AN UNSURPASSED SCOPE OF TRUTH FINDING

In the reunited Federal Republic of Germany, the Stasi Record Act (Stasi-Unterlagengesetz) was passed on 1 January 1992. Überprüfung (literally: ‘check, review’, but used here more specifically in the meaning of investigation followed by vetting) will end at 29 December 2006 for most categories, such as members of government and parliament, lawyers, judges and public functionaries.

This will imply the end for an important element of the work of the BstU Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, Federal Commissioner for the Records of the National Security Service of the Former German Democratic Republic). There is no time limit however for other functions of the BstU, such as inspection of personal records (Einsichtnahme in Geheimdienstakten) .

What have been the results of the first fifteen years of documenting and publishing the operations of the Stasi (National Security Service) in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR)? The lessons of the ‘German model’ of truth finding, personal access to files and justice have not been widely regarded by those who studied truth commissions and transitional justice. It is argued here that the German model may actually be the most encompassing, consistent and legitimate approach available.

Since 1992, the Federal Republic of Germany (the legal successor to the GDR) has been unique in its set of initiatives, as it has 

• established two successive truth commissions; 
• offered access to personal files to all victims, and on a more
• restricted basis to academic researchers and media, with documentation including the names of those directly responsible for repression; 
• prosecuted and convicted two of the highest level functionaries and over 200 others; 
• paid or is in the process of paying compensation to up to 189,000 victims; 
• established over 350 memorials and museums commemorating the repression of the GDR period; 
• provided financial means provided for official truth finding and disclosure that have far surpassed the budgets of all the world’s truth commissions combined.

INTERNATIONAL DISREGARD FOR THE ‘GERMAN MODEL’

The model of the BstU in Germany, a state bureau for access to and research on files of the former Stasi (of MsF, i.e. secret service), has as yet received little attention in English-language media and publications. As far as I am aware, it has neither been closely studied or promoted by Amnesty International or other international human rights organizations. This contrasts with much publicity on truth-finding efforts in countries such as Argentina, South-Africa and Peru. In my view, the German model that combines authoritative studies with personal access to files, represents one of the best approaches to clarification of the past and the accounting for human rights violations.

Various factors seem to have caused the international neglect of the German experience: 

• German is often seen as a country with ‘too much past’. There has been so much international debate about Vergangenheitsbewaltigung that this has veiled the more recent GDR truth finding. As Offe and Poppe (2006) note, ‘after 1990 some Germans argued that “this time we are going to do it right”, as if a rigorous reckoning with communism could redeem the laxist practices after 1945’.
• Internationally, ‘lustration’ is not in particularly well known. There have not been lustration efforts in English, French or Spanish speaking countries; they all occurred all in countries with languages that few foreigners can read (including Hungarian, Lithuanian, Estonian). German is, generally speaking, not a popular language in the international community. 
• The GDR was never object of much international attention, boycotts etc., as was the case for South Africa, Latin American countries or Russia. One reason was that activists in the FRG (and its government) did so much of this already. 
• The GDR was example of ‘blunt’ repression, like in a police state, not ‘sharp’ as in many other countries. Violence was mostly not fatal (except border killings) and there were no ‘disappearances’. Yet conditions for political prisoners were harsh and sometimes deadly. The percentage of people spied on intensely may have been higher than in any other country in the world (possibly with the exception of North Korea).

SPECIFIC FEATURES OF REPRESSION IN THE GDR

The Stasi was widely regarded as one of the most effective intelligence agencies in the world. The intensity of state surveillance was probably without parallel anywhere in the world. In 1989, the Stasi had 91,000 staff members and 174,000 unofficial collaborators - a ratio of one spy for every 62 citizens. Some estimate that there may even have been one informant (formal or informal) for every 6.5 East Germans. The GDR has had a continuous history of nearly 57 years of repressive regime (from early 1993 to late 1999). This may not be a modern time record (the Soviet Union was under autocratic rule for 75 years), but is was longer than that of any other state in Central Europe.

The GDR border system was formed by a series of chain-link fences, walls, turrets and mine fields that was in place from 1952 to 1990, and was 1,381 km in length. Between 1949 and 1961 approximately 2.5 million people crossed from the GDR to the FRG via the still open border with West Berlin with a further 5,000 crossing the Berlin Wall between 1961 and 1989 The border was actively guarded using a variety of often lethal methods. Mines were buried and watchtowers set up. Dogs patrolled the area and automatic firing devices pointing towards the GDR territory could be triggered by movement. The border guards stationed along the route had orders to stop anyone attempting to escape by shooting them. The most famous part of the GDR border was the Berlin Wall, built on 13 August 1961, cutting off the three Western sectors of Berlin from East Berlin and the GDR. Several hundred people died while attempting to escape from the GDR, mostly civilians. The exact number of victims is difficult to calculate. The Berlin Public Prosecution Department reckons that about 270 'proven' deaths on the border were due to acts of violence by GDR border security guards, including deaths caused by mines and automatic firing devices. The Central Assessment Group for Governmental and Federational Crimes (German ZERV), however, has registered 421 suspected cases of killings by armed GDR border guards.

