Stasiland explores a complicated world in which people are forced to make difficult choices. Discuss.

‘We are here to inform you today, that you don’t exist anymore.’ The committee’s comments to Klaus illustrate the regime at its most ridiculous and most frightening. Discuss.

Relationships in Stasiland are incredibly sad, but they also show that there are other aspects of humanity that are enduring, besides brutality. Discuss.

Miriam remarked that when she confronted the Stasi, ‘You know, they just want to stop thinking about the past. They want to pretend it all didn’t happen’. Is there a place for simply ‘forgetting’ the past?

Julia says it was ‘the total surveillance that damaged me the worst. I know how far people will transgress over your boundaries—until you have no private sphere left at all. And I think that is a terrible knowledge to have’. How did the Stasi’s behaviour impact those it watched?

Stasiland helps its readers understand the motivations of those who worked for the Stasi as well as those who became informers. Discuss.

‘If there is one thing my life has taught me,’ explains Hagen Koch, ‘it is that one must not see things just from one side!’ How does Funder attempt to achieve this in Stasiland?

One of the problems with Funder’s investigation is the mixture of subjectivity and objectivity. Do you agree?