Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
London : Granta, 2003.
Description
A book of travel, history and biography that reads like a documentary novel. Anna Funder tells astonishing stories from the underbelly of the former East Germany. As her narrative builds, Stasiland records heartbreaking tales of bravery and betrayal, of suffering and stoicism amid the daily chaos.
Media reviews
While the life-stories are touching and infuriating, she fails to offer insights that would have given her book a wider theme. Nevertheless, taken with a pinch of salt, Stasiland is worth reading. In the end, German history is too serious to be left solely to the Germans.
User reviews
LibraryThing member John
Theodore Dalrymple referred to Stasiland in an article on how appreciating the value of having a precious freedom requires that we must understand what it is to lose it. This book certainly does that. Funder is an Australian, who learned German, and who became fascinated with life in the GDR,
The sheer bulk of machinery, of effort and resources that went into internal control is staggering:
"At the end, the Stasi had 97,000 employees–more than enough to oversee a country of seventeen million people. But it also had over 173,000 informers among the population. In Hitler's Third Reich it is estimated that there was one Gestapo agent for every 2000 citizens, and in Stalin's USSR there was one KGB agent for every 5830 people. In the GDR, there was one Stasi officer or informant for every sixty-three people. If part-time informers are included some estimates have the ratio as high as one informer for every 6.5 citizens".
In this atmosphere, no one knew whom to trust, and people had to live a weirdly schizophrenic life where they had to publically acknowledge known fictions as facts, and they had to continually tread a line between seeing things for what they were in the GDR, and ignoring these realities, in order to stay sane. People had to live "in a relation of unspoken hostility but outward compliance to the state".
A young woman, bright, committed and energetic has her life ruined because of a youthful indiscretion that sees her denied education and training, harried and imprisoned as is her husband who dies, or is killed, while in custody of the Stasi. Another woman is separated from her baby when the Wall goes up because she had to travel to western Berlin for the medical treatment and medicines that were not available in the east, and she opts to leave her baby to be raised in the western hospital rather than have him die with her in east Berlin. It is these individual stories that bring home the horror of the omnipresent police state and the persecution of people who otherwise would, given a chance and some openness, have probably been loyal members of society. But chance and openness are exactly what the state cannot afford, especially when every one of its citizens is seen as a potential, even probable, enemy.
(March/06)
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behind the Berlin Wall. She talked to a wide range of people, including former Stasi members: "I'm making portraits of people, East Germans, of whom there will be non left in a generation. And I'm painting a picture of a city on the old fault-line of east and west. This is working against forgetting, and against time". Some undoubtedly would like to forget, some pine to return to the good old days, others bear the scars of ruined personal and professional lives that the downfall of the wall did not, and could not, simply wipe away. The sheer bulk of machinery, of effort and resources that went into internal control is staggering:
"At the end, the Stasi had 97,000 employees–more than enough to oversee a country of seventeen million people. But it also had over 173,000 informers among the population. In Hitler's Third Reich it is estimated that there was one Gestapo agent for every 2000 citizens, and in Stalin's USSR there was one KGB agent for every 5830 people. In the GDR, there was one Stasi officer or informant for every sixty-three people. If part-time informers are included some estimates have the ratio as high as one informer for every 6.5 citizens".
In this atmosphere, no one knew whom to trust, and people had to live a weirdly schizophrenic life where they had to publically acknowledge known fictions as facts, and they had to continually tread a line between seeing things for what they were in the GDR, and ignoring these realities, in order to stay sane. People had to live "in a relation of unspoken hostility but outward compliance to the state".
A young woman, bright, committed and energetic has her life ruined because of a youthful indiscretion that sees her denied education and training, harried and imprisoned as is her husband who dies, or is killed, while in custody of the Stasi. Another woman is separated from her baby when the Wall goes up because she had to travel to western Berlin for the medical treatment and medicines that were not available in the east, and she opts to leave her baby to be raised in the western hospital rather than have him die with her in east Berlin. It is these individual stories that bring home the horror of the omnipresent police state and the persecution of people who otherwise would, given a chance and some openness, have probably been loyal members of society. But chance and openness are exactly what the state cannot afford, especially when every one of its citizens is seen as a potential, even probable, enemy.
