Miriam and Charlie
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Maiden in her tower - “From here you could see anyone coming”.
Crime of sedition - "Enemy of the state at 16”.
Dehumanisation. "When I got out of prison, I was basically no longer human."
Peter Rabbit in Mr McGregor’s Garden.
“Eleven years too late and six months too early”.
375 years to piece the shredded Stasi files together.
For Charlie “Making me finally, of this land”.
She cut herself out of photos, as she did not want to exist - "I cut myself out of it"
"brave and strong and broken"
"slight fragile body and big voice"
"perhaps they beat something out of her she didn't get back"
"she is so slight that the voice comes from nowhere and everywhere at once: it is not
immediately evident that it is hers; it fill the room, and wraps us up."
"it was a crime of sedition"
Enemy of state at 16
investigating her hustbands death
"she has a surprisingly big nicotine-stained voice. she is so slight that the voice comes
from nowhere and everwhere at once"
"they break you just like fiction."
"i was no longer human"
"she is a madien safe in her tower"
"i became, officially, an enemy of the state at sixteen"
Was placed in "solitary confinement for a month"
"when i got out of prision i was basically no longer human"
" juvenile prisoner number 725"
"she is a maiden safe in her tower"
Miriam is playing a waiting game that keeps her life suspended
"the interrogation of Miriam, aged sixteen, took place every night for ten nghts for the
six hours between 10pm an 4 am"
"When I got out of prison, I was basically no longer human"
Miriam was released in 1970, and was seventeen and a half
Frau Paul
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Crying so silently “It is more like leaking”.
Waking to a changed world.
Choices.
Function of memory.
"The mortgage out acts put on our future”.
seperated from her ill baby son by the wall
imprisoned for helping students escape the GDR
"frau paul had a delight and strength about her"
"frau paul had her youth taken away from her"
soul has been "buckled out of shape forever"
• "a large woman in her early sixties. she has a cap of dark hair and very blue eyes. Her
cloths and hair are neat and she has tapered plump fingers of mournful magdalene."
• "Frau Paul does not picture herself as a hero, or a dissident"
• "a lonely, teary guilt-wracked wreck.”
• "a mournful magdalene"
• "The Wall Went Straight Through My Heart"- title of her story
• "i had decided against my son"
• “memory, like so much else, is unreliable. Not only for what it hides and what it
alters, but also for what it reveals.
• “The picture we make of ourselves, with all its congruencies and fantastical edges,
sustains us.”
• "Frau paul does not picture herself as a hero, or a dissident. She is a dental technician
and a mother with a terrible family history.And she is a criminal. This seems to me the
sorriest;that the picture she has of herself is one the Stasi made for her"
• “her decision took a whole new fund of courage to live with.”
• "very blue eyes and a soft face"
• “It seems to me that Frau Paul, as one does, may have overestimated her own
strength, her resistance to damage,”
• "She starts to cry, so silently, its more like leaking"
• "she had been taken out of time, and out of place"
• "memory, like so much else, is unreliable. not only for what it hides, bust also for
what it reveals" - claims she didnt know they were going to escape, but Anna believes
that she does but it has been repressed into her consciousness
• "She had been taken out of time, and out of place"
• "But here she is in the place that broke her, and she is telling me about it. It is part
bravery, like the bravery that made her refuse the Stasi deal, and it is part, perhaps,
obsession, caused by whay they did to her after that"
• "She is a dental technician and a mother with a terrible family history. And she is a
criminal. This seems to me the sorriest thing; that the picture she has of herself is one
that the Stasi made for her"
Julia
• Funder realises “everything here was broken or about to be” - like Julia.
• "I look at her and I know that under all those layers of black is a wiry body and a
sharp-sharp mind, but there is something about Julia that breaks my heart."
• Julia’s perception of life under the GDR is skewed - “no drunks before the Wall came
down”.
• Link between Funder and Julia - “I look at Julia and she reminds me of myself."
• GDR created the shell in which Julia still lives - hermit crab analogy.
