“STASILAND” by Anna Funder

“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. It knew who your visitors were, it knew whom you telephoned, and it knew if your wife slept around. It was a bureaucracy metastasised through East German society; overt or covert, there was someone reporting to STASI on their fellow and friends in every school, every factory, every apartment block, every pub.

In my mind, only us, the people who lived in the communism can understand similar regimes. But Anna Funder proved me wrong. Born and raised in Australia, she wrote a beautiful book about the East Germans people who were persecuted by the STASI.

Thus, I learned from her book about the “puzzle people” from Nuremberg: eighteen women and thirteen men (verified do not have any involvement with the STASI in the past) who were trying to put together shredded and hand-ripped files, photos, and film from the STASI. In total, they were 15000 sacks. It will take them 375 years to reconstruct everything.

” – It’s really just like a puzzle at home. You start with the corners, and fill in the rest from the shape of the edges.”

” – I think at the end the STASI had so much information that they thought everyone was an enemy, because everyone was under observation. I don’t think they knew who was for them, or against, or wether everyone was just shutting up.”

” – But this is not about the individuals, the dark man continues. It is about a system that so manipulated people that it drove them to do these things. It shows how people can be used against one another. I’m reluctant to condemn them because the STASI were also manipulated, they too needed jobs.”

Granta Books, 2003