison, that was something heading my way and I thought, they [the other women] are here because of something magic, right?).13Interview with Gabriele Stötzer, June 14, 2021. In that context, Stötzer accompanied the other women as someone with knowledge of the Stasi and the very building they wanted to occupy: “Ich war schonmal drinne, wo die rein wollten … ich war ja Knastologin in dem Moment” (I’d already been inside the place where they wanted to go … in that moment I was a jailbird.)14Interview with Gabriele Stötzer, June 14, 2021. In the interview with Windsor, she states that she decided she could not, however, work for the Stasi Records Authority in the immediate post-Wende period, because they demanded a declaration of continued secrecy, which she was not prepared to give—for her, this should be a moment of revelation, not further concealment.15Interview with Gabriele Stötzer, June 14, 2021.

Indeed, in her introduction to Der lange Arm der Stasi, Stötzer indicates the satisfaction she eventually gained from accessing, and revealing, the files:

Our interviewees describe being able to piece together aspects of their lives that had remained hidden before the opening of the files. We have seen in chapter 1 that Kolbe did not get confirmation of his suspicions about his father until the opening of the files (however incomplete). Wagner describes the files as providing structure and chronology to his memory of the attempted recruitment.19Wagner, “Stasi-Gift,” 8. Moog recalls her attempt to leave the GDR through an (arranged) marriage with a British citizen living in Paris. She did not know until the opening of the files why the approval for her to leave the GDR was not granted for four years, a period she describes as one of the hardest of her life. The files reveal to her that it was the Stasi who blocked the process, refusing to grant approval while the Operativer Vorgang against her remained open: “Das erfuhr ich eigentlich nicht. Ich wusste nicht. Also, wie gesagt, also die Zusammenhänge hab’ ich erst im Nachhinein aus der Stasi-Akte erfahren” (I didn’t actually find out. I didn’t know. So, as I said, I only learnt about the connections afterwards from the Stasi file).20Interview with Christa Moog, August 25, 2021. The files reveal that there were multiple plans to arrest Maaß—something he continually feared. The files show why these were not followed through, that is, owing to fear of unmasking the Stasi’s “wichtigsten ‘Agenten’ Sascha Anderson” (most important “agent” Sascha Anderson).21Böthig, “Vorbemerkung,” in Sprachzeiten, 8. In his interview with Windsor, Maaß adds that Anderson’s betrayal resulted in an archive of recordings and documentation of the scene that would not otherwise exist: “Sascha Anderson [hat] seine Freunde, unseren Freundeskreis, an die Stasi ausgeliefert und verraten. Gleichzeitig hat er ein Stück dieses Lebens dokumentiert und diese Dokumentation erweist sich jetzt als wertvoll” (Sascha Anderson handed over his friends, our circle of friends, to the Stasi and betrayed them. At the same time, he documented a part of this life, and this documentation is now proving to be valuable).22Interview with Ekkehard Maaß, July 30, 2021.

However, the experience of revelation can also be a painful one. In “Stube und der Herr,” Wagner’s fictional “Herr” describes the files as a kind of poison: “Jetzt nachdem ich die Akten durchgelesen habe, fühle ich mein Leben von Akten, Wanzen und Kanzlisten vergiftet” (now that I’ve read through the files, I feel my life has been poisoned by files, bugs and administrators).23Wagner, “Stube und der Herr,” 295. In her interview with Windsor, Bettina Wegner describes the files as contaminated and touching them as giving her the feeling of being unclean:

The poison and contamination of the files can also come from another quarter, that is, the certainty that they appear to provide about individuals, which has the potential to undo the bonds of trust founded on uncertain knowledge. We have seen in chapter 2 Wegner’s anger over the trusted friend who was revealed to be an IM, as well as Kolbe’s discovery that Peter Mugay, a close family friend, had spied on him as IM “Albert.”25In Kolbe’s interview with Windsor and his essay about Mugay in StasiSachen, he implies he began receiving ominous silent phone calls after Mugay’s outing as a former IM, pointing towards an insidious “Nachleben” (afterlife) of paranoia and mistrust following these revelations. Interview with Uwe Kolbe, June 1, 2021, and “Uwe Kolbe über IM Albert alias Peter Mugay,” in Mytze, StasiSachen 6, 35. Maaß describes his emotions at discovering the extent of Anderson’s complicity, which was revealed only by the files and not by Anderson himself. Referring to Anderson’s 2002 autobiography, Sascha Anderson, Maaß describes the files as “ehrlicher als das Buch von Anderson” (more honest than Anderson’s book), adding “seine Arbeit für die Stasi war schlimmer als Verrat” (his work for the Stasi was worse than betrayal).26Maaß, “Ein Betroffener über die Stasi-Mitarbeit von Sascha Anderson,” 142. Beyond the authors that are the focus of this book, we find accounts of critical intellectuals who discovered that those closest to them had been informants. Examples include Susanne Schädlich’s description of the impact of discovering that her uncle (Karlheinz Schädlich) had been an informant and his subsequent suicide (Immer wieder Dezember (Always December Again), 2009),27Schädlich, Immer wieder Dezember. and Vera Wollenberger’s (now Lengsfeld) moving account of finding out that her husband Knut Wollenberger had been working for the Stasi. Wollenberger notes laconically: “Ich habe einen Mann verloren, der nie mein Mann war” (I lost a husband, who was never my husband). The title of Wollenberger’s text “Eine zweite Vergewaltigung” (A Second Rape) points towards the emotional impact of the discovery, which Wollenberger states she was nonetheless glad she made.28Wollenberger, “Eine zweite Vergewaltigung.”