• Genuine belief in the ideals of the GDR.
• "End of the security state meant the end, too of her personal security”.
• GDR-logic
• "Fallen into the gap between the GDR’s action and its reality”.
• "Julia was distressed, dropped out and suicidal"
• Despite all she has been through, Julia seems at times nostalgic rather than bitter
about the regime
• "I look at Julia and she reminds me of myself - straggly fair hair she doesn't care
much about, grey-green eyes and slightly crooked teeth that have seen a bit much
nicotine."
• "'im unemployed' julia said.'why else would i be here?' 'This is the Employment
Office, not the Unemployment office'"
• “Behrends were ambivalent about their country.”
• "She is a hermit crab, soft-fleshed with friends but ready to whisk back into its shell at
the slightest sign of contact"
• “The system which had imprisoned her had also, somehow, protected her.”
• “a single woman in a single room at the top of her block, unable to go forward into
her future.”
• "She is wearino her usual assortment of black" - doesnt want to draw attention to
herself.
• “I wanted to explain to people overseas about the GDR—that Communism was not
such a bad system.’ She didn’t want to leave.
• "like her father, Julia believed in East Germany as an alternative to the west"
• “I look at the box in her arms and know that you cannot destroy your past, nor what it
does to you. It’s not ever, really, over”
• Anna's Landlady
• victimised by the stasi
• raped after the wall fell in 1989
• "under all the layers of black is a wiry body and sharp-mind, but there is something
about julia that breaks my heart. she is a hermit crab, all soft-fleshed with her friends
but ready to whisk back into its shell at the slightest sight of contact."
• “Julia was being asked to repeat her knowledge of socialist catechism, her belief in
things that were hard to remember, because they were not real.” - the political exam
for university entrance
• “Julia and her family, like many others in the GDR, trod this line between seeing this
for what they were in the GDR, and ignoring those realities in order to stay sane”
The Wall
• "Anti-Facist Protective Measure"
• “It was one of the longest structures ever built to keep people separate from one
another.”
• “On the night of 12 – 13 August the Berlin Wall was rolled out in barbed wire.”
• "I'd really like to have me a look at that wall of theirs" - defined by the wall
• " the wall went straight through my heart"
• created overnight - "woke to a changed world"
• "if you didnt know that the wall had been in this place, you'd find it hard to imagine."
• "in less than one generation this scar will be invisible" (building over where the wall
used to be) - however inlay still exists through the city today
• "monstrous expanse of grey concrete designed to make people feel small. It works"
• “Mauer im Kopf" (or the Wall in the Head)
• “The Wall persists in Stasi men’s minds as something they hope might one day come
again, and in their victims’ minds too, as a terrifying possibility.”
• "a hole in the city"
• "The wall went through houses, along streets, along waterways, and sliced
underground train lines into pieces"
• "In other place in Berlin the border, and with it the wall, cut a strange wound through
the city."
• Berliner Mauer
• "Most useful construction in all of German history! In European History!"
• "After the wall fell, the german media called east germany 'the most perfected
surveillance state of all time"
Absurdity in Stasiland
• Anna in Stasiland like Alice in Wonderland. (stories that are almost unbelivable) "I
Shrank like Alice" - Anna Funder.
• “Let the jury consider their verdict,’ the King said, for about the twentieth time that
day. ‘No, no!’ said the Queen. ‘Sentence first—verdict afterwards.’ Alice’s Adventures
in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll”
• "'im unemployed' julia said.'why else would i be here?' 'This is the Employment
Office, not the Unemployment office'"
• Julia - “The system which had imprisoned her had also, somehow, protected er.”