(March/06)
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LibraryThing member thorold
An interesting book, probably well worth a look if you don't know anything about the former DDR, but written in an irritatingly journalistic, confessional style. The case histories of former Stasi members and the ordinary people who got caught up in their system and were damaged by it are gripping
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and well told. Unfortunately, there are all too many people with such stories to tell, as anyone who has friends or colleagues from the "neue Bundesländer" (or indeed anyone who occasionally glances at the Spiegel or German TV) can confirm. Ms Funder apparently couldn't find enough of them to make a book, however, so we also get a great deal of tedious padding here about "my adventures as an Australian reporter in Berlin". Possibly interesting if you're an Australian reader who's never been to Europe and needs help imagining what Berlin looks like, but the rest of us really don't need to be told ad nauseam about drunks sitting on park benches or plastic bags hanging in trees. Show Less
LibraryThing member BedlamGuest79
Interesting book. However, I could not stand the patronizing tone of Anna Funder as she judges everyone she meets. The chapters about her landlady are quite upsetting: as the landlady seems to suggest that not everything was bad about GDR and not everything is good about unified Germany, Funder
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treats her like a mental case. She could have picked up on this controversy/ambiguity but she choses to dismiss the landlady as a slightly dotty lost soul. Show Less
LibraryThing member ZeljanaMaricFerli
For anyone familiar with the topic, this book will most likely not reveal anything new. Still, as a person interested in GDR I thought it was an entertaining read. Some parts that describe author's experience felt really unnecessary, and they did not add anything to the story.
On a more positive
On a more positive
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note, the main reason why this book is worth reading is the message against totalitarianism and its destructive power it has long after it officially ceases to exist. It shows that the effect of propaganda is sometimes impossible to be undone. And we are all victims of it, no matter how much we believe we are resistant to it. Sometimes this is true even if we are the victims. Show Less
LibraryThing member jmchshannon
There are few defining historical moments in one’s life – the type that sears itself on one’s memory so that one can always remember where one was or what one was doing when the moment occurred. For me, the fall of the Berlin Wall was one of those moments. Coming home from school, I first
In 1993, I was lucky enough to visit Germany as part of a student program, during which a two-day stop in Berlin was part of the itinerary. Four years after the fall of the Wall, there was still a marked difference between the East and the West. The desolation, the starkness of the architecture, the creep factor of the death zones, which could still be seen even though the Wall was all but gone – these left indelible memories. Part of the tour was through the former Checkpoint Charlie, which at that point was already set up as a tourist destination. There is something exceedingly disturbing about the boom gates, the tanks, and the passport office required that was required to visit another part of the city.
In college, one of my German professors was from East Germany. I used to bombard him with questions about life in the former GDR (Democratic Republic of Germany, or the official name of the country), changes he has seen, his opinions on the German socialist regime versus the new capitalistic one. We would argue/debate about the merits of capitalism and democracy quite frequently. At the time, being the young college know-it-all, I chalked up his opinions to being deluded and considered him a brainwashed fool to think that the East was better than the West.
I mention these stories because they all played a part in the reason why I chose to read Stasiland. Interestingly, much of what I had seen with my own eyes and experienced through the debates with my professor so many years ago was corroborated in the stories Anna Funder shares. There is no denying that there were definite drawbacks to living in the GDR. The stories about Stasi infiltration/observation, the net of informers, and their interrogation/intimidation tactics are absolutely horrifying. Yet, to deem the GDR an unmitigated failure is not accurate either. The sense of complete loss and abandonment that people still felt years after its end indicates a regime that was successfully working on some levels.
