Stasi Unofficial Collaborators (machine translation)

[Joao]

I recently digitized and machine-translated the following:

Traitor or Seduced: A psychoanalytic investigation of Stasi unofficial collaborators
[Original title: Verräter oder Verführte: Eine psychoanalytische Untersuchung Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter der Stasi]

by Ingrid Kerz-Rühling and Tomas Plänkers
First published 2004

Over the 40 year existence of the German Democratic Republic, more than 600,000 people were recruited by the Ministry for State Security (Stasi) as unofficial collaborators. Whether out of political conviction or a sense of adventure, for career reasons or revenge, for fear of reprisals or the desire for recognition and security, an incurable and afflictive alliance was entered into with the Stasi whereby colleagues, acquaintances, friends, or even their own family were surveilled and betrayed. How do these people stand by their former conspiratorial activities 14 years after dissolution of the Stasi?

For the first time, this psychoanalytic investigation creates an opportunity to question the unconscious motivations for their actions. Twenty former unofficial collaborators told their life stories and a group of five psychoanalysts drew up an overall assessment which takes into account the different perceptions by the collaborators and their case officers, yielding an assessment of fact and perpetrators alike.

Machine translation is rough and imperfect, alas. Some German words were untranslatable by the software and remain in the text--while these can often be rendered into English with a little but of web-searching, it's deadly tedious work. If anyone actually reads this and wants to submit corrections, I can update the file.

Posted here: https://www.scribd.com/doc/276595103/Tr ... laborators

[Joao]

Contents

Foreword

1 Introduction
1.1 Overview of the structure of the Stasi and its functions
1.2 Selection and use of unofficial collaborators
1.3 The psychodynamics of surveillance and betrayal relations
1.4 Question and objectives
1.5 Method
1.6 Evaluation
1.7 Data framework of the surveyed unofficial collaborators

2 