• Hohenschönhausen - translates to 'High beautiful house' yet it was "“a prison for
political prisoners—it was the innermost security installation in a secured area within
a walled-off country; it was another blank on the map”
• “Have you ever in your life heard such a ridiculous story? Can you believe they
swallowed that?’ ” - Miriam. They did not believe she could have made it over the
Wall, but initially they did believe her crazy story about the "underground
organisation" that assisted her
• They believe that the actions taken amongst the stasi regime was humane
• 'the two of you, violator and victim (collaborator! violin!), are linked, forever perhaps,
by the obscenityy of what has been revealed to you, by the sad knowledge of what
people are capable of. We are all guilty.' - the true confessions of an albino terrorist,
Breyten Breytenbach.
• ‘“Big Brozer” - von Schnitzler is angered and frustrated by this reality TV show,
which is essentially just a microcosmic version of the security state he continues to
believe in
• "This land gone wrong"
• "The Stasi entirely failed to predict the end of Communism, and with it the end of the
country.”
• "one can never say that something is not possible"
• "land gone wrong"
• "they just want to know what happened in their lives"
• "tomorrows bruises will develop on my skin, like a picture from a negative."
• “I pictured the street ballet of the deaf and dumb: agents signalling to each other from
corner to corner: stroking noses, tummies, backs and hair, tying and untying
shoelaces, lifting their hats to strangers and riffling through papers—a choreography
for very nasty scouts.”
• "in the GDR, there was one Stasi officer or inforant for every sixty-three people"
• "i shrank like Alice"
• "Doesn't that mean we're banned?" "We didn't say you were banned,' Comrade
Oelschlagel said. 'We said you don't exist"
• “there were so many informers in church opposition groups at demonstrations that
they were making these groups appear stronger than they really were. In one of the
most beautiful ironies I have ever seen, he dutifully noted that, by having swelled the
ranks of the opposition, the Stasi was giving the people heart to keep demonstrating
against them."
• Half painted buildings - "This society was built on lies - lie after lie after lie."
Place in Stasiland - Physical Descriptions, Places, etc.
• “At ground level Alexanderplatz is a monstrous expanse of grey concrete designed to
make people fell small.” (explanation of communist city / powerless )
• “I walk home to the apartment from Rosenthaler Platz station. The park is alive, the
light so bright it picks out people and their shadows in exaggerated 3-D.”
• “Hohenschönhausen was a prison for political prisoners—it was the innermost
security installation in a secured area within a walled-off country; it was another blank
on the map.”
• “This U-Boat smelt of damp and old urine and vomit and earth: the smell of misery.”
• “Further inside the zone we reached a building with high concrete walls topped by
barbed wire. The walls seemed to stretch on and on, enclosing an area as big as a city
block. At the corners were octagonal guard towers, and underneath them, along the
outside, an empty dog-run.”
• In Northern Germany I inhabit the grey end of the spectrum: grey buildings, grey
earth, grey birds, grey trees
• "people shake infants up and down to make them calm, and children spin on swings
and roundabouts, i never noticed were there"
• “A carpet hangs on the wall bearing the woolly triumvirate of Marx, Engels and Lenin
in profile next to a lurid hand-worked mat with the Stasi insignia in red, yellow and
black acrylic. The rugs fascinate me. They demonstrate, I think, the value of labour
over everything else here, mostly aesthetics and utility.” - at the Normannenstrasse
Stasi headquarters, but serves as a greater metaphor for the whole of East Germany
• "it occurs to me that the purpose of disinfectant globules is to mask the smells of
human bodies with something worse"
• "outside the city and then the country spool past in black and white"
• "east germany still felt like a secret walled-in garden, a place lost in time" (when
Anna Funder went after the wall fell in November 1989)
• "the street wound crookedly"
• “Berlin is green, a perfumed city.”
• "In this city where some of the darkest chapters of the 20th century were written, few
claim to crimes committed by the Red Dictatorship were on a par with the nightmare
of Nazism."
• Funder also uses a great deal of colour to create mood and a sense of place,
particularly grey and brown and ‘ExtremeDark Green’
• Street names are changed in a "massive act of ideological redecoration".
Anna Funder - Author Intent and Intrusion
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Narrator of this non-fiction text and journalist living in Berlin.
journalistic non-fiction.
she personally leads the reader on their journey of exploration into Stasiland.
