KNOWING THE SECRET POLICE: Secrecy and knowledge in East German Society

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The Secret Police (Stasi) is ever-present in the ways in which the former German Democratic Republic is remembered. From academic accounts which describe the Stasi as all-powerful to cultural representations which show the invasive network of Stasi surveillance (e.g. The Lives of Others, 2006; Stasiland, 2003), the GDR has in many ways become synonymous with the Stasi in public imagination. But how did the citizens of the GDR navigate this presence and the secrecy surrounding it in their daily lives? How were they able to gain insight into its tactics and terror; how did they share knowledge about its strengths and weaknesses? This project investigates how different kinds of knowledge were circulated through social, religious, political and literary networks. It puts these explorations into conversation with a the study of how such knowledge was represented in the literature at the time of the GDR and how it was reflected on in literature written after the Stasi-archives opened. In doing so it pays heed to the role families may have played in underpinning or undermining networks and how information and understandings passed across the border between East and West Germany. The project is based on the hypothesis that navigating the 'public secret' of the Stasi relied on varied forms of political agency and gave rise to many kinds of political identity. As a result, it aims to challenge narratives about former citizens of the GDR as 'moulded' by the 'SED-dictatorship' and lacking the civic virtues necessary to participate in contemporary democratic life. The project combines oral history, archival research, textual analysis and ethnography to explore how citizens of the GDR could know the Stasi and how they shared this knowledge. It aims to use the resulting findings to engage in debates with practitioners in the field of public memory-work and the wider German public through two workshops and a touring exhibition. And it will bring these insights to history teachers and pupils in the UK at two school days. Moreover, findings will be explored in no less than nine academic publications by the research team. In the third year of the grant the scope of the project will be widened to the question of surveillance in contemporary societies at an interdisciplinary one day conference.