As one would expect, many of the stories that are shared within the pages of Stasiland will get one’s Western blood boiling. One in 50 East Germans informing on friends, neighbors, and family. Horrific interrogation tactics that border on the medieval. Intimidation and bribery tactics that include threats to family, to careers, to freedom. Being able to look at the West and its wealth of riches and know that to even attempt to try to reach it would mean incarceration at a minimum and possible death. This was life in the GDR.
However, for every horror story Ms. Funder shares, there are also stories of tremendous strength, courage as well as complaisance and acceptance. The sixteen-year-old girl who fails to capitulate even after she was imprisoned for trying to escape. The mother who tearfully chooses between being reunited with her son for a day versus betraying a friend in the West. A rock band that refuses to amend its politically charged lyrics after direct orders and threats to do so. There are also the stories of everyday existence, of those who did not necessarily oppose life in the GDR. They recognized its shortcomings but were not interested in leaving or surreptitiously protesting. Ms. Funder does an excellent job presenting a very fair view of life in the East.
Stasiland highlights the positives and negatives of life in East Berlin as a microcosm for life in East Germany. There are the stories that bring a reader to tears, with its elements of loss and ignorance of civil rights. There are also stories that cause a reader to pause and reevaluate one’s perception of life in the East. Throughout it all, Ms. Funder maintains a sense of wonder not only at the existence of such a regime and especially of the Wall but also at the quick destruction of almost everything related to the regime after the unification of Germany in 1990. As Ms. Funder found, something that pervasive cannot be swept under the rug or sanitized without causing mental anguish to former citizens regardless of their feelings for the regime itself. East Germany is a topic that does not generate much historical discussion, but as Ms. Funder found, it continues to be a part of the German identification process and the ramifications of its governing policies still pervade the German culture, making this a topic that should not be ignored but should continue to be studied. Stasiland is an excellent first step.
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caught a glimpse of this historic event while trying to get my daily fix of Jeopardy. I was transfixed by the site of the people swarming the Wall on both sides, taking pick-axes to it, helping each other over it and just standing there and celebrating. It was a visually thrilling and life-altering image because it is what started me down the path of studying German.In 1993, I was lucky enough to visit Germany as part of a student program, during which a two-day stop in Berlin was part of the itinerary. Four years after the fall of the Wall, there was still a marked difference between the East and the West. The desolation, the starkness of the architecture, the creep factor of the death zones, which could still be seen even though the Wall was all but gone – these left indelible memories. Part of the tour was through the former Checkpoint Charlie, which at that point was already set up as a tourist destination. There is something exceedingly disturbing about the boom gates, the tanks, and the passport office required that was required to visit another part of the city.
In college, one of my German professors was from East Germany. I used to bombard him with questions about life in the former GDR (Democratic Republic of Germany, or the official name of the country), changes he has seen, his opinions on the German socialist regime versus the new capitalistic one. We would argue/debate about the merits of capitalism and democracy quite frequently. At the time, being the young college know-it-all, I chalked up his opinions to being deluded and considered him a brainwashed fool to think that the East was better than the West.
I mention these stories because they all played a part in the reason why I chose to read Stasiland. Interestingly, much of what I had seen with my own eyes and experienced through the debates with my professor so many years ago was corroborated in the stories Anna Funder shares. There is no denying that there were definite drawbacks to living in the GDR. The stories about Stasi infiltration/observation, the net of informers, and their interrogation/intimidation tactics are absolutely horrifying. Yet, to deem the GDR an unmitigated failure is not accurate either. The sense of complete loss and abandonment that people still felt years after its end indicates a regime that was successfully working on some levels.
As one would expect, many of the stories that are shared within the pages of Stasiland will get one’s Western blood boiling. One in 50 East Germans informing on friends, neighbors, and family. Horrific interrogation tactics that border on the medieval. Intimidation and bribery tactics that include threats to family, to careers, to freedom. Being able to look at the West and its wealth of riches and know that to even attempt to try to reach it would mean incarceration at a minimum and possible death. This was life in the GDR.
