Stasiland

Chapter 21: Frau Paul

Earlier in her text, Funder met a guide at the Stasi museum who thought she should speak to Frau Paul. Funder makes an appointment and arrives at the house which she describes as ‘spick and span’, a noticeable difference from Funder’s other observations about old government buildings or apartments filled with the past. Frau Paul had notes ready, titled ‘The Wall Went Straight Through My Heart’. The account given by Frau Paul is a sad story detailing how her son, Torsten, was born very ill. He was transferred to the Westend Hospital in West Berlin where he was immediately operated on for his life-threatening stomach condition. Torsten needed a special formula preparation and medications obtainable only from the West. Frau Paul and her husband needed border sector permission each time they crossed to visit him but when the barbed wire Berlin Wall was rolled out overnight, they were severed from contact. One cruel official even told her Torsten would be better off dead.

Frau Paul contacted Michael Hinze, a student in the West who helped get people out of the GDR. He was part of a clever scheme that extricated people via the rail system using altered western passports supplied by volunteers who gave their documents to be altered. Frau Paul and her husband made arrangements to escape but the plan failed when the Stasi caught the group before they were able to help them. Frau Paul and her husband abandoned their escape plans but agreed to assisting three students who asked to stay in their home.

Chapter 21: Frau Paul Quotes

Everything here is, as my mother would say, ‘spic and span’, and so was Sigrid Paul. Chapter 21

‘The Wall Went Straight through My Heart.’ (Heading on Frau Paul’s notes) Chapter 21

‘I went to see him that time and of course I wanted more,’ she says. ‘I wanted more.’ (Frau Paul) Chapter 21

She seems to have, in fact, very little distance from what happened to her. Things remain close, and hard. (About Frau Paul) Chapter 21

Chapter 22: The Deal

Funder continues the narrative of Frau Paul but indicates that there is more to the story as she already knew more than Frau Paul was revealing. This shows that for Frau Paul, ‘Memory, like so much else, was unreliable. Not only for what it hides and what it alters, but also for what it reveals’. It also suggests that Frau Paul’s memories are coloured by the perception of herself, in some ways, as a criminal. Most readers would see her as a victim and a brave resistance fighter, especially in light of the Stasi deal that was offered to her: help them catch Michael Hinze and she can see her son. Frau Paul remembers Fricke, a Western journalist and broadcaster, similarly entrapped by the Stasi and dragged across the border to prison. Frau Paul decides she cannot trap Michael, and agonisingly recalls to Funder, ‘I had to decide against my son, but I couldn’t let myself be used in this way’. Funder reflects on the courage of Frau Paul and how the woman in front of her was now a ‘lonely, teary, guilt-wracked wreck’. Her husband and the three students were arrested after a failed tunnel escape.

Chapter 22: The Deal Quotes

Memory, like so much else, was unreliable. Not only for what it hides and what it alters, but also for what it reveals. Chapter 22

If she does not admit to having known, it was because for this knowledge she was made a criminal in the GDR, and because, saddest of all, she still feels like one. Chapter 22

.. Then they continued the interrogation day and night- they liked to do it when one was sleep-deprived. They didn’t give me any rest.’ (Frau Paul) Chapter 22

‘Me-bait in a trap for Michael! And of course that was an absolute no. I couldn’t.’ (Frau Paul) Chapter 22

There was no right answer here, no good outcome. Chapter 22

Chapter 23: Hohenschonhausen

Frau Paul took Funder to the Hohenschönhausen prison, which is now a museum. Once again, Funder focuses on the greyness, lack of windows and ventilation, and the intensely oppressive nature of the prison. Frau Paul locks her in a prison van so she can experience how it feels. Like being locked in at the TV station, there is a small glimpse of what it would be like to be deprived of freedom that Funder experiences while investigating the stories. Frau Paul continues her story, outlining how she and her husband were held in Hohenschönhausen prison for five months, never knowing their charges or judgement until five minutes before their trial. Funder admires Frau Paul’s bravery in being able to return to such an awful place; ‘But here she was in the place that broke her, and she was telling me about it’ giving insight in to the importance of retelling the past to prevent it happening again. Funder imagines that Frau Paul’s reason for not admitting how committed she was to helping others escape was that she saw herself as a criminal rather than a hero or dissident; ‘This seems to me the sorriest thing; that the picture she has of herself was one that the Stasi made for her.’