The GDR was the scene of the first popular revolt in the Eastern European socialist block, in June and July 1953. A strike by Berlin construction workers turned into a widespread uprising against the East German government the next day. The uprising in Berlin was violently suppressed by tanks of the Soviet forces in Germanty. In spite of the intervention of Soviet troops, the wave of strikes and protests was not easily brought under control. There were demonstrations in more than 500 towns and villages. After the evaluation of documents accessible since 1990, the number of victims appears to be at least 125; higher estimates put the number of dead at 267. In addition, there were numerous arrests.

The so-called ‘foreign intelligence lines’ within the Stasi consisted of the Berlin centre of the ‘Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung’ (HVA) and the Departments XV in the fifteen district Stasi headquarters all over the GDR. In October 1989 approximately 5,000 full-time employees worked for these foreign intelligence units, among them 4,000 in Berlin. Compared to the 1950s the number of officers was ten times as high at the end of the GDR. At least since the mid-1970s the Stasi could listen into every phone conversation between West and East Germany. It also targeted objects and individuals in West Berlin and West Germany and tapped their lines.

In the forty year history of the GDR, approximately 300,000 people were imprisoned for their political beliefs. Political prisoners were subjected to a variety of psychological punishments by the Stasi. Incarceration typically began with an isolation period intended to weaken the prisoner before interrogation. For example, Hans Scheidler was arrested in August 1968 after distributing leaflets condemning the USSR's invasion of Czechoslovakia. He was immediately transported to Hohenschönhausen prison in East Berlin and placed in solitary confinement. ‘I spent seven months without knowing my sentence, without newspapers, without visitors, without anyone to talk to, without seeing the sky.’ The prison guards attempted to dehumanize the prisoners by refusing to use their names. ‘I learned to respond to 'number one'‘, Scheidler remembers. The isolation was usually effective. The interrogation sessions provided the prisoners with their only human interaction, and for the first time they were addressed by their actual names. The suddenly humane treatment created immediate affection for the interrogators. ‘By the end of isolation, you were willing to confess anything,’ says Scheidler. He became so desperate during his isolation that he faked a suicide attempt. The worried prison guards immediately moved him to a two-person cell. The isolation period and interrogation were followed by a formal sentencing of the prisoners, usually on the recommendation of the Stasi. The sentences were overstated to depress the prisoners and to allow for the offer of shortened sentences in exchange for ‘rehabilitation’. Sentences were typically served in mixed population cells comprised of political and common criminals. After being sentenced to 30 months in prison, Scheidler was transferred to a cell containing 33 people in the Commando X section of Hohenschönhausen. ‘The head prisoner in the cell was a 25-year-old murderer. I saw a 20-year-old thug break down a 68-year-old professor. There was an atmosphere of fear.’ The prison guards created an environment of distrust by rewarding those prisoners who reported rule violations or political opposition. A system of collective punishment was implemented so that the prisoners were responsible for each other's behaviour. If a political prisoner stepped out of line, however, an additional punishment of 12-72 hours in the ‘hot room’ was imposed, a special cell kept at extremely high temperatures. ‘At roll call you could usually tell who had spent the night in the hot room by the paleness of their faces.’

GERMAN TRUTH COMMISSIONS

Germany is the only East European state which has brought forth a truth commission - two, in fact. Both have dealt with the legacy of the former Socialist Unity Party (SED) in the German Democratic Republic. The first commission, `Elaboration of the history and consequences of the SED dictatorship', was established in 1992. It studied the repressive apparatus of the Stasi, and repressive use of the judicial and prison system. It was a 16 member committee of inquiry from the federal parliament. Dozens of hearings were staged in the former East German section of the country, and many resulting `subgroups' still meet in various cities to discuss the SED legacy. An enormous amount of material, up to 150,000 pages, has been collected by this commission, and an official report has been published. A new Enquête-Kommission was set up in May 1995, labeled `Conquering the consequences of the SED dictatorship in the process of German unification'. Its terms of reference include three main issues: the ideological influence of the SED, the militarization of society and the penetration of society by the Stasi security apparatus. The office has also compiled an analytical history of the GDR, which in 1995 already consisted of 15,000 pages while new volumes continue to appear.
THE STASI FILES ACT

