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The File: A Personal History

Timothy Garton Ash · 3 HN comments
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"Eloquent, aware and scrupulous . . . a rich and instructive examination of the Cold War past." --The New York Times In 1978 a romantic young Englishman took up residence in Berlin to see what that divided city could teach him about tyranny and freedom. Fifteen years later Timothy Garton Ash--who was by then famous for his reportage of the downfall of communism in Central Europe--returned. This time he had come to look at a file that bore the code-name "Romeo." The file had been compiled by the Stasi, the East German secret police, with the assistance of dozens of informers. And it contained a meticulous record of Garton Ash's earlier life in Berlin. In this memoir, Garton Ash describes what it was like to rediscover his younger self through the eyes of the Stasi, and then to go on to confront those who actually informed against him to the secret police. Moving from document to remembrance, from the offices of British intelligence to the living rooms of retired Stasi officers, The File is a personal narrative as gripping, as disquieting, and as morally provocative as any fiction by George Orwell or Graham Greene. And it is all true. "In this painstaking, powerful unmasking of evil, the wretched face of tyranny is revealed." --Philadelphia Inquirer
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Also good is "The File: A Personal History" by Timothy Garton-Ash ( http://www.amazon.com/File-Personal-Timothy-Garton-Ash/dp/06... ). The author returns to Germany after re-unification and researches his own Stasi file from when he was in East Berlin in the late 70's as a part of his post-graduate research from Oxford.
I recently read The File by Timothy Garton Ash, a British journalist who spent a fair amount of time in East Germany in the last decade of the DDR. After reunification he was able to obtain his Stasi file. He learned how the Stasi perceived him as a risk and began contacting those who snitched on him.

The stories of how some of the informants became informants are fascinating. One cooperated with the Stasi in order to obtain exit visas for official travel. Some were Ash's friends seeking to boost their careers, some were just pleased to do their part in furthering the cause of socialism.

Ash was never imprisoned or tortured and could leave whenever he pleased (though he was eventually barred from entering the DDR). He didn't really suffer at the hands of the Stasi but the book is a terrific look at the Stasi's surveillance and intimidation through the eyes of a single individual.

http://www.amazon.com/The-File-A-Personal-History/dp/0679777...

weinzierl
"he was able to obtain his Stasi file" sounds a bit like this was something special (I'm sorry if this is wrong, English is not my first language).

Just to clarify:

"Everyone has the right to inspect those documents that created the STASI about themselves. More than a half million people have made use of this option since 1992."[1]

[1] http://www.bstu.bund.de/DE/Akteneinsicht/Privatpersonen/Priv... (loose translation)

saryant
That might just be poor wording on my part. Ash doesn't try to make it out as something exclusive, he devotes a significant portion of the book to Germany's efforts to bring the Stasi's work to light and the effects of that effort on German reunification.
I have a nerdish interest in the Stasi for reasons I can't quite explain. I've not seen the movie, but I'd recommend Stasiland:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasiland

as an account of various people who lived under the Stasi. Also, The File:

http://www.amazon.com/The-File-A-Personal-History/dp/0679777...

The (again, factual) story of someone uncovering their own file and researching its history.

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