Ordinary citizens, who do not support the Stasi ideology, automatically become “enemies” of the state, and suffer from the constant pressure of being watched for the slightest transgression.
Barricades: Dieter Behrend, Julia’s father, is a typical victim who is worn down by the need to show outward membership of the Stasi; the slightest error or mishap can have devastating consequences. (Quote) Living with the constant contradictions and anxieties takes its psychological toll.
As Julia states, from the time “we woke up… they were aware of what “could be said outside the home (very little) and what could be discussed in it (most things)” (95) Julia describes her father, Dieter, as one who is defeated by this constant intrusion. He is depressed and needs constant medication. “Living for so long in a relation of unspoken hostility but outward compliance to the state had broken him” (96)
Constant psychological surveillance takes its toll and leads to heightened state of anxiety. Funder explains this burden of anxiety in terms of Julia’s shell-like “internal migration” whereby she erects artificial boundaries just like the “barricaded tower” to which she presently, physically, escapes. Julia often withdraws unpredictably. She is like a “hermit crab”, ready to “whisk back into its shell at the slightest sign of contact” (90). In a way Funder also suggests it is more complicated and indescribable (or unidentifiable): “It’s not that either. I don’t know what it is” (90) (This narrative device adds to the sense of realism.)
Also, as Funder explains, the erosion of trust leads to a loss of dignity and even a loss of selfhood. Julia finds that the Stasi is so intrusive that there is not even a kernel of self she can keep intact; she has no “private sphere left at all” (113) As she recalls, “it was the loss of everything until I had disappeared too.” (115).
Symbol: of the conflicting and contradictory relationship with the Stasi: violation of self and betrayal of trust in the “good father state”: *** Funder depicts the box of the love letters from her Italian boyfriend as an “aide memoire” that she contradictorily keeps but fears to open, like the “barricaded apartment”, which is full of “things she can’t leave, but can’t look at either”; (leave in the ground or dig up. 112) Both the apartment and the letters become symbols of her conflicting emotions and memories of the State that she seeks to repress but that she knows she must recover; (first she seeks to repress her memories then to understand them but she realises she will never repair the trust that she has lost). The box of letters is a sentimental and patriotic reminder of her boyfriend but simultaneously reminds her of the intrusive nature of the Stasi into her very raw, private life. They also represent the personal wounds, owing to the violation of trust that perhaps will never heal. Despite visits to the psychotherapist, she realises “you cannot destroy the past, nor what it does to you. It’s not ever, really, over”. (117)
- She soon realizes that they know more about her Italian boyfriend than she did and coerces her into acts of betrayal.
- She feels completely disappointed in the “good father state” and experiences an acute sense of anxiety and danger “without me having done anything at all”.
- She refuses to become an informer, like 25??? per cent of GDR citizens, and defies Major N’s order not to divulge their conversation to anyone.
- She realizes the extent of their blackmail when she finally gets a job. In her private rebellious sphere (“she is only part attached to the world”), she sacrifices physical and emotional security; she cannot get a job; cannot go to university)
Finally when Julia is physically raped, (repercussions 147) she develops a severe mistrust of men.
Julia migrates to San Francisco where she works in a feminist bookshop in Berkeley. She is thankful that they “honour their victims here” and in a sense feels “much more at home than in my own country”. Despite a sense of closure Funder suggests that Julia has been so severely traumatised and her trust so deeply betrayed that she will struggle to heal the psychological wounds. This verifies her comment to Funder, “I think I’m definitely psychologically damaged!. She laughs, but she means it.”
Miriam suffers from the psychological trauma of constant surveillance; she also endures the frustrating tendency of the Stasi to refuse to accept responsibility for its violations of human rights.
Symbols: location of apartment; claustrophobic; lack of control and knowledge.