Between 4th and 7th December 1989, the Stasi buildings in all district cities and most of the county towns all over the GDR were stormed and seized by spontaneously arranged citizens' committees. All remaining files and documents were secured and sealed. After December 7 only the Stasi headquarters in Berlin were still in business, since for some time people did not dare to enter the huge compound. Finally on 15 January 1990, there were efforts made to negotiate a takeover combined with simultaneous pressure from outside demonstrators. They resulted in the seizure of still remaining, quite comprehensive central files as well. In the following months leading toward German unification in October 1990, citizens' committees in East Germany oversaw the dismantling of the Stasi.

The Law on the Files of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic was codified on 20 December 1991 and came into effect on 1 January 1992. This law was adopted by the Parliament of the unified German Federal Republic on the basis of an Act previously passed by the first (and last) freely-elected East German Parliament. Crucial provisions of the Stasi Files Act (Stasi-Unterlagengesetz, ‘Stug’) include:

The purpose of the act is to
1. facilitate individual access to personal data which the State Security Service has stored regarding him, so that he can clarify what influence the state security service has had on his personal destiny;
2. protect the individual from impairment of his right to privacy being caused by use of the personal data stored by the State Security Service;
3. ensure and promote the historical, political, and juridical reappraisal of the activities of the State Security Service;
4. provide public and private bodies with access to the information required to achieve the purposes stated in this Act.

Each individual has the right to enquire of the Federal Commissioner if the records contain personal data regarding him. If this is the case, the individual shall have the right to obtain information, to inspect the records and to be provided with records

This implies that victims of Stasi spying have the right to inspect their own files and to have informers named. Others on whom there are files but who were not direct victims of surveillance can also inspect their files providing the legitimate interests of victims are not infringed. Everyone, including foreigners, has the right to inspect his/her personal files and find out to what an extent the MfS (Stasi) influenced their own lives. One can obtain the application form for the inspection of your personal records by mail or via the Internet. After 12 weeks, one will receive initial information about whether indications of a file were found. Urgent cases (as for very old or sick people) are processed with priority. Researchers and the media can access records with no personal data; records with personal data on ‘persons of contemporary history’, political office holders and public officials while in office unless they are data subjects or third parties; and records with personal data on Stasi employees or beneficiaries.

Before the files of the Stasi were officially opened, there was a black market for files stolen by former Stasi agents or supplied by the former Soviet security apparatus, the KGB (which had copies of many of them). These files were used for blackmail, extortion and fomenting public disturbances. There was even a price list for files; the media were among the most interested buyers.

THE BSTU (FEDERAL COMMISSIONER FOR STASI FILES)

The BstU (Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, Federal Commissioner for the Records of the National Security Service of the Former German Democratic Republic) was set up concomitant with the Stasi Files Act. The inventory which the BStU had taken over consisted roughly half of the archived records the MfS had drawn up and filed according to its needs. The rest was in a largely disorderly state the way the Stasi officers had left it and the records were partially even torn up.

During the regime's final days, panicking Stasi officials attempted to shred the files of their documents, both using paper shredders and tearing them by hand when the shredders collapsed under the load (they could not burn the papers, since the smoke would betray them). The hastily stored bags of paper pieces were found soon after. In 1995, the German government hired a team to reassemble the documents; six years later the three dozen archivists commissioned on the projects were through only 300 bags; the methodology was then changed to computer-assisted data recovery to process the remaining 16,000 bags - estimated to contain 33 million pages. Yet the announced grand computer that could theoretically do 10,000 pages an hour has never reached the BstU offices.

The Berlin central office plus its outposts contain 120 km of documents, 16.5 km of torn records, 41.7 km of records on film 41.7 km – in total some 180 km. Another 6 km may be added if all the shredded files will ever be recomposed.

There have been over 5 million applications for inspection since 1991. They include inspection of personal records (2 million), investigations (3 million) and research and media (15,000).

Debate continues on a provision that people in both those categories may apply for their files to be destroyed or made anonymous from January 2007, providing there is no over-riding interest of other data subjects who would otherwise suffer a lack of evidence, or the files are not needed for historical and political research.

In March 2002, former Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl won a lawsuit to deny public access to his Stasi files. In the wake of the court's decision, the BstU, meanwhile headed by Marianne Birthler, was temporarily required to block further access to some of its papers on prominent individuals and to blacken many names from copies handed out until then without such deletions.