On the other hand, the presumed certainty of the files could not always prevent the “Stasi zombie” from destroying relationships beyond the existence of the ministry that had created it. Wegner describes how Schlesinger gained early access to the files because a rumour was circulating that he had been an IM—we might recall from chapter 1 that this was a rumour that the Stasi deliberately put into circulation before the Wende. After the Wende, this rumour was—Wegner reports—affecting Schlesinger’s work and causing him to receive cancellations for readings. Wegner describes her disappointment particularly at Sarah Kirsch, a long-standing friend, who did not call Schlesinger to ask if the rumours were true but instead cut off all contact. When Wegner called to confront her, she hung up. Wegner notes: “Also, da hat die Stasi noch ihre Wünsche erfüllt gekriegt, nachdem sie schon nich’ mehr das Ministerium hatten” (well, the Stasi still got their wishes granted after they no longer had the ministry).29Interview with Bettina Wegner, August 23, 2021.

Indeed, opening and publishing the Stasi files may have been a radical act of revelation and a final act of resistance. However, it did not end the epistemic injustice experienced by victims of Stasi persecution: epistemic injustice is understood here to mean the marginalisation of these individuals as knowing subjects and failure to recognise their knowledge systems as valid.30See Fricker, Epistemic Injustice; Mitova, “Decolonising Knowledge Here and Now.” Even with the destruction of the organisation that compiled them, the files still presented an alien “hostile” version of the self that—as Lewis notes—often did not correspond to the memories of those affected.31Lewis, “Reading and Writing the Stasi File.” In Archive Fever, Derrida describes the archive as a “place of consignation,” whose structure codetermines the “archivable meaning.”32Derrida, Archive Fever, 18. Jones has explored the disjuncture between lived memory (what Derrida refers to as mnémé or anamenesis) and the externalised memory of the archive, which will always be fixed at the time of writing and through the hostile gaze of the Stasi.33Jones, The Media of Testimony, 72.

And yet, as noted above, many authors felt compelled to integrate this hostile gaze into their literary fiction and non-fiction after unification, and all the authors we interviewed referred to the files in their account of their lives in the GDR, even before being prompted to do so. We recall Wallen’s observation of the archive “as a haunting presence for all autobiography,” that makes us fear loss of control over our own accounts of self.34Wallen, “Narrative Tensions,” 270. In this context, Wagner’s “Herr” asserts:

These literary acts of resistance take many forms. Kolbe, for instance, has referred to his 2014 autobiographically inspired novel Die Lüge36Kolbe, Die Lüge.—which presents a father-son story set in an unnamed but recognizable authoritarian state—as “eine erfundene Erinnerung—oder erinnerte Erfindung” (a fabricated memory or a remembered fabrication).37Dotzauer, “Uwe Kolbes Roman ‘Die Lüge.’” In the interview with Windsor, Kolbe noted that he spent a year and a half researching his father’s story, including at the Stasi Records Office, but ultimately discarded the archival material he had collected and decided against using it in his book—an act of casting off that refuses to grant authority to the files.38Interview with Uwe Kolbe, June 1, 2021. In addition to her documentary book Der lange Arm der Stasi, Stötzer’s post-Wende writings include her 2002 literary memoir Die bröckelnde Festung about her experiences in Hoheneck.39Stötzer, Die bröckelnde Festung. The text does not include a genre attribution, but is described by one reviewer as a “literarischer Erfahrungsbericht”40Hillauer, “Zeit hinter Mauern.” (literary report on experience) and is a recognizable reworking of her testimonial text “Dabei sein und nicht Schweigen.”41Stötzer also noted in her interview with Windsor that she had written a book based on her prison notes. As we noted in chapter 3, that original text was composed primarily using the impersonal third-person pronoun “man.” In Die brö­ckelnde Festung, Stötzer shifts to the more personal, but nonetheless somewhat distanced, third-person “sie.” In doing this, she asserts the memories and experiences that she had already committed to paper, but which could only circulate clandestinely, and claims them for an unnamed female prisoner-protagonist. Finally, the establishment of the Archiv unterdrückter Literatur at the Bundesstiftung Aufarbeitung—which houses numerous unpublished manuscripts, some of which were retrieved from the Stasi files—and the publication of the series “Die Verschwiegene Bibliothek”—including works by Stötzer, Krolkiewicz and many others—can be seen as literary counter-archives that give belated resonance to writers and works deemed dangerous by the Stasi.42Geipel and Walther, Gesperrte Ablage; Neteler, “Die ‘Verschwiegene Bibliothek.’” In this sense, it is the creation and revelation of other worlds, the representation of knowledge and experience in literary form, and the reception of that knowledge by a new “adequate reader” in the united Germany that is needed to finally achieve epistemic justice for those persecuted by the Stasi.