While in prison, Frau Paul’s son, Torsten, remained in the Westend Hospital, tended by staff. She received a letter from one of the doctors reporting on his good progress. Michael Hinze, who only recently learned about Frau Paul’s connection with his freedom, expresses his gratitude, while explaining to Funder why he doesn’t need to feel guilty about her actions.

In August 1964, Frau Paul and her husband were ‘bought’ for 40,000 Western Marks, a common practice that actually dares to put a price on a human life. However, unlike most transactions, Frau Paul and her husband were stripped of their ID and dumped in an East Berlin street. There were only 9 of the 34,000 people bought by the West who were not delivered, and unfortunately, they were two of them. Torsten finally came home in late 1965, aged nearly five, and failed to recognise his mother. Frau Paul’s sad and confused emotional state as she tells this part of the story reduces Funder to tears as well. Another aspect of being involved in the investigation of the stories is sharing the painful memories. Funder meets Torsten, who admires his parents’ actions and is determined not to play the ‘if only’ game, living life as it comes. Torsten is broken in body but seems hopeful in spirit. Funder ends the chapter with a reference to ‘Mauer im Kopf or the Wall in the Head’. She realises that some Stasi men live in hope that the Wall may return some day, while for victims it was a terrifying possibility.

Chapter 23: Hohenschonhausen Quotes

‘I hate this place, but I’m still here.’ (Frau Paul) Chapter 23

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 was in the place that broke her, and she was telling me about it. It was part bravery, like the bravery that made her refuse the Stasi deal … Chapter 23

‘She’s a very courageous woman,’ Hinze continues, ‘I have a great deal of respect for her. I’m also grateful to her. But at the same time I don’t think I need to feel guilty … ‘. (Michael Hinze about Frau Paul) Chapter 23

‘And when I took him in my arms for the first time and held him to me he must have thought, “What does this old lady want with me? She says she was my mother, but what was that, a mother?’ (Frau Paul about her returning son, Torsten) Chapter 23

I admire them for what they did.’ He seems to have learned to contain both longing and regret. ‘It doesn’t occur to me,’ he says, ‘to think that perhaps they might have done things differently and things might have worked out differently.’ (Torsten) Chapter 23

He had learned not to play the ‘if only’ game… (about Torsten) Chapter 23

Chapter 24: Herr Bohnsack

Another piece of the Stasi regime is revealed. Along with men who trained operatives, men who spied and informed, men who built walls, men who spoke against western influence, there was Bohnsack, who took the job of ‘disinformation and psychological warfare against the West’ while overseeing the overseas espionage service of the regime. While in Division X, Bohnsack, who was trained as a journalist, leaked information, manufactured recorded conversations, and spread rumours about the West.

His story has a focus on the end of the regime. As the groundswell moved against the leaders in the GDR and the Stasi, there was a shift in Stasi activity. Bohnsack and his colleagues feared they would be ordered to shoot their own people, but also knew that if they disobeyed orders, they’d be shot. They were also aware of what may happen to them should power be lost. However, once Mielke stood down from the leadership in the last days, his men lacked the ability to give orders themselves; they were only used to receiving them. Bohnsack, on his own initiative, spent three days feeding files into his family’s old baker’s oven, watched by a suspicious neighbour. The story references the past, shadowing Hitler’s orders to shoot those who wouldn’t shoot others, with the black cloud over the bake ovens reminiscent of chimneys over Auschwitz.

Threatened with exposure after the media got hold of a disk containing names of the top paid Stasi, Bohnsack outed himself to the Western newspaper. By breaking the unwritten Stasi code of honour, he was seen as a traitor by former colleagues and ostracised. He returned to his local tavern and faced harsh abuse for years, but reasons that ‘he can’t take back the past.’

Funder’s investigation is interrupted as she hears news that her mother is seriously ill with cancer in Australia. Uwe drives an upset Funder to the airport. She has left a message on Miriam’s phone but in the coming months, her energies are devoted to her mother, who dies nine months later. Funder recalls that ‘grief came down on me like a cage’ and it would be three years before she would return to Berlin.

