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February 16, 2007
Seven true Lives of Others
Real-life stories of how the East German Stasi, or secret police, recruited informers, amplifying the story in Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others, is the subject 
of a lengthy piece by Hannah Booth in the Guardian. "It's more than 17 years since the Berlin Wall fell, that chilly night on November 9 1989. To the sound of car horns and cheers, East Germans fled to the west in their thousands. Those skinny teens in stonewashed jeans and leather jackets dancing on the wall will now be approaching their 40s; those boxy Trabants streaming through the Brandenburg Gate, now Audis and BMWs. But the past hasn't been entirely forgotten. In fact, Germany is currently experiencing a resurgence of interest in what life was really like in the German Democratic Republic. After years of silence followed by sugary nostalgia ("ostalgie") for kitsch food brands and clothes, former East Germans are taking a harder, more critical look at life under the constant gaze of the Stasi... Both East German citizens and West German politicians were spied upon by the Stasi, who recruited an extraordinary one in five of the civilian population to act as unofficial informers. Little surprise, then, that even with the archives open, a national paranoia remains over who was victim and who collaborator." [Seven victims of the former communist state tell their stories at the link.]
Posted by Ray Pride at February 16, 2007 03:10 PM
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