According to a report received by the newspaper Berliner Zeitung, the ‘Birthler Commission [BstU] will be integrated into the Federal Archive and the educational and research duties of the Commission for Stasi Records will be handed over to Stiftung Aufarbeitung Foundation and/or other institutes’. The dissolution of the commission in its current form would ‘be completed by the year 2010’.

The BstU has engaged cooperation with its equivalent institutions abroad (Czech Republic, Israel, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary). In Ukraine there is no equivalent institute and therefore the BstU cooperates with individual archivists and historians. The BstU also cooperates with prosecutors in Poland, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, USA, Canada and the United Kingdom.

THE ‘ROSENHOLZ’ AND ‘SIRA’ DISCOVERIES

The ‘Rosenholz’ files are a collection of 381 CD-ROMs containing 280,000 files with information on employees of the Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung (HVA), one of the intelligence agencies of the former GDR. They mostly contain the real names of agents who worked for the HVA in former West Germany. In 1985 Stasi Minister Erich Mielke, still preparing for emergency measures against a nuclear attack from the West, ordered to microfilm all 317,000 personal file cards with the real names of all HVA agents and 77,000 file cards with codewords of HVA operations. In addition, on his order also computerized forms had to be prepared on each individual agent holding some basic information on the nature of the contact. Whereas the paper file cards were destroyed in early 1990, one microfilm copy had apparently made it to the KGB. From there supposedly the CIA obtained the films in 1992 and brought them to its centre in Langley for scrutiny. According to another rumour, a former Stasi Major General sold it to the CIA for 1.5 million U.S. dollars. Finally there was an arrangement set up for West German intelligence officers to travel to the United States and transcribe during many weeks in 1993 the information in these films concerning West German agents only. The West German service called this operation on the territory of Northern Virginia ‘Rosenholz’. The Rosenholz files ended up with the CIA during the German reunification under unclear circumstances; they finally returned to Germany in 2003 after long negotiations. The files were then checked by the Birthler-Behörde (BStU); since March 2004, they have been open to the general public.

The decoding of the so-called SIRA tapes was achieved in 1998. This System Information Recherche Aufklärung (SIRA) consists of computerized databases, in which the HVA put the headlines of almost every single ‘information’ obtained by its different agents together with other statistical data including evaluating grades on an information's value. These electronic tapes were destroyed in the early 1990s, but copies turned up later with the former East German army where the BstU discovered and decoded them in many years of work. For the period between 1969 and 1989, 4,500 different ‘sources’ with codenames have identified. The tape contains the complete F-22 file of the HVA archive, consisting of 63,035 data sets with the cover names and service periods of all HVA agents which have ever been in service (about 47,000 since 1950). According to a first review by managers of the former Stasi archive, by 1989 approximately 15,000 agents had been in active service. Security experts estimate only one third of all agents has been unmasked until today.

PURGES AND VETTING (ÜBERPRÜFUNG)

‘Purification' of former communists after the demise of the German Democratic Republic was far-reaching. For example, sixty percent of Saxony's educational officials and teachers were fired. But teachers purged in Saxony were all offered new jobs in Brandenburg.

The BStU supports the civil service in its investigations to find out whether there are former members of the National Security Service among its employees. Applications for vetting were eight times as high in 2004 as in 2003, the result of a Federal Council decision of September 2003 to vet all higher political figures and functionaries. This was after the Rosenholz (Rosewood) files had come to light. Nearly al of this growth occurred in the states of Sachsen (Saxony), Sachsen-Anhalt and Thüringen. These three states alone checked over 55,00 public functionaries in 2004. In the GDR a total of 42,000 individuals was removed from public office. Judges were purged 77-100 per cent, nearly all judges in former GDR come from West Germany.

TRIALS

Of all ECE states, only Germany and the Czech Republic have properly convicted some of the highest level responsible persons. In Germany, as of March 1999, 22,765 investigations had been opened, leading to the opening of 565 criminal court cases. Verdicts were reached in 211 cases, of which just 20 cases resulted in actual prison sentences. While most received suspended sentences, their criminal records preclude the pursuit of many opportunities. Further, all employees and informants of the Stasi were barred from holding civil servant positions in reunified Germany. For many low-ranking civil servants this exclusion effectively ended their careers.

Some of the cases attracted much international attention:

• The first border guard trial began in 1991, involving four soldiers responsible for killing Chris Gueffroy, 20, the last person to die while fleeing East Germany, on 5 Februay 1989. Two of the four guards were cleared, the other two eventually received suspended sentences. 
• Party chief Erich Honecker had fled to Moscow after the GDR’s demise, trying to avoid prosecution over crimes the new German government charged him with, specifically the 192 deaths of those trying to escape over the Berlin Wall. He was extradited to Germany in 1992. When he did come to trial in 1993, he was released due to ill health and moved to Chile where he died in exile some months later, in May 1994. 
• A 1992 indictment maintained that, as members of the GDR's secretive national Defense Council, Honecker and former Secret Police Chief Erich Mielke, Minister-President Willi Stoph, the Defense Minister and his chief-of-staff, and the Suhl District Party Secretary had enjoyed ‘unlimited influence’ in determining how their state's border was fortified. The indictment provided a detailed outline of the procedures of the National Defence Council and descriptions of 68 of the killings that had taken place on the inter-German border between 1961 and 1989. 
• Stasi chief Mielke was arrested by the new German authorities and charged with the murder of two police officers in 1931 – and not with his involvement in the secret service. Sentenced in October 1993 to six years, he was paroled after less than two. In 1998 all further legal action against him was ended on the grounds of his poor health. He died shortly thereafter. 
• Since 1991, 128 people of a total of 246 have been convicted for crimes relating to deaths on the East German border. Of that number, 10 were part of the political leadership. Former Defense Minister Heinz Kessler received 7.5 years in prison, the harshest punishment. Egon Krenz, the successor to GDR leader Erich Honecker, received 6.5 years and Klaus-Dieter Baumgarten, head of the East German border troops, also got a 6.5 year sentence. 
• After 1991, around 80 border soldiers were tried. They received suspended sentences or no sentences whatsoever. In 65 cases, judges declared the suspects innocent. In November 2004, four former military technicians, between the ages of 63 and 71, were convicted of accessory to murder for their part in developing and maintaining the SM70 machine, an automatic shooting device which had been placed along the East German border. They received no sentence for the fatal injuries their machines dealt four people trying to cross the border in the 1980s.

Compared with post WW II convictions of German war criminals and their allies in occupied countries, the number is low. At that time, there were 5,000 convictions by allied courts, 7,000 by German courts. The number of people sanctioned, including those punished with (temporary) suspension of civil rights, was between 0.3 and 2 per cent of the population in the countries that had been occupied.

In the trials of leaders and agents of the former GDR, the (former West German) judges were both competent and untainted (Elster, 2006). The low level of successful prosecutions remains a puzzle. As Offe and Poppe (2006) argue,
one explanation may be found in the low level of resources allocated to the investigations and to the high level of respect for the rule of law and notably for the clause in the unification treaty that individuals might be tried only for acts that were crimes under both East German and West German law at the time they were committed. It has been argued but remains unproved that this decision may reflect in part the leverage communist elites still possessed as unification arrangements were being negotiated. Whatever the mechanism, the outcome has been summarized in a famous phrase by a former East German dissident, Bärbel Bohley: ‘We expected justice, but we got the Rechtsstaat instead.’ Another explanation may be found in the lack of a politically efficacious demand for justice in unified Germany.

COMPENSATION

Compensation has become a hard principle of international law, but so far there has been little actual implementation. Most explicitly is has been dealt with through international bodies: UN Comittteeon Human Rights, European Court and and most of all the Inter-American Court (Shelton). Huge sums have been awared under civil suits by US courts, but none of these sums has as yet been paid out. It has proven difficult to assess the right amount of compensation, the principles and actual assessments have varied greatly (Shelton). Often compensation was proposed or decided on in truth c omissions, but actual implementation fell far behind that in South Africa, El Salvador, Guatemala and other countries.

Germany has important experience in compensation: the Wiedergutmachung after World War II. The term refers to the reparations that the German government agreed to pay to the direct survivors of the Holocaust and to those who were made to work as forced labour or who otherwise became victims of the Nazis. The verb wiedergutmachen means ‘to make well again’. Individuals who were persecuted for political, racial, religious or ideological reasons by Nazi regime are eligible for money from the German government under the terms of the Federal Compensation Law (BEG) of 1953 and 1956. This includes Jews who were interned in camps or ghettos, were obliged to wear the star badge, or who lived in hiding. Only people who were directly victimised are eligible for Wiedergutmachung, and not, for example, offspring born after the war or grandchildren. Statistics concerning Wiedergutmachung payments were released by the BEG through the mid-1980's, but have not since been publicly released. As of the mid-1980s, over four million claims had been filed and paid. Approximately 40% of the claims were from Israel, where many Holocaust survivors live, 20% were from Germany, and 40% were from other countries. The total of German Wiedergutmachung money and similar compensation granted to World War II victims may now be over 100 billion dollar.

There have been major cases of restitution in a number of Central European states: GDR, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary. Poland has already paid out US$ 125 million since 1990. In Hungary, laws have been enacted to compensate victims of unlawful detention and the families of those who were executed. In the early 1990s, nearly one million people (some 10 percent of the population) applied for such compensation. The German government has undertaken to provide at least modest financial compensation to persons who were detained, beaten, and tortured by the communist regime of the German Democratic Republic. The whole process is expected to take between 10 and 30 years. For political prisoners, there is a (standard) compensation of 10 euro a day for every day in prison. About 189,000 victims of the East German legal system hope to receive some form of compensation through this programme.

A particular case is that of athletes. Olympic-medal-winning athletes may not be the first persons that come to mind when thinking of victims of a repressive regime. But their quandary may be serious enough. In November 2005, 190 East Germans who ran, swam and shot-putted their way to glory, setting world records and demonstrating the superiority of communism, launched a case against the German pharmaceutical giant Jenapharm. They claimed that the East German firm knowingly supplied the steroids that were given to them by trainers and coaches from the 1960s until East Germany's demise in 1989. Jenapharm argued it was not responsible for the doping scandal and blamed the communist system. The victims all received Oral-Turinabol -- an anabolic steroid containing testosterone. That 'blue bean' had catastrophic side effects: infertility among women, embarrassing hair growth, breast cancer, heart problems, testicular cancer. An estimated 800 athletes developed serious ailments. Swimmer Rica Reinisch, who at the age of 15 won three gold medals in the 1980 Olympics, said: 'The worst thing was that I didn't know I was being doped. I was lied to and deceived. Whenever I asked my coach what the tablets were I was told they were vitamins and preparations.' Lawyers for the victims were hoping for 10 to12 million euro in compensation. Jenapharm's chief executive said she had 'sympathy', but that she was convinced that the claims for damages against Jenapharm were not justified. (Intriguingly, some of the world records set by East German athletes while using Oral-Turinabol have not been bettered.)

VICTIMS AND PERPETRATORS: BETTER OFF?

The reunified German government implemented four policies at the time of reunification to ensure that GDR officials and the persecuted received just treatment in the new Germany:
- Victims of political imprisonment received compensation;
- The most severe violators of human rights were prosecuted;
- Employees of the Stasi were prohibited from working in the civil service;
- High ranking government officials had their pensions reduced.

These measures attempted to ease the suffering of political prisoners without harming low ranking government officials. Instead however, they have often exacerbated the problems both groups face and left many involved feeling victimized. Victims may feel insulted by their low compensation, disappointed to see so many officials walking free, and infuriated by the ease with which many GDR officials have gained employment. GDR officials are angered by prosecutions for actions that were legal in the GDR and upset that many low ranking GDR officials, despite the government’s intentions, have been fired or had their pensions reduced. Victims of political persecution in the GDR entered the reunification process with the expectation that they would finally be able to assume full membership in German society. Instead, the effects of their persecution – psychological trauma, a lack of education, and destroyed reputations – have presented many of them with substantial obstacles to integration and employment.

In the eastern part of Germany (the former territory of the GDR) there is factual compensation in many respects: new jobs or social security, adapted pension payments, new services, recognition of the past, ample opportunities for open public and academic debate, official investigation and research, disclosure regarding the GDR oppression, rehabilitation in reputation for many individuals, access to personal files, memorials and museums. In that situation, no one who was a victim of repression in the GDR should feel less well off now. But unemployment has risen considerably, from officially nil in GDR times to 10 per cent in some areas. The compensation awarded by the German government has done little to address these economic problems, which assigns a sad fate to many of those who risked their own well-being to achieve political reform in the GDR.

The persecutors – the GDR officials who directly or indirectly contributed to their punishments – have equally met with disappointment. Many are perceived as villains even though they had little choice in supporting the GDR government, and they struggle to cope with their reduced standing in society. The perpetrators often have benefited. They were well qualified and were easily hired, also by the institutions that researched the former Stasi files. Quite a few were paid well for interviews and books about their former employment. Many teachers kept their positions. However, their pensions were generally reduced. They were fired from the jobs they held in the state apparatus. The Federal Republic obtained nearly 600 convictions of GDR officials after reunification, and thought most received suspended sentences, they were banned from holding civil servant positions.

The Federal Republic's refusal to honour the pensions of some GDR officials adds to the frustration of officials. In the GDR, high ranking SED and Stasi officials received pensions two to three times higher than the average pension. The FGR originally reduced these pensions to the GDR average, but a recent Constitutional Court ruling has limited the application of this policy to those positions which were substantially connected to the commission of crimes. While the ruling was a partial victory for officials, it legitimized what they criticize as ‘pension criminal law’. The officials whose pensions have been reduced have not been convicted of any crimes, and they are punished without a hearing. In their view, the pensions reflect the value attached to the work of individuals in the GDR. Other valued government employees such as doctors also received high salaries and pensions.

Ex-Stasi officers continue to be politically active via such organizations as the Gesellschaft zur Rechtlichen und Humanitären Unterstützung e.V. (Society for Legal and Humanitarian Support, GRH). Former highranking officers and employees of the Stasi, including the Stasi's last director, Wolfgang Schwanitz, make up the majority of the organization's members, and it receives support from the German Communist Party, among others. Members often speak out uninvited at memorial services and public events. They call for the closure of the museum at the former prison in Berlin’s Hohenschönhausen. In March 2006 in Berlin GRH members disrupted a museum event; a political scandal was unleashed when the Berlin Senator (Minister) of Culture refused to confront them.

The dissatisfaction of many resistors is aggravated by two high-profile cases of success by former GDR officials. First, in 1990 the federal government of the newly reunified Germany established a Federal Commission for the Stasi Files to organize and manage the secret police's files on East Germans. Ironically, the massive organization ended up hiring many more GDR officials than resistors. Second, the former head of the foreign intelligence for the Stasi, Markus Wolf, signed a lucrative publishing deal for his 1997 book, ‘Man Without a Face: The Autobiography of Communism's Greatest Spymaster’, and did a tour of the talk show circuit in Europe. The publicity, much of it positive, and the revenue the book generated have become cause for discontent among victims of the former regime.

BUDGET, PERSONNEL, COMMUNICATION

As of mid-2005, the BstU employed 2,205 functionaries, of whom 1,292 in the central office in Berlin and 931 in the outposts. That was nearly 200 employees less than in mid-2003. The annual budget has been growing marginally over the years; the 2005 budget was 102 million euro (about US$ 130 million).

This shows the great investments that Germany is willing to offer, compared with other countries. The total costs of truth commissions has varied from under US$ 1 million (Chile) to over US$ 35 million (South Africa). Also the staff load and the produce of the BstU (over twenty substantive books, many articles, and the servicing of 5 million requests for inspection of files) are impressive compared with other truth initiatives. The staff of truth commissions was 60 in Argentina and Chile, 150 in Peru, 200 in Guatemala and 300 in South Africa. These staff members were employed for months or a few years, while many BstU staff have been employed since 1991.

There is an extensive report of the BstU’s activities every two years (only in German). Every month, there are tours and presentations in BstU posts. Moreover, the efforts of historical clarification have contributed to many memorials and museums (see below). This level of public communication has remained unparalleled in the world (though South Africa has provided a lot of publicity on the TRC in a number of years while operating)..

MEMORIALS AND MUSEUMS

The number of memorials, monuments and museums in commemoration of the GDR victims runs 356, according to one authoritative guide (Kaminsky, 2004). Among these are 90 memorials along the site of the former Wall, 80 memorials for the victims of the 1940s and 1950s, 40 memorials at the sites of mass graves and former prisons, 30 monuments to commemorate local instances of repression, 27 memorials devoted to the 1953 uprisings, 17 signs memorizing the Wende of 1989 and 37 general memorials for the victims of Stalinist persecution. They feature prominently in a country that has already innumerable memorials for WWII and still makes new ones (as in Berlin: the Holocaust Mahnmal, the House of Terror and the Jewish Museum). The number of GDR memorials is impressive too in comparison with the total of memorials of other instances of wholesale repression and violence. For example, the Armenian National Institute has identified 135 memorials in 25 countries (but none in Turkey, where it all happened).

In various places in Central Europe there is a fragile and sometimes tensed balance between Holocaust and communist-period memorials. In most places, museums for the Holocaust are very well organized and sometimes spectacularly designed. The 2004 Jewish Museum in Berlin and the 2005 Holocaust Memorial in Budapest are among the most impressive historical museums I have ever seen. In contrast, memorial venues for the communist past are run by volunteers (as in Berlin) or by what appears to be a commercial enterprise (as in Budapest), while there is no such place yet in Poland. The tension is particularly noticeable in Hungary. In this country, the period of the holocaust was as murderous as it was short (from late 1944), while the Stalinist/Soviet regime deported, and often killed, hundreds of thousands of Hungarians over a period of at least a decade. Yet while the Holocaust Memorial is unanimously praised (and well-funded), the largely privately-established Terror Haza (House of Terror), commemorating victims of Stalinism, is the centre of much controversy.

> See also Part IV – Memorials

WHAT HAS NOT HAPPENED GERMANY (COMPARED TO MANY OTHER COUNTRIES)

As a final remark, it should be noted what did not happen in GDR territory after its demise (categories taken from Elster, 2004): 

• Victors’ justice (as in the Nuremberg and Tokyo military trials after the war, also in countries that had been occupied by the Nazis). 
• Summary trials, extralegal execution (as in Romania, 1989). 
• Presumption of collective guilt (as in Germany after 1945). 
• Illegal internment (as in all previously occupied countries after 1945). 
• Special courts below the standards of international law (idem). 
• Retroactive legislation (though this is debatable, see the discussion about the border guards trials). 
• Witch hunts (though the mass firing of teachers in Sachsen may have had characteristics of such a hunt). 
• Blanket amnesty (though very few of those responsible for GDR human rights abuses were convicted in court). 
• Non-adjudication due to amnesty laws or statutes of limitation (as was the case in various Latin American countries).

LITERATURE AND WEBSITES

BstU (Bundesbeauftragten für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen DDR. Website: www.bstu.bund.de.
BstU (2005). Siebenter Tätigkeitsbericht der Bundesbeauftragten für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik. Berlin: BstU
Carrier, Peter (2005). Holocaust monuments and national memory cultures in France and Germany since 1989. New York: Berghahn.
Elster, John (2004). Closing the Books: Transitional Justice in Historical Perspective. Cambridge, Mass: Cambridge University Press.
Gay, Caroline (2003). ‘The Politics of Cultural Remembrance: The Holocaust Monument in Berlin.’ The International Journal of Cultural Policy, Vol. 9 (2003), p. 153-166.
Geiger, Rudolf (1998). ‘The German Border Guards Cases and International Human Rights.’ European Journal of International Law, Vol. 9 p. 540-549.
Kaminsky, Annette (2004). Orte des Erinnerns. Gedenkzeichen, Gedenkstätten und Museen zur Diktatur in SBZ und DDR Leipzig: Forum Verlag.
Knegge, Volkhard & Norbert Frei (2002). Verbrechen erinnern: die Auseinandersetzung mit Holocaust und Völkermord. München: Beck.
Koehler, John (2001). Stasi. The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police. Boulder: Westview Press.
McAdams, James (1996). ‘The Honecker Trial: The East German Past and The German Future’. Review of Politics 58 (1).
Offe, Claus & Ulrike Poppe (2004). ‘Transitional Justice in the German Democratic Republic and in Unified Germany’. Lukas H. Meyer, ed., Justice in Time: Responding to Historical Injustice. Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft,. pp. 239-269.’
Offe, Claus & Ulrike Poppe (2006). ‘Transitional justice in the German Democratic Republic and in Unified Germany’. John Elster, ed., Retribution and Reparation in the Transition to Democracy. New York: Columbia University.
Peterson, Edward (2003). The Secret Police and the Revolution: The Fall of the German Democratic Republic. New York: Praeger.
Quint, Peter (1997). The Imperfect Union: Constitutional Structures of German Unification. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Rosenberg, Tina (1996). The Haunted land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts after Communism. New York: Vintage Books.
Sa’adah, Anne (2006). ‘Regime Change: Lessons from Germany on Justice, Institution Building, and Democracy’. Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 50 no. 3, p. 303-323.
Schäfer, Bernd (2000). ‘Stasi Files and GDR Espionage against the West.’ Institutt for forsvarsstudier, Oslo.
Schwann, Heribert & Helgard Heindrichs (2005). Das Spinnennetz. Stasi-Agenten in Westen: Die geheimen Akten der Rosenholz-Datei. München: Knaur.
Unverhau, Dagmar (2004). Das Stasi-Unterlage- Gesetz. Münster: Wilhelm Hopf Verlag.
Williams, Kienan, Kieran Williams, Aleks Szczerbiak & Brigid Fowler (2003). Explaining Lustration in Eastern Europe: A Post-Communist Politics Approach. Falmer (UK): Sussex University Institute.
Wikipedia, at www.wikipedia.org
Wolff, Friedrich (2005). Einigkeit und Recht. Die DDR and die deutsche Justiz. Berlin: Das neue Berlin.
see also ‘Literature’ in Part II - Lustration 

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