Chapter 24: Herr Bohnsack Quotes

Herr Bohnsack was in Division X, responsible, as he put it on the phone to me, for ‘disinformation and psychological warfare against the west’. Chapter 24

‘For me,’ Bohnsack says, ‘that was the most terrifying thing. That instead of shooting cardboard figures we’d have to shoot our own people. And we knew, just like under Hitler, that if we refused we’d be taken off and shot ourselves.’ Chapter 24

‘I destroyed everything, all day long.’ There was so much paper to burn the oven nearly collapsed. A cloud of black smoke hung over him in the sky. Chapter 24

‘I can’t stand here before you all and undo it, take it all back.’ After that I sat down. I drank a beer and I just sat there.’ (Herr Bohnsack to the pub crowd after the fall) Chapter 24

After she died, grief came down on me like a cage. It was another eighteen months before I could focus on anything outside an immediate small area of sadness, or could imagine myself into anyone else’s life. All up it was nearly three years before I came back to Berlin. (Funder after her mother passes) Chapter 24

Chapter 25: Berlin, Spring 2000

As Funder returns to Berlin, there are noticeable differences in her descriptions of the city. The portrayal of springtime and a green, perfumed city offers signs of hope; Funder’s detail about the flowers and trees contrast her earlier emphasis on the city’s bleakness and practicality of government buildings. Despite the trace of hope, Funder reflects that nothing has changed substantially. There are still homeless men in the park, and one of them tells her that he preferred socialism to the new Kapitalismus. Funder wonders if some are looking back at the GDR through rose-coloured glasses, sensing ‘an ache for a lost time when things were more secure’. Funder is mindful that Miriam has not responded to a letter she sent from Australia.

Chapter 25: Berlin, Spring 2000 Quotes

Berlin was green, a perfumed city. I realise I have never been here in full spring. Chapter 25

‘You know, television was not good for the eyes. Not healthy.’ I wonder if he was somehow watching over me that winter, seeing the flickering black and white at my window. (Man in park to Funder) Chapter 25

‘This Kapitalismus, you can’t imagine the sort of shit it’s building.’ He sniffs and spits onto the ground. Then he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a comb. ‘It was so much better before…’. (Man in park to Funder) Chapter 25

Chapter 26: The Wall

Funder renews her acquaintance with Berlin, walking through streets lined with cherry trees and chatting to people she encounters. She meets a drunk who doesn’t ‘want to be German anymore’. Mielke has requested to see his own file. Funder renews contact with Frau Paul, who was still active in an organisation helping those persecuted by the regime, running prison tours and campaigning for victim compensation.

Soon after, Mielke dies, aged 92, with the headlines proclaiming, ‘Most hated man now dead’. Funder visits a new museum at BenauerStrasse that includes an imitation of a section of the Wall. Funder sees this as ‘…a sanitised Disney version; it was history, airbrushed for effect’; there is a sense of remembering but without the real raw pain. Herr Koch takes Funder on a tour along the old route of the Wall. She sees him as part of the new remembering, unable to let go of the past, the ‘lone crusader against forgetting’.

Chapter 26: The Wall Quotes

‘I don’t want to be German any more!’ he sobs. ‘I don’t want to be German any more!’ His face was tracked with silver tears…. ‘We are terrible.’ (Man on street) Chapter 26

Mielke died this week. He was ninety-two. The headlines read, ‘Most hated man now dead.’ Chapter 26

‘I’m taking a busload of tourists tomorrow along the route where the Wall was, because you can hardly tell any more.’ (Hagan Koch) Chapter 26

He is, once more, a true believer: the Wall was the thing that defined him, and he will not let it go. I think for a moment of Frau Paul, who will also not let it go. Herr Koch starts to take photographs. I look up at the angel’s long face and I think of Miriam and Julia; lives shaped, too, by the Wall. Will they let it go? Or, will it let them go? (About Hagan Koch and the others relationship with the wall and memories) Chapter 26

For one mark you can have your passport stamped with a GDR entry visa, as if you had stepped into this tent and miraculously been admitted to that place in the past. Elderly American tourists are climbing out of a bus. Chapter 26

Chapter 27: Puzzlers

After the shredding and tearing of files by the Stasi, sacks full of paper were delivered to the village of Zirndorf, near Nuremberg, where the File Authority, who now runs the building, were tasked with restoring the documents and releasing the files to the public. The legend of ‘the puzzle women’ is known to Funder and she is keen to meet them. The term ‘puzzle women’ isn’t quite correct as thirteen men worked as ‘puzzlers’ alongside eighteen women. Funder wants them to find out what happened to Charlie Weber, in order to help Miriam find closure. She wonders why the files can’t be reassembled using computer programs but the director informs her that only originals are acceptable for ‘purposes of evidence’. One of the workers tells Funder that the regime manipulated people to such a degree that they were driven to do things that, in a ‘normal’ existence, they would never consider. Funder learns it would take 40 workers, 375 years to reconstruct all of the bags of shredded and torn files. ‘I am speechless’ writes Funder as she realises that the whole project was really just a symbolic act. The hope that Miriam, and others, will find answers here is misplaced; the restoring of the documents is metaphoric of healing lives as, for some, there will not be enough time to fully heal.