However, for every horror story Ms. Funder shares, there are also stories of tremendous strength, courage as well as complaisance and acceptance. The sixteen-year-old girl who fails to capitulate even after she was imprisoned for trying to escape. The mother who tearfully chooses between being reunited with her son for a day versus betraying a friend in the West. A rock band that refuses to amend its politically charged lyrics after direct orders and threats to do so. There are also the stories of everyday existence, of those who did not necessarily oppose life in the GDR. They recognized its shortcomings but were not interested in leaving or surreptitiously protesting. Ms. Funder does an excellent job presenting a very fair view of life in the East.
Stasiland highlights the positives and negatives of life in East Berlin as a microcosm for life in East Germany. There are the stories that bring a reader to tears, with its elements of loss and ignorance of civil rights. There are also stories that cause a reader to pause and reevaluate one’s perception of life in the East. Throughout it all, Ms. Funder maintains a sense of wonder not only at the existence of such a regime and especially of the Wall but also at the quick destruction of almost everything related to the regime after the unification of Germany in 1990. As Ms. Funder found, something that pervasive cannot be swept under the rug or sanitized without causing mental anguish to former citizens regardless of their feelings for the regime itself. East Germany is a topic that does not generate much historical discussion, but as Ms. Funder found, it continues to be a part of the German identification process and the ramifications of its governing policies still pervade the German culture, making this a topic that should not be ignored but should continue to be studied. Stasiland is an excellent first step.
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LibraryThing member tandah
'Stasiland' creeps up on you - and then it grips and shakes you and changes your view of history, and of the world. I hear given the massive political upheavals across the globe; there is a renewed interest in the fictional '1984'. I would encourage people instead to pick up the factual
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'Stasiland'. I like its contemporised account of the GDR, its non-fictionalised story-telling, and the author's emerging insights. A friend told me that it's on school reading lists in Germany, I think it might be a useful on school reading lists anywhere in the western world. Show Less
LibraryThing member nittnut
I mostly enjoyed this look at East Germany in the decade after the wall came down. It was especially interesting to me because I remember watching all the events leading to the fall of the GDR unfold. I even have an authentic piece of the wall a college friend brought me from his trip to Germany in
Funder shares stories of people who were persecuted by the Stasi, and stories of people who worked for the Stasi. The stories are really interesting, and it is clear that Funder has the ability to create trust with those she interviewed, as well as the ability to communicate the stories with all their emotion and pathos to the reader. A couple of things bothered me. One was that this is someone not only from the West, but not even from Germany doing the writing, and so, in a way, it's really a research project. I was also a little troubled by the judgmental tone that occasionally came across in the writing. The style is journalistic, but easy to read, and if you're interested in the subject, it's worth your time.
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the summer of 1990. He swears he chipped it off himself, lol. I was interested to read more about ordinary people from the East and their experiences. Funder shares stories of people who were persecuted by the Stasi, and stories of people who worked for the Stasi. The stories are really interesting, and it is clear that Funder has the ability to create trust with those she interviewed, as well as the ability to communicate the stories with all their emotion and pathos to the reader. A couple of things bothered me. One was that this is someone not only from the West, but not even from Germany doing the writing, and so, in a way, it's really a research project. I was also a little troubled by the judgmental tone that occasionally came across in the writing. The style is journalistic, but easy to read, and if you're interested in the subject, it's worth your time.
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LibraryThing member ascapola
A powerful investigation, told in a novelistic style that captures experiences of victims and operaties of the Stasi security service in the former GDR.
LibraryThing member Amzzz
A collection of true stories that are unimaginable to a 21 year old living in Australia. The stories that Funder tells, weaving them into her own narrative, give a personal insight into life in the DDR, particularly those who came into contact with the infamous Stasi.
LibraryThing member anthrofashion
"What a wonderful world" It is very hard to understand how on earth this regime lasted for so m any years. The bosses in Stasi wanted a wonderful world, but no person could argue with them. This book show what happened to those who dared to say something. Funder gives us the picture painted by the
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regular young adults. We are taken on a trip to fiknd out what the real desteny of a husband was, we are shaken. This story is rougher than any fiction novel. It is the real world at it´s worst. Show Less
LibraryThing member manatree
An interesting look at the Communist regime of the DDR, of which people are forget and sweep under the rug of time. My only complaint is that it is written like a journalistic feature rather than a typical academic book wth the usual notes and citations.