"Im making portraits of people, East Germans, of whom there will be non left in
generation."
"i found a part-time job in television, and set about looking for some of the stories
form this land gone wrong."
"I am in favour of remebering things, so as not to do them again"
"Ishrank like Alice."
“I recognise this pattern of unpredictable shouting followed by bouts of quiet reason
from other bullies I have known.”- influencing the reader's perception of von
Schnitzler by characterising him as a bully
Inserts her narration and commentary upon those stories that she recounts.
Anna Funder gives a voice to the past community of what was, East Germany
“No-one is interested in these people.”- said to Schmidt and Scheller, upset by their
lack of interest in former East Germans
'Funder becme aware of the hidden histories of people whose lives had been shaped
by one of the most efficient police states in human history. she set out to collect and
investigate the stories of both victims and perpetrators of those who had worked for
the Stasi (the east german secret sevis)
"i recognise this pattern of unpredictable shouting followed by bouts of quiet reason
from other bullies i have known"
Stasiland - "written almost like a novel, with a perfect mix of compassion and
distance"
Anna Funder spiritedly plunges herself into "this land gone wrong..."
Let's look now at THEMES...
Guilt
• Personal guilt is explored through characters such as Frau Paul who has wrestled with
her feelings of guilt about leaving Torsten in the West rather than being used as bait by
the Stasi.
• East Germans are taught to associate Nazism with West Germany
• There is an absense of guilt in several of the ex-Stasi men interviewed by Funder.
They have a lack of repentance for their actions.
• National or community guilt is seen in those who stood by and watched the regime
destroy the lives of many of its citizens.
• Funder feels a form of guilt for the horiffic memories she encourages Miriam, Julia
and Frau Paul to recall. - “I decide to give it another fortnight or so before I call again.
At some level, at least, I am aware that I am following a person who has been
hounded enough.”
• “ 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.” - Anna Funder, realising how
different her life could have been if she was born into the GDR like Julia, sense of
guilt at growing up in a free country.
• “I don’t feel guilty, I mean, I was just lucky that I didn’t fall into the clutches of the
Stasi.” - Michael Hinze does not feel guilt over the sacrifice Frau Paul made to protect
him from the Stasi.
Surveilance
• An estimated one informer for every 6.5 people
• 'The most perfected surveillance state of all time'
• At the end the Stasi had 97,000 employese- more than enough to oversee a country of
17,000,000. However they also had over 173,000 informers among the general
population.
• "In Hitler's Third Reich it is estimated that there was one Gestapo agent for ever 2000
citizens, and Stalin's USSR there was one KGB agent for every 5830 people.
However is part-time informers are included, some estimates have the ratio as high as
one informer for every 6.5 citizens in East Germany."
• "Stasi File Authority- Project Group Reconstruction. Time required for reconstruction:
1 worker reconstructs on average 10 pages per day, 40 workers reconstruct on average
400 pages per day, 40 workers reconstruct on average in a year of 250 working days
100,000 pages, there are, on average 2,500 pages per sack, 100,000 pages amounts to
40 sacks per year, In all, at the Stasi File Authority there 15,000 sacks. This means
that to reconstruct everything it would take 40 workers 375 years."
• “Julia’s experience: the end of the security state meant the end, too, of her personal
security. The system which had imprisoned her had also, somehow, protected her.
‘They were much quicker in the east to find and convict people,’ she says. Deep
down, and for so far indelible reasons, she associates the fall of the Wall with the end
of what had remained of her private sphere after the Stasi had finished with it.”
• "obsessiveness with detail"
• “The Stasi was the internal army by which the government kept control. Its job was to
know everything about everyone, using any means it chose.”
• “But looking back on it, it’s the total surveillance that damaged me the worst. I know
how far people will transgress over your bound-aries—until you have no private
sphere left at all. And I think that is a terrible knowledge to have.”- Julia
• x"It inspected all mail in secret rooms above post offices (copying letters and stealing
any valubles), and inspected, daily, tens of thousands of phone calls. It bugged hotel
rooms and spied on diplomats. It ran its own universities, hospitals, elite sports
centres and terrorist training programs for Libyans and the West Germans of the Red
Army Faction."
