The Federal Commission for the Stasi Archives – the East German secret police – was born shortly after German reunification. The agency’s employment of ex-Stasi members is fuelling fear that records of its wrongs will be lost in the annals of history.
The commissioner in charge of the agency admitted in a recent
interview that 37 ex-Stasi staffers remain.
“There are still 37 of them here. Five [out of an original
48] have been moved on, five have left for age reasons, and one
of them has died,” former dissident journalist and current
commissioner Roland Jahn told Germany’s Tagesspiegel newspaper on Friday.
He admitted that the issue was harder to resolve than originally
anticipated. Under German employment law, public servants can
only be moved to “comparable” posts in other state
agencies.
“Only alternative jobs are organized in other federal
administrations,” he said. “But many employees say, ‘I
do not think about changing.’ And so the whole affair is
delayed.” The agency has some 1,600 members of staff.
The Federal Commission for the Stasi Archives (BStU) was established by the German government in 1991. Joachim Gauck – now President of Germany – became Federal Commissioner for the agency in 1990, heading up the new service. Its role was essentially to investigate Stasi crimes and manage the archiving of those offenses, as well as to protect the files so that people could access those which concerned them. “They can then clarify what influence the Stasi had on their destiny,” the BStU said
However, many have raised fears that ex-Stasi agents could easily
destroy the records while working for the agency.
The Stasi had approximately 5.1 million data cards in its
enormous archive, which also included samples of sweat -
“jars with body odor samples taken from people who had been
examined and arrested,” according to German History in
Documents and Images (GHDI).
The association also reported the widescale destruction of
documents in order to conceal crimes of the government in 1990.
“During the final days of the GDR regime, the Stasi
desperately tried to destroy the archive before it could be
seized by opponents,” WikiLeaks stated during the release of
a report in 2007.
Gauck gave permanent contracts to ex-Stasi workers around 1997.
In his 1991 book ‘The Stasi Files,’ he defended their re-hiring.
"We couldn't have done without their specialist knowledge of
certain branches and the Stasi's archiving system,” he said.
Klaus Schroeder, a historian at Berlin’s Free University told the
Guardian that “ultimately, the responsibility for giving
these people uncontrolled access to high-profile files lies with
Gauck.”
The neologism ‘Gaucken’ even crept into German discourse and came
to mean “the request and viewing of old Stasi files.” A
less flattering variation also exists: “to always speak
incessantly on the same theme in conversation.”
In the 2007 leaked report, it was first revealed that: “The
BStU [Stasi files commission] employed at least 79 former Stasi
members. At the time of the report (May 2007), 56 remained in the
employment of the agency, including 54 former full-time Stasi
members and two former ‘Unofficial Employees’ (informers).”
The report, written by Prof. Dr. Hans Hugo Klein of the Christian
Democratic Union (CDU) and Prof. Dr. Klaus Schroeder, spawned
suspicion that records of incriminating actions of some Stasi
staffers could have been modified or destroyed.
Jahn described it as “intolerable” during his inaugural
speech in 2011 that any victims of the Stasi’s methods would have
to encounter old employees.
German politics has plunged into a whirlpool of anti-Stasi
rhetoric in recent months, with reports emerging over the past
two weeks that German Chancellor Angela Merkel compared the
NSA’s spying to that of secret police in East Germany.
“I find it absurd to equate the NSA and the Stasi – it clouds
the view. It doesn't help us in clearing up the current
intelligence scandals, and it trivializes the work of the Stasi.
They didn't only gather information but also locked up anyone who
commented critically on the state. But the NSA debate has shown
how important it is to speak out when fundamental human rights
are being violated,” Jahn added.