LibraryThing member verenka
I quite liked the book. Sure it's unusual for an Austrian to read an english book by an Australian about the GDR. German books about the GDR assume a lot of knowledge about the country, the system, etc. and since I was only 9 when the wall came down I didn't know a lot about the GDR.
The book
The book
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explains a lot and contains an interesting mix of information on the GDR and reunited Germany and particularly Berlin in the nineties as experienced by the author herself. Show Less
LibraryThing member dr_zirk
Anna Funder's Stasiland is an excellent piece of non-fiction, successfully balancing a straight recitation of historical facts with frequent diversions to explore the stories of those who either worked for the Stasi, informed for the Stasi, or were victims of the Statsi. The complex social
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structure of the GDR meant that there were few obvious moral choices, and the willingness to plumb this particular depth is the strength of this book. Funder manages to unearth a couple of real heroes, but the exploration of their complete stories makes for no easy victories - in the end, in the world's most effective police state, all citizens were losers. Show Less
LibraryThing member mountie9
The Good Stuff
Fascinating and brutally honest
Learned so much interesting historical information that I am sad to say I never knew
Funder's style of writing is very unique and personal
Disturbing that these events happened and the people of East Germany had to live under these conditions
Many sides of
Very raw and vivid - no sanitizing of stories to make them more palatable - real and honest
Author has obvious respect and compassion for her interview subjects
Author extremely observant about minute details that can often tell a story (eg mannerisms,
tone of voice)
Some wonderful stories of resistance, sacrifice and bravery by ordinary people
The Not So Good Stuff
Quite depressing at times, I felt myself never wanting to visit Germany at all
So heartbreakingly sad and horrific that I had to keep putting it down
Some further readings would be nice
Favorite Quotes/Passages
"I can only describe it as horror-romance. It's a dumb feeling, but I don't want to shake it. The romance comes from the dream of a better world that the German Communists wanted to build out of the ashes of their Nazi past; from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. The horror comes from what they did in its name."
"We laugh at the improbability of it, of someone barely more than a child poking about in Beatrix Potter's garden by the wall, watching out for Mr McGregor and his blunderbuss, and lookng for a step-ladder to scale one of the most fortified borders on earth. We both like the girl shew was, and I like the women she has become."
"The hairs on my forearms stand up. I have stopped looking at Julia now because in this dimness she ceased addressing her words to me some time ago. I am humbled for reasons I cannot at this moment unravel. I am outraged for her, and vaguely guilty about my relative luck in life."
Who Should/Shouldn't Read
For those with an interest in German History
Anyone could benefit from a read of this - history comes alive and you see the personal toil of a Orwellian Government
4 Dewey's
I received this from HarperCollins in Exchange for an Honest Review
Fascinating and brutally honest
Learned so much interesting historical information that I am sad to say I never knew
Funder's style of writing is very unique and personal
Disturbing that these events happened and the people of East Germany had to live under these conditions
Many sides of
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the stories are told, which make it a book you want to discuss Very raw and vivid - no sanitizing of stories to make them more palatable - real and honest
Author has obvious respect and compassion for her interview subjects
Author extremely observant about minute details that can often tell a story (eg mannerisms,
tone of voice)
Some wonderful stories of resistance, sacrifice and bravery by ordinary people
The Not So Good Stuff
Quite depressing at times, I felt myself never wanting to visit Germany at all
So heartbreakingly sad and horrific that I had to keep putting it down
Some further readings would be nice
Favorite Quotes/Passages
"I can only describe it as horror-romance. It's a dumb feeling, but I don't want to shake it. The romance comes from the dream of a better world that the German Communists wanted to build out of the ashes of their Nazi past; from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. The horror comes from what they did in its name."
