Events with Marianne Birthler, Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former GDR
Tel-Aviv - Jerusalem - Sderot
February 2010
In 2007 a German movie was shown which turned out to be the most successful German movie ever to be screened in Israeli movie theaters: The Life Of Others (Das Leben der anderen). The movie touched on the work of the secret police of East Germany and also the way German society was dealing with its legacy after the unification.
January 2010 was not just the 60th anniversary of the founding of the East German secret police, but also the 20th anniversary of the takeover of its offices in various East German cities by citizen’s initiatives.
On this background, the Israel office of the Heinrich Boell Stiftung invited Marianne Birthler for three events. Marianne Birthler is Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former GDR in Berlin and heading the agency in her second term, succeeding Joachim Gauck. Birthler grew up in East Germany, has been a human rights advocate in the GDR and participated in the resistance to the Soviet imposed communist regime. Following the peaceful revolution of 1989 she had become a member of the only democratically elected People's Chamber and after Germany's reunification a member of the Bundestag and Minister of Education in the state parliament of Brandenburg for the party Alliance 90/The Greens.
The film-screening and discussion series began in Tel-Aviv's Cinemateque, filled with 370 movie-goers. This tremendous interest was probably partly due to the evening's prominent and highly appreciated moderator: Avi Primor - Israel's former Ambassador to the European Union, and from 1993 until 1999 Ambassador to Germany. The sex appeal of a secret police might have been another reason for the many participants. This event-series, however, did not present the methods of the Stasi by means of a thriller like “The Life Of Others”. Prior to the screening of the movie all three moderators rather apologetically pointed out that the movie shown - “Jeder schweigt von etwas anderem” - (Last To Know) was a documentary, portraying the lives of former Stasi inmates.
After the film, Avi Primor posed a central question which would be part of the discussion in the days to come: Why did Nazi Germany function with "only" 60,000 Gestapo soldiers out of a population of 80 Million, while East Germany needed 90,000 official full-time members and 200,000 informal informants for a much smaller country and population in order to function? This might be indicative of the amount of support from the population, Primor suggested, while Birthler pointed at the special nature of East Germany's dictatorship:one country was separated by a long wall. People had family on the other side, kept in touch and exchanged letters.
Shortly after the fall of the wall, during the final days of the East German regime, Stasi officials had begun to destroy evidence and shred documents. Once this had become public, enraged East German activists first occupied the Stasi office in Erfurt, then the other branches of East Germany's secret police. In the course of a big demonstration, access to the Stasi headquarters was gained and the destruction of records stopped. Today an especially developed software program reassembles the shredded records.
During the year of Germany's unification the country began to address the question of East Germany's secret police. Should the accumulated Stasi information be destroyed, locked up in archives or be accessible to the public? Should the names of Stasi perpetrators become common knowledge? Should they be banned from office? After a public debate it was decided to establish one central archive in Berlin, which would house all Stasi documentation. Following the declassification of the Stasi files, citizens could inquire about their personal history. Access was, however, limited. Investigations could only be made about one's own life or that of immediate family members. Other requests for insight into Stasi records are only granted for academic research or investigative journalism. The Stasi archive, so Birthler, was to serve three purposes: Stasi victims and their fates should receive recognition. Perpetrators will be exposed, questions of responsibility and guilt are addressed. The third, more general and educational aspect concerns general structures and methods of dictatorships. Birthler pointed out that Germany, by establishing the Stasi Archive, chose a unique way of coming to terms with the East German regime. People from countries with former dictatorships such as Iraq, Cambodia, Spain or Latin American countries visit the records in order to be inspired for their future activities in dealing with their own history.
The discussion in Tel Aviv’s Cinemateque addresses various questions: How was it possible that in the eastern part of Germany a regime much like that of Nazi Germany could rise immediately after Nazi terror and Holocaust? How is it that many former Stasi-informants still hold leading positions? How could the German parliament decide upon granting Stasi officers a high pension, while their victims were struggling to make ends meet? One of the focal points in Tel-Aviv was the role writers like Stefan Heym and Christa Wolf, a musician like Kurt Masur or politicians such as Gregor Gysi or Markus Wolf played. Birthler said that the first three had not worked for the Stasi, while Gysi as a lawyer had turned in his clients and Wolf's reconnaissance administration was one of the Stasi's arms. Birthler is known as a strong critic of the party “Die Linke” (The Left), claiming that the party is nominating former Stasi employees as members of parliament. In East Germany's opposition, so Birthler, artists had not played a major role. Their only real outcry followed Wolf Biermann's expulsion. International protest movements like the Czechoslovakian petition Charta 77 and the Polish trade union Solidarnosc had had a much bigger impact.
Marianne Birthler pointed out that much of the public's attention had focused on the material compensation of the victims while they mainly struggled with severe psychological damage. They had learnt that family members or close friends had turned them in. But never had she heard, assured Birthler, that people did regret to find out the truth.
The second screening took place in Jerusalem Cinemateque. The moderator of the evening was Prof. Shlomo Avineri, a renowned Israeli political scientist, who teaches at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and had been director general of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the discussion after the film, Shlomo Avineri mentioned that among the 158 kilometers of Stasi files, the archive owned also one kilometer of records from the time of Nazi Germany. Many of them had been copied and sent to Yad Vashem or the Holocaust museum in Washington. East Germany had not used these files in order to deal with its Nazi past. According to official ideology, East Germany was the country of Nazi resistance. The information of the Nazi records had rather served the Stasi to blackmail former Nazis, added Birthler.
The questions from the audience were similar to those in Tel-Aviv, but while the tension in Tel-Aviv had circled around the Stasi-involvement of Gregor Gysi and Markus Wolf, in Jerusalem it focused on a local incident – the tapping of former Knesset member Naomi Chazan's phone.
After the film had been shown and discussed in Ramallah, the third Israeli screening took place in a very different setting as the first two screenings. Most cultural events take place in Israel's three major cities – in Tel-Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa. For the event-series with Marianne Birthler, the Heinrich Boell Stiftung decided to take a different approach. Next to Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem the small town of Sderot was chosen as the third venue. Sderot is one of many so-called development towns situated in peripheral remote rural areas with a socio-economic weak population, mostly Jewish immigrants from Marocco. In the course of the Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Union in 1990, Sderot doubled its population. Sderot is situated less that a mile from the Gaza strip and is internationally known because it has been a target of Qassam rocket attacks for years, which have disrupted daily life. Nearly a quarter of the town's population has left due to traumatic experiences and economic ruin.
Who would be the audience in Sderot's much smaller Cinemateque? Prof. Moshe Zimmermann was the host of this evening. Prof. Zimmermann, historian, publicist and since 1986 director of the Koebner Center for German History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, focuses on social history of the 18th and 20th century in Germany, on the history of Germans and Jews, of German Jewry, of anti-Semitism, visual history and sports. Prof. Zimmermann leaves hardly anyone in Israel indifferent. He has his followers (and opponents) all over the country, also at the nearby Sapir College and among the Kibbutz members in the area. They were part of the audience of about 60 people and came from as far away as Arad in the South. At least one third of the audience was, however, from Sderot. Among them was Martine, a religiously clad woman in her forties of Moroccan origin, who wanted to know, how a civilized people such as the Germans were capable of the Holocaust and a dictatorship with a secret police like the Stasi. She had heard that question before on Israeli radio and was interested in receiving an answer. Following the discussion she pointed out how grateful she and her friends – also traditional, religious women – were that this event had come to Sderot and how important it was for her to show herself appreciative, since she saw the change in Germany, today one of Israel's strongest allies.
The discussion in Sderot was much more personal. Ms. Birthler related to how she had learnt that friends had turned her in to the Stasi and how one used to always turn around before daring to criticize. Even at home people would cover the phone with a pillow before telling critical jokes. On the other hand the discussion had a more general, educational character. Prof. Zimmermann stressed the importance of general elections, of political parties and political participation. Marianne Birthler clarified that the Stasi had never ever pretended to protect East German citizens. It had always been an instrument, sword and shield of the single existing unity Party, the SED. Relating to Martine's question, Birthler said that dictatorships like that in East Germany could happen in any country. No country was immune. The means of the Stasi were mostly not life threatening. Their subtleness was its success: incentives, corruption, fear, repression and psychological pressure. One of its key methods was called Zersetzung, the attempt to slowly disintegrate and decompose its opponents.
Antje Aiger
Click here to read more about the film: Last to Know, a German documentary by by Marc Bauder and Dörte Franke
CV of Marianne Birthler: The Federal Commissioner
From the website of the Office of the Federal Comissioner (BStU)
Marianne Birthler was born in Berlin in 1948. After her final secondary school examinations, she was employed for six years in foreign trade and completed an Open University course in Foreign Trade Economics from 1967 to 1972. This was followed by a period of family leave, and a five-year training course as a catechist and parish worker for the Evangelical Church. From 1982 onwards, Marianne Birthler was active in child and youth work for the Evangelical Church, first in a parish in Prenzlauer Berg, then as a youth advisor in the City Youth Parish Office in Berlin.
From 1986 onwards, Marianne Birthler became actively involved in various opposition groups, such as the "Arbeitskreis Solidarische Kirche" ("Solidarity Church Workshop") and the "Initiative Frieden und Menschenrechte" ("Initiative for Peace and Human Rights").
After participation in the Round Table (subject: Learning-Education-Youth), Marianne Birthler became a member of the People’s Chamber (Volkskammer) in March of 1990, and was spokesperson for the Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen parliamentary group until the dissolution of the parliament. From October 3rd, 1990, Marianne Birthler was a member of the Federal Parliament (Bundestag) and spokesperson for the Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen parliamentary group up until the first all-German elections on December 2nd.
At the same time, Marianne Birthler stood for the Brandenburg Federal State Parliament and became Minister of Education, Youth and Sport. She resigned from the Ministry in October 1992 in reaction to the Prime Minister's Stasi contacts.
After the union of Bündnis 90 with the Green Party in May, 1993, she headed the new party as General Spokesperson of the Board until December, 1994.
From January, 1995, Marianne Birthler led the Berlin office of the Bundestag Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen parliamentary group. At the same time, she completed a four-year training course as organization counsellor. After the relocation of Parliament and Government to Berlin in summer 1999, she worked as an advisor for Personnel Development and Further Education in the Bündnis 90 / Die Grünenparliamentary group.
On September 29th, 2000, Marianne Birthler was elected with a qualified majority by the German Bundestag to be the Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former GDR. She was inaugurated by the Minister of the Interior on October 11, 2000.
Marianne Birthler has held several honorary offices and functions: she is a member of the German Unicef Committee and belongs to the Advisory Board of Transparency International in Germany, the foundation board of the Stiftung Mitarbeit (Cooperation Foundation), the Grüne Akademie der Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung (Green Academy of the Heinrich Böll Foundation), Körber-Stiftung (Körber Foundation), the foundation board of the "Stiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur" (Government-funded organisation devoted to the examination and reappraisal of the Communist dictatorship in East Germany), and the advisory board of the Gedenkstätte Berlin-Hohenschönhausen (Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial).