Unknown photographers, undated, Pictures from the Secret STASI Archives
The Berlin-based photographer Simon Menner has dealt extensively with the subject of surveillance, and his research here has led him to conclude that there isn’t much available pictorial material showing the activity of surveillance from the perspective of those doing the surveillance rather than those under surveillance. Of course we are all familiar with the blurry images of surveillance cameras; but Menner suspected that there must be more. He was intrigued by the question of what the Orwellian ‘Big Brother’ sees when he has us under observation.
It is indeed astonishing that this field has not attracted more research. After all, the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) was home to the State Security Service (STASI)—one of the largest surveillance apparatuses in history. Relative to the size of the population, the East German STASI had far more agents than the KGB or the CIA. After the wall dividing Germany was torn down most of the archive materials were opened to the public, and although access to these documents is subject to certain limitations, the sheer scope of this access is unparalleled among all the countries of the former Eastern Bloc. Even in the West, nothing like this exists. So it was only natural that Simon Menner approached the authorities responsible for storing the STASI archives with his request to see more. The authorities proved to be both kind and helpful. Menner received permission to sift through the photos at the archive and to make several reproductions.
Perhaps the most disconcerting photos Menner found—when he began his research, he had no idea such things existed—were the photographs made by STASI spies photographing other spies. Among the allied powers there were small units who were allowed to move freely between East and West Germany: the Military Liaison Missions (MLM). Both sides to the East and West considered these ‘Missions’ an ideal opportunity to spy on each other. Whenever a unit of MLM soldiers travelled through East Germany, the STASI did their best to observe them. Each side was well aware of the fact that the other side knew what they were up to. And that’s exactly what we see in these photos: an endless circle of reciprocal awareness. In Simon Menner’s opinion, this is a prototypical image of the Cold War. And that is why the artist is currently investigating whether comparable photographs are extant in the archives of the Western allies. Exhibited together, they would reveal the closed circularity of these activities. (read more)
I apologize in advance for any historical inaccuracies or translation errors, as I am neither German nor do I speak the language, and would greatly appreciate anyone nice enough to correct me! ]]
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Twenty-one years after German re-unification, Communist East Ger-many—or the German Democratic Republic, as it officially and inaccurately called itself—has receded like a bad dream. Many university students in Eastern Germany today weren’t even born when the Wall fell, and for them, life in the GDR is evoked mostly through period-piece movies, such as The Lives of Others, and in such curious expressions of Ostalgie—“Eastalgia”—as the ongoing cult of nostalgia for the Trabant, the reviled East German car.
But the hard reality of life in the GDR remains deeply lodged in the memories and stories of millions of middle-aged Germans. These are people who grew up as citizens of the Socialist republic and bore the brunt of its ideology. People like Ute, whom I interviewed one long afternoon and evening in the city of Leipzig in 1994, when the experiences—and wounds—of East German life were still fresh.
(Quelle: commonwealmagazine.org)
East Germany under Honecker initially experienced some improvements in its living standards and economic condition as he embraced a program of “consumer socialism”—which saw limited market reforms and some trade with the west (bringing in some much desired consumer goods). There was also recognition for the first time of West Germany, although its people could still not usually pass between the two. Increasingly, East Germany became a police state, with its secret police force, the Stasi, gaining in power and influence throughout the nation. When limited debate on political reforms and civil rights was permitted in Poland, Czechoslovakia and elsewhere in the 1980s, such talk was prohibited in East Germany. Even when the USSR under President Mikhail Gorbachev began to initiate political and economic reform under his program of perestroika, or “change.” Honecker famously refused to follow, claiming East Germany had already done “its pere-stroika” in the 1970s.
Of all of Gorbachev’s reforms, however, it was the abandonment of the “Brezhnev Doctrine” that had the widest implications. Under the terms of this doctrine, the USSR would intervene in Warsaw Pact coun-tries—as it had done in Czechoslovakia in 1968—to uphold communist rule where necessary. By discarding it, client states were able to discuss and initiate reforms without threat of Soviet military intervention. Poland and Hungary led the way during 1989. In August 1989, Hungary removed its border restrictions, briefly allowing several thousand East Germans to flee over the Hungarian border and then onto Austria and West Germany.
(Quelle: gale.cengage.com)
“Potsdamer Platz”, a central square in Berlin where the Soviet, British and American sectors met. In the background you can see the ruin of “Haus Vaterland”, one of a number of exclusive restaurants and department stores which had surrounded Potsdamer Platz since the beginning of the century. At that time, Potsdamer Platz had been considered the busiest square in Europe. After the Wall came up - two years after this photograph was taken - the square became a kind of wasteland. In the foreground you can see an “S” sign, which signifies the S-Bahn station for city trains which run underground here. At the time the picture was taken, this S-Bahn line connected all the Sectors in Berlin. When the wall came up, however, the trains travelled through the stations in the Soviet zone without stopping, turning them into „ghost stations“ - except for Friedrichstraße, which was a checkpoint. After the fall of the Wall, Potsdamer Platz became a huge building site from which major business centres, cinemas, shopping centres etc. emerged.
The socialist fraternal kiss or Brotherhood Kiss was a special form of greeting between the statesmen of the so-called Eastern Bloc. It consists of an embrace and a mutual kiss (or kisses) to cheeks or in rarer cases to the mouth.
With this a special connection between Socialist states was to be demonstrated. Both the embrace and the kiss were supposed to be the expression of happiness, fraternity and equality, and were otherwise a transformation of a known ritual and symbol of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The fraternal kiss became famous via Erich Honecker and Leonid Brezhnev, who were photographed exercising the ritual. The photograph became widespread and it was subsequently transformed into a graffiti painting on the Berlin Wall; see My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love.
The origin of this ritual stems from the Eastern Orthodox Fraternal- or Easter Kiss, which through its entrechment in the rites of the Orthodox Church carried a substantial strength of expression and so found use in daily life.
As a symbol of equality, fraternity and solidarity, the socialist fraternal kiss was the expression of the pathos and enthusiasm of the emergent Workers’ movement between the middle and end of the 19th century. In the years after the October Revolution and the subsequent Communist International, a ritualisation of the so far spontaneous gist succeeded into an official greeting between Communist comrades. The symbolic reinforcement of the feeling of camaraderie also gained success through the fact that many Communists and Socialists had to make long, arduous and dangerous trips to then the isolated Bolshevik Russia. That way the much-experienced international Solidarity found expression in stormy embraces and kisses.
After the Soviet Union collapsed, the use such a greeting ritual declined.
Berlin-Hohenschönhausen
was the main custody center of the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS), better known as Stasi, the secret police of East Germany (DDR), where thousands of political prisoners passed through from 1951 to the fall of DDR.
The Hohenschönhausen area was completely sealed off from the rest of Berlin and was shown as a blank spot on all maps. Before arrival a prisoner would be driven around in a sealed car for hours to make sure he had no clue where he was on arrival. The prisoners were held in total isolation during their stay, and were never allowed to see any fellow inmates during their stay.
The photo above is taken through one of the peep holes showing a hallway with open cell doors. (Photo by the author).
Source: http://en.stiftung-hsh.de/index.php & Funder, Anna. Stasiland, London: Granta, 2003.