"We laugh at the improbability of it, of someone barely more than a child poking about in Beatrix Potter's garden by the wall, watching out for Mr McGregor and his blunderbuss, and lookng for a step-ladder to scale one of the most fortified borders on earth. We both like the girl shew was, and I like the women she has become."
"The hairs on my forearms stand up. I have stopped looking at Julia now because in this dimness she ceased addressing her words to me some time ago. I am humbled for reasons I cannot at this moment unravel. I am outraged for her, and vaguely guilty about my relative luck in life."
Who Should/Shouldn't Read
For those with an interest in German History
Anyone could benefit from a read of this - history comes alive and you see the personal toil of a Orwellian Government
4 Dewey's
I received this from HarperCollins in Exchange for an Honest Review
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LibraryThing member Veeralpadhiar
This work gets its name from the Stasi – which was the internal army by which the East German government kept control (just like NKVD in USSR). Its job was to know everything about everyone, using any means it chose.
In its forty years, ‘the Firm’ generated the equivalent of all records in
The paragraph below would render a general idea how deeply it affected lives of people under its “rule”:
In Hitler’s Third Reich it is estimated that there was one Gestapo agent for every 2000 citizens, and in Stalin’s USSR there was one KGB agent for every 5830 people. In the GDR, there was one Stasi officer or informant for every sixty-three people. If part-time informers are included, some estimates have the ratio as high as one informer for every 6.5 citizens.
Anna Funder depicts beautifully the “logic” behind the Wall:
So, according to Koch, Ulbricht, the head of state, decided he needed to build an ‘anti-fascist protective measure’. I have always been fond of this term which has something of the prophylactic about it, protecting easterners from the western disease of shallow materialism. It obeys all the logic of locking up free people to keep them safe from criminals.
In its forty years, ‘the Firm’ generated the equivalent of all records in
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German history since the middle ages. Laid out upright and end to end, the files the Stasi kept on their countrymen and women would form a line 180 kilometres long.The paragraph below would render a general idea how deeply it affected lives of people under its “rule”:
In Hitler’s Third Reich it is estimated that there was one Gestapo agent for every 2000 citizens, and in Stalin’s USSR there was one KGB agent for every 5830 people. In the GDR, there was one Stasi officer or informant for every sixty-three people. If part-time informers are included, some estimates have the ratio as high as one informer for every 6.5 citizens.
Anna Funder depicts beautifully the “logic” behind the Wall:
So, according to Koch, Ulbricht, the head of state, decided he needed to build an ‘anti-fascist protective measure’. I have always been fond of this term which has something of the prophylactic about it, protecting easterners from the western disease of shallow materialism. It obeys all the logic of locking up free people to keep them safe from criminals.
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LibraryThing member thebradking
My friend Aleks and I are each writing non-fiction stories that involve some form of first-person narrative. It's a troublesome form, first person, because quite often the narrative gets in the way of the story. Done poorly, it's a narcissistic writer's tool that reads about as well as a monkey
I realize that's hardly a ringing endorsement for first-person stories, and yet Anna Funder has managed to do exactly the opposite with Stasiland. The book, and the stories of the people she meets as she pieces together life in East Berlin during the time of The Wall, is gorgeous and flawed (in the best way).
Funder's story paints a picture of daily life in East Berlin under the brutal watch of the Stasi, the sector's secret police. She offers little historical insight or weighty dissections of how East Berlin came to be. Instead, she spends her time fluttering from citizen to Stassi to citizen, at each stop painting portraits of a life stuck in a particular time.
Even as I try to capture her narrative style and stylings, I find it difficult. On more than one occasion, I found the lack of contextual depth noticeable only to realize five minutes later that Funder had pulled me along with her gentle narratives. The story felt intellectually light in some places, and yet full of the humanity of her subjects.
It's the last point that I expected to bother me as I finished the book. Certainly the book wasn't long on context. Often I felt as if the author relied simply upon "what you know" about East Berlin to shorthand the narrative, and yet the world of the Stasi's GDR surrounded me as I read and her characters lept off the page.