- “they want to stop thinking about the past; they want to pretend it didn’t happen”. ( p. 45)
Many ordinary citizens intuitively resist Stasi ideology because of their innate belief that the Stasi operators are trampling on justice and human rights. (Funder deliberately depicts “ordinary” people who become activists because of their intuitive sense of human rights. … “…” )
As 16-year-old school girls, Miriam and Ursula instinctively sensed that there was something unjust about Stasi police “dousing people with fire hoses”, “roughing people up” and bringing in the horses during the demonstration sparked by the demolition of the OId University Church in Leipzig in 1968.
Thus began a personal rebellion that demanded a great deal of courage.
Symbols: During their first meeting, Miriam a woman in her “mid forties”, wears “a long black sweater and pants” (15) During one of their final meetings she is “dressed entirely in white: loose pants and a flowing top”; (276). The transformation from black to white clothes metaphorically represents the emotional distance that Miriam has travelled in her journey to come to terms with her pain and loss of Charlie. Also the photograph, from which she had torn herself out of existence, is this time, is intact. (AS Funder notes, “I’m glad she has let herself remain in existence in this one” (276). This becomes another symbol of her emotional recovery. (Despite these signs of some recovery, Funder nevertheless leaves an open-ended quality to Miriam’s story.)
Throughout her struggle against the Stasi, Miriam becomes incensed that no one seems to take responsibility for Charlie’s death. He is possibly one of the victims of Southern General Cemetery, for whom the cremator leaves the oven open “so that the Stasi could do their business” (74.) She presumes more likely he was being uncooperative and was “roughed up in the cell, leading to a fatal fall” (279).
Miriam has to live with the fact that she can only guess at what happened to Charlie. “things have been put behind glass but it’s not over yet”
Miriam erects posters and circulates leaflets and soon finds herself on trial for the “crime of sedition” (circulating leaflets). She is caught and thus begins a series of imprisonment, interrogation sessions during which she suffers the torture of sleep deprivation.
Typical of those individuals who refuse to become “faustian bargain hunters” who would sell their souls to the devil as does Faust, in Goethe’s iconic play.
Funder shows that whilst the victims suffer in a variety of ways and struggle to cope with their psychological scars, there are nevertheless a few small victories that help them maintain some dignity.
Small victories
- Julia – plays bluff and threatens Honecker; she eventually gets a job;
- Frau paul – does not divulge Heinz’s identity “bravest woman”. Wall becomes a physical barrier that separates herself from her son.
- Hoch – the circumstances of the plate.
How: Frau Paul and Herr Koch are two survivors who are dealing with the decisions they made and the treacherous actions taken by the Stasi to ruin their families
Impact – dealing with the consequences of difficult decisions; accepting the ruin of families and loss of close relationships
Symbol of loss: Torsten uses the German polite form of “Sie” to relate to his parents which reinforces his lack of familiarity and intimacy. It symbolises his lost childhood and the impact of forced institutionalisation because of the literal erection of the wall.
Herr Koch is particularly incensed because, as an exemplary employee for 25 years, and ultimately the Director of the Drafting Office for Cartographics and Topography) he was prepared to make necessary sacrifices unlike the hordes leaving the GDR. (170) (By 1961, 2000 people were leaving East Germany daily. (Wall was built in 1961)) He was instrumental in marking out the wall and was prepared to follow the curious GDR logic that seeks to lock up free people to keep them safe from the criminals and from Western materialism.
However, despite his loyalty he is reprimanded owing to the visit of his father from the West; also his wife is considered a “negative influence”. (He was so swiftly made redundant… and was “interchangeable with any other uniform and bad crewcut. It made him to think he would leave no mark here (178)”. Hence, the depth of his anger and indignation which fuels his moment of defiance (plate)
He was imprisoned because he did not tell the Stasi about his father’s visit on a day visa; the Stasi accused him of being in possession of pornographic material; his wife filed for petition out of fear of losing their child.
Salvages some pride and purpose:
Herr Koch’s obsession with the wall also reflects conflicting emotions (like Julia) and is keen that outsiders not only recognise the audacity and absurdity of the system, but also the pain and suffering that it caused; (the “wall is the thing that defined him and he will not let it go” (257 – tours for tourists, helping them to see the wall from the eastern perspective) He is a “lone crusader against forgetting”; He is incensed (mortified; terribly angry) that he was so cruelly betrayed by the Stasi despite his loyalty. His campaign to retain the plate captures his incredible sense of humiliation and hurt.