• "Anyone can have an affair, but everything must be reported."
The Past
• For victims of the Stasi like Miriam, Julia and Frau Paul, recalling the past is
extremely painful.
• Klaus tends to be nonchalant and unresentful about the demise of The Klaus Renft
Combo, prefering to take life as it comes, rather than dwell on the past.
• Miriam has invested considerable time and emotional energy int her search for
answers over Charlie's death, thus remaining 'suspended' in the past.
• Julia is seeing a psychotherapist at the time of Funders meeting with her, who wants
Julia to confront her past in order to move on with her life.
• "You know, they just want to stop thinking about the past. They want to pretend it
didn't happen."
• ‘What interests me is the process of dealing with it all now that it is all over. Can you
rework your past, the grit that rubs in you, until it is shiny and smooth as a pearl?’
• There are those who want to keep the GDR as history, while others are embarrassed
by the past.
• “I think it’s worse if you repress it.’ To dig it up, or to leave it lie in the ground?”
• "It is history, airbrushed for effect."
Truth
• it is estimated to take "375 years" to put all the Stasi files back together. this means
that for many people who are left "suspended" in their own lives without knowing the
answers to why they were victimized are likely to never get the answers they are
looking for. "GDR logic"
• The wall went up overnight and went down overnight.
• Herr Bohnsack, who outs himself as ex-Stasi after the fall of the Wall, becomes a
pariah; telling the truth has made him an outcast.
• The destruction of files by the Stasi was an attempt to conceal the truth of their
activities.
• Miriam finds it vertually impossible to discover the truth about Charlies death, and his
death becomes symbolic of the search for truth in Stasiland.
• Frau Paul has not revealed the whole truth about herself and her role in assisting
people like Michael Hinze.
• Funder is interested in why the Stasi regime failed to see the truth about the possibility
of the Wall coming down in 1989.
• Funder interviews both victims and perpetrators to find out what their 'truths' are.
• “ I think it is a sign of being accustomed to such power that the truth does not matter
because you cannot be contradicted.” - relates directly to von Schnitzler but also more
widely to all the Stasi perpetrators and those with power over the oppressive GDR
regime as no one could contradict them without being destroyed
Ideology
• “The romance comes from the dream of a better world 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.” - communist ideals
• “Julia’s father Dieter is a sensitive man. He wanted to better what he saw as a flawed
system, but one which, from its founding premise, was fairer than capitalism. ” despite the flaws of communism, at its core it was seen as a more just alternative to
capitalism
• “Like her father, Julia believed in East Germany as an alternative to the west. ‘I
wanted to explain to people overseas about the GDR—that Communism was not such
a bad system.” - alternative to the West, ie. alternative to Nazism
• Funder meets people who are deeply passionate about their political ideology and
others who are ambivalent.
• Von Schnitzler remains deeply resentful of the 'capitalist, imperialist West.'
• Herr Winz brings a copy of The Communist Manifesto that he signs and gives to
Funder.
• The women who works at the TV archive building believes von Schnitzler is not 'a
turncoat' like the others; she is one of those nostalgic for life before the Wall came
down.
Courage
• ‘It was one of the very rare occasions when the bluff was called and someone ‘won’
against the Firm.’
• Page 84
• "When he was released into West Berlin, he immediately, and at some risk to himself,
broadcast over the airwaves the story of his abduction. At the end of an afternoon spet
with him he said to me, 'Frau Paul- then Ruhrdanz- is a very brave woman'."
• “I was trying, I think, to get a perspective on this lost world, and the kinds of courage
in it.” - Anna Funder on the purpose of her interviews and exploration of the former
GDR
• “You won’t find the great story of human courage you are looking for.” - ironic that
Funder finds many great stories of human courage.
• “Frau Paul had the courage to do the right thing by her conscience in a situation where
most people would decide to see their baby, and tell themselves later they had no
choice. Once made though, her decision took a whole new fund of courage to live
with.”
• “She’s a very courageous woman.” - Michael Hinze describes Frau Paul.
Resistance
• "east germany never had much of a culture of opposition"
• “I am not your classic resistance fighter,’ she says. ‘I was not even part of the
opposition. ” - Frau Paul. Resistance can come in many forms- ordinary people
victimised by the Stasi, not just those who held opposing beliefs
• “There must have been some resistance to the dictatorship?” - Anna Funder ch. 2
• “Everywhere Mielke found opposition he found enemies, and the more enemies he
found the more staff and informers he hired to quell them.”
• “After a time Miriam stopped obeying the cards that appeared in her letterbox
summoning her to their offices to clarify some circumstances.” - Miriam began to
resist against the manipulation of the Stasi.
• “You know, they just want to stop thinking about the past. They want to pretend it all
didn’t happen.” - authorities of united Germany resisting against investigating the
past.
• “They were clever—they slapped the leaflets up in telephone booths over the
instructions and at tramstops over the timetables. ” - Miriam performing an act of
resistance.
Remembering/ Forgetting
• "i forgot their existence altogther" (plants)
• History influences the present and the future. we can learn from mistakes to ensure
that we dont cycle through tragedy after tradedy.
• As people, we evolve from what the past has made us, and living under different
circumstances during the GDR has led to the differences in opions on how to deal
with the past on how to deal with the past. For those that gained security they miss the
regime but for those that lost something dear to them they are left broken.
• “I know there are places that I don’t visit, some even that I prefer not to drive past,
where bad things have happened. But here she is in the place that broke her, and she is
telling me about it.” - some people choose to remember, others choose to forget (this
quote relates to Frau Paul and Hohenschönhausen prison.)
• “There are things I don’t remember,’ she says. I can’t tell whether she means she
makes it a practice not to think of them, or she cannot recall.” - relates to Julia
• “There are some things—’ she stops. ‘I don’t think I’ll be able to remember this. I
haven’t remembered this.” - Julia has repressed her memories relating to her
encounter with the Stasi Man Major N. Evidence of this: (a quote from Julia two
chapters ago) “Julia glances away. ‘I don’t have any story of the Stasi, or anything
like that,’ she says.”
• ‘What interests me is the process of dealing with it all now that it is all over. Can you
rework your past, the grit that rubs in you, until it is shiny and smooth as a pearl?’
• “I think it’s worse if you repress it.’ To dig it up, or to leave it lie in the ground?”
Hope
• “I am foreign here and speak with an accent but am much more at home than in my
own country! Funny, no?” - hopeful end for Julia in San Francisco, where they
"honour" their abuse victims.
• “Sometimes she can hear and smell them, but for now the beasts are all in their
cages.” - element of hope for Miriam. although she may never get the answers she
needs, and her trauamtic past still has an impact on her, she may still be able to go on.
• “Even in this land of rubble and dust there was room for hope.” - in 1946 people were
still hopeful that somehow a socialist state would emerge which lived up to the
‘democratic’ in GDR.
• “The Wall persists in Stasi men’s minds as something they hope might one day come
again”
• "The park is alive, the light so bright it picks out people and their shadows in
exaggerated 3-D. Sunbathers loll on the grass, some in trunks and some barebottomed. There are teenagers removing gum from their mouths to kiss, a sheepdog
with a single forelock dyed green, an adolescent cripple in a baby pusher being taken
for a stroll. People shake infants up and down to make them calm, and children spin
on swings and roundabouts I never noticed were there.” - Funder observes that hidden
among the memories of the past are some hopeful signs for the future of Germany.
• The change in season from Winter to Spring suggests that a new beginning is also
starting for Berlin. Enough time has passed for a new generation to emerge who have
no memory of the Wall. They are defining themselves differently and the Wall is being
relegated to history.