So if this review seems disjointed in its explanation, let me lay any confusion to rest: Funder's writing is brilliant and beautiful, and paints her story across the canvas. The misgivings about the style are my own.
Read this book today.
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uses a hammer.I realize that's hardly a ringing endorsement for first-person stories, and yet Anna Funder has managed to do exactly the opposite with Stasiland. The book, and the stories of the people she meets as she pieces together life in East Berlin during the time of The Wall, is gorgeous and flawed (in the best way).
Funder's story paints a picture of daily life in East Berlin under the brutal watch of the Stasi, the sector's secret police. She offers little historical insight or weighty dissections of how East Berlin came to be. Instead, she spends her time fluttering from citizen to Stassi to citizen, at each stop painting portraits of a life stuck in a particular time.
Even as I try to capture her narrative style and stylings, I find it difficult. On more than one occasion, I found the lack of contextual depth noticeable only to realize five minutes later that Funder had pulled me along with her gentle narratives. The story felt intellectually light in some places, and yet full of the humanity of her subjects.
It's the last point that I expected to bother me as I finished the book. Certainly the book wasn't long on context. Often I felt as if the author relied simply upon "what you know" about East Berlin to shorthand the narrative, and yet the world of the Stasi's GDR surrounded me as I read and her characters lept off the page.
So if this review seems disjointed in its explanation, let me lay any confusion to rest: Funder's writing is brilliant and beautiful, and paints her story across the canvas. The misgivings about the style are my own.
Read this book today.
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LibraryThing member TheWasp
Australian Anna Funder spent several years living in Germany. During that time she was told individual stories of peoples experiences living in East Germany while under Communist control and the Stasi secret police.
LibraryThing member john257hopper
The author is an Australian journalist who lived in Berlin and Leipzig in the late 1990s and recorded the stories of East Germans, both the victims of abuses by the dreaded Stasi (Ministry of State Security) and the former perpetrators, most of whom seem quite unrepentant about what they did. The
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stories by the victims are often horrifying and pathetic (in the true sense of that word), stories of split families, carefully planned escapes foiled at the last minute, and the all-pervasive atmosphere of distrust, deceit and Orwellian mass surveillance and informing, including by people blackmailed into informing on their own loved ones. A depressing but important read now a generation after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Show Less
LibraryThing member MargaritaMorris
This is a "must read" for anyone wanting to understand what life was like in the former East Germany. Anna Funder speaks to victims of the Stasi (State Police) and former employees of the organisation. It is written in a haunting, captivating tone and manages, also, to give the reader a real
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flavour of what it was like for Anna herself living in the former East Berlin. Show Less
LibraryThing member nog
Way too much about the author.
LibraryThing member Ken-Me-Old-Mate
I was recently in Germany touring around and was struck by the complete lack of any war memorials to dead German soldiers. I am told it is something they would like to forget and I have also been told of German men and boys going to war and not coming back and their families not knowing where or
Which brings me to Stasiland. The author brings us a description of the absolute power of the Stasi regime. She talks to people greatly affected by the Stasi, including one woman whose husband was murdered by them, and pretty much it is a book in peoples' own words. It is about the lies that have been left behind and the continuing willfull desire to "forget" this short but tragic episode in modern history. She also discovers how many former Stasi people are still in the local/government/police/judicial systems. She says that for the most part you'd no longer know where the Berlin Wall previously went and some of the preserved bits are reconstructions and not original. More erasing of history.
The book does not romanticise or nostalgicise its existence. It details many of the horrors perpetrated on people in such a fashion that people around them had no idea. About secret torture prisons in the heart of Berlin completely unknown by the locals around them and about how many met horrible deaths there. About prisoner transport vehicles disguised as normal delivery vans so the population would have no idea about any of it.
A regime besotted with spying on its citizens and dutifully recording everything in words, audio and film. Such was their proclivity for this that in its short (41 years) history the Stasi accumulated more records than had previously existed in all of Germany since the Middle Ages.