PLATE: significant: moment of defiance: but Herr Koch is bitter and defiant because the Stasi completely ruined his life, his marriage, and his career, and so flippantly cleaned his desk of all his belongings after he was made redundant. All he had managed to salvage as testimony to his amazing dedication to the Stasi was the plate. He was extremely determined to seize the plate as a sign of his small act of control; a small act of revenge after (180) His wife lost her job; he was labelled a thief and “perjurer”.
(Plate – acts of defiance: cf Frau Paul and refusal to betray Michael hinze and Julia calls Major N’s bluff”
Frau Paul lives with a sense of regret that she was not able to provide her son, Torsten Ruhrdanz, with a decent home and loving parents. He comes home a stranger. (To her disappointment, her son is transferred from, Charite, a hospital in the East, to Westend Hospital in West Berlin, the fateful night of the erection of the Berlin Wall (12-13 August 1961). Through unfortunate circumstances, she now must seek permission (and numerous passes) to visit him.)
She wonders whether it would have been different if she had made the decision to visit him on that vital day when she was asked to betray Michael Hinze. Her pain is that she decides “against my son”. Whilst she was able to maintain a clear conscience, she is forever haunted by the fact that she gave up the chance to see him and became forever imprisoned by her choices.
Room 118 in one of the Stasi’s most infamous prisons, Hohenschonhausen. Using the primitive technique referred to euphemistically these days as waterboarding, the barefoot prisoner is “yoked into position” and water drips onto his head. It causes such pain that the prisoner would lose consciousness and his “head would slump”. He would either revive from the water or drown (226).
This is the place of Frau Paul’s worst nightmares: the place that broke her spirit. Funder returns with Frau Paul to the site of torture. Funder notes, “it was in offices that the Stasi truly came into their own: as innovators, story-makers, and Faustian bargain-hunters. That room was where a deal was offered and refused, and a soul buckled out of shape, forever.” (226) In Frau Paul’s case, witnesses the prisoners being tortured, knowing that you could suffer a similar fate, almost breaks her spirit. Funder also notes that none of the torturers had been brought to justice.
Narrative device: Funder climbs into one of the very “tiny cells’ and Frau Paul asks her to imagine that “someone is sitting there with a machine gun”. Although Funder states that there are place she anxiously avoids, she is in awe of Frau paul’s brave and resilient stance in revising the place that “broke her” which is perhaps also fuelled by bravery but also obsession, “caused by what they did to her after that”.
The sense that many still metaphorically erect the “Mauer im Kopf” alludes to the “terrifying possibility of the return of the wall”. So traumatised are many of the victims, according to Funder, that they are unable to let go of their past and embrace the unified Germany.
the Stasi; physically destroyed all the evidence; shredded the evidence… Stasi – perpetrators… Herr Christian – has no sense of responsibility and passionately believes in the righteousness of their cause.
Herr Winz – spying tradecraft ; conditioned; Herr bonsack… During her interview with Herr Christian, Funder not only presents a rather human side to the Stasi officer who takes her on a “tour” as if he is proud or obsessed with his former role, but he still appears caught up in the spying games. The fact that he is grinning and “leaning on the bonnet of the biggest, blackest BMW I have ever seen” suggests that he has not been affected or damaged, or hindered by his involvement. Funder highlights the fact that he is still trying to find similar work as a “private detective” and sets him up for ridicule with the confession that there were even aspects of his job that he enjoyed such as disguising himself as the “blind man”, giving Funder a “mock punch” as if she should also enjoy the joke.
Funder – first-hand, outsider’s, perspective: reflects Julia – age; gender; appearance… and yet completely different backgrounds: personalises the stories; acts as a guide as she uncovers the impacts on the victim; “I am outraged for her and vaguely guilty about my relative luck in life” (109)