Chapter 27: Puzzlers Quotes

I have been thinking about this place for so long as the focus of Miriam’s hopes; I want there to be stainless steel benches and people wearing hair nets and white cloth gloves … I want them to find out what happened to Charlie Weber. (The Stasi file authority) Chapter 27

The dark man says he was most shocked by how the Stasi used people’s own distress against them. ‘When they were in prison, for instance, offering to let them out on condition that they spy for the Stasi.’ Chapter 27

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.’ The others are nodding. ‘On the other hand,’ he says, ‘there were lots of people who just said no. Not everyone can be bought.’ (Workers at the file authority) Chapter 27

This means that to reconstruct everything it would take 40 workers 375 years. I am speechless. Chapter 27

I look out the window, thinking about Miriam and her hopes that the torn-apart pieces of her life will be put back together in those airy rooms, some time in the next 375 years. Chapter 27

Chapter 28: Miriam and Charlie

Funder arrives in Leipzig, and notices another newly built museum. She is the only visitor and as she wanders around, she sees a TV monitor showing old von Schnitzler broadcasts and discovers old Renft memorabilia in a glass cabinet. She feels annoyed that ‘this past can look so tawdry and so safe, as if destined from the outset to end up behind glass…’. Next, Funder revisits the Stasi museum, with its smell jars, the place where her quest had begun.

Miriam invites Funder to her new apartment, which is ‘white, light and comfortable’. Miriam now works at a public radio station, and shocks Funder with the news that some of her colleagues are former Stasi informers. This mixed new world is hard to negotiate, shiny, painted over, but still essentially the same: victims and perpetrators walk side by side. Those who wish to forget are among those who wish to remember. There has been a recent trend of ‘Ostalgie’ that is nostalgia of the old East. Miriam declines to be involved in these types of programs at the station, worried that this will ‘feed into a crazy nostalgia for the GDR…’.

Miriam is clearly pleased to see and talk to Funder again, and seems hopeful. She shows her a poem written by Charlie and seems to simply pick up where the conversation left off several years ago. She reveals how the Stasi harassed her and Charlie after they applied to leave the East, before he was imprisoned, never to return. Miriam’s attempts to find out more about Charlie’s death and burial in the intervening years have been fruitless but she still holds out hope for the puzzlers. As Funder says, Miriam is playing a waiting game that keeps her life suspended; ‘And underneath the need to know was the need for justice’. Her fragility is highlighted when Funder observes Miriam asleep in the living room, a blindfold across her eyes and ‘so slender and crumpled’. Funder farewells Miriam at the station and reads a copy of Charlie’s touching poem on the train. The chapter, and the text, closes with Funder’s focus on colour, brightness, grass, and life moving on. For the first time, she notices a playground near her apartment, rather than homeless old men. Hope.

Chapter 28: Miriam and Charlie Quotes

Most of the cranes are gone. New facades of buildings in sun-yellow and dusky pink, some even gilded, have been revealed from behind scaffolding. (Leipzig) Chapter 28

I am annoyed that this past can look so tawdry and so safe, as if destined from the outset to end up behind glass, securely roped off and under press-button control. … Isn’t a museum the place for things that are over? Chapter 28

She was probably sixteen, which means she was six years old when the Wall fell. She wouldn’t remember a time without telephone boxes. (Funder sees a teen) Chapter 28

‘Things like this feed into a crazy nostalgia for the GDR- as if it had been a harmless welfare state that looked after people’s needs. Most of the people at these parties are too young to remember the GDR anyway. They are just looking for something to yearn for.’ (Miriam about Ostalgie parties) Chapter 28

Some of the men running the radio station are former Stasi informers, or, in one case, a former Stasi employee. This shocks me, but Miriam shrugs. ‘The old cadre are back in power …’ Chapter 28

For now, though, this terrible game of waiting keeps her suspended from her life with Charlie, still in contact. And underneath the need to know, was the need for justice. The regime may be gone, but the world cannot be set to rights until Miriam had some kind of justice. Things have been put behind glass, but it was not yet over. Chapter 28

…I have made myself sick with silence …
I have wandered, lost …
I hunkered down to see
What will become of me. …
I held myself tight,
So as not to scream.
But I did scream, so loud,
That this land howled back at me,
As hideously,
As it builds its houses. (From Charlie’s poem) Chapter 28