One of the most interesting bits was how the East Germans distanced themselves from the Nazis. They re-wrote their history to imply that all the Nazis were in what was now called West Germany. This was epitomised by the author seeing a plaque on a bridge in Dresden over the Elbe that "commemorated the liberation of East Germans from their Nazi oppressors by their brothers the Russians". So where we once had just Nazis we now have the existence of East Germans 4 years before East Germany existed!
Less than 27 years before I was there this year, all that existed and yet now, there is hardly a trace of it left, except inside people.
I know for certain what shaped my world and I cannot imagine what it would be like to be born into a world that disappears without a trace in just a few short years.
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when they had died. On visiting some of the cities that were bombed flat, it was somewhat marvellous to see them re-constructed as if the bombing had never happened but you are left with the feeling that it is more as if the war had not happened, like it has been erased.Which brings me to Stasiland. The author brings us a description of the absolute power of the Stasi regime. She talks to people greatly affected by the Stasi, including one woman whose husband was murdered by them, and pretty much it is a book in peoples' own words. It is about the lies that have been left behind and the continuing willfull desire to "forget" this short but tragic episode in modern history. She also discovers how many former Stasi people are still in the local/government/police/judicial systems. She says that for the most part you'd no longer know where the Berlin Wall previously went and some of the preserved bits are reconstructions and not original. More erasing of history.
The book does not romanticise or nostalgicise its existence. It details many of the horrors perpetrated on people in such a fashion that people around them had no idea. About secret torture prisons in the heart of Berlin completely unknown by the locals around them and about how many met horrible deaths there. About prisoner transport vehicles disguised as normal delivery vans so the population would have no idea about any of it.
A regime besotted with spying on its citizens and dutifully recording everything in words, audio and film. Such was their proclivity for this that in its short (41 years) history the Stasi accumulated more records than had previously existed in all of Germany since the Middle Ages.
One of the most interesting bits was how the East Germans distanced themselves from the Nazis. They re-wrote their history to imply that all the Nazis were in what was now called West Germany. This was epitomised by the author seeing a plaque on a bridge in Dresden over the Elbe that "commemorated the liberation of East Germans from their Nazi oppressors by their brothers the Russians". So where we once had just Nazis we now have the existence of East Germans 4 years before East Germany existed!
Less than 27 years before I was there this year, all that existed and yet now, there is hardly a trace of it left, except inside people.
I know for certain what shaped my world and I cannot imagine what it would be like to be born into a world that disappears without a trace in just a few short years.
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LibraryThing member soufflebun
Reading about East Germany is wild because it happened so recently and just the stark differences in beliefs about how society should be run is kind of hard to imagine. Also just thinking about how brave people were and how I'd act in a society like that is interesting. Anecdotes from people that
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suffered from the Stasi interspersed with anecdotes from former Stasi themselves made for a really memorable book. Show Less
LibraryThing member SarahEBear
Australian Author, Anna Funder, explores the stories of those who lived in East Berlin (and beyond) under the Communist rule and how the falling of the Berlin Wall impacted on their lives. She offers up a fascinating collection of individual's stories of life, love and persecution by the Stasi, and
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recollections of those who were part of the 'machine'. It is an interesting examination of the recent past history of one of Europe's most dynamic and cosmopolitan cities. Show Less
LibraryThing member TheCrow2
A very interesting book about showing us the working of the Stasi through interviews from both sides. My only criticism that a bit tighter editing would have been nice.
LibraryThing member kslade
Disturbing account of how the East German secret police or Stasi treated the people. Just saw German movie, The Lives of Others, which goes well with this. We should avoid all dictators or wannabe ones.
Awards
Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction (Winner — 2004)
Guardian First Book Award (Shortlist — 2003)
The Age Book of the Year Award (Shortlist — Non-fiction — 2002)
Language
Original publication date
2003
Physical description
288 p.; 24 cm
ISBN
1862075808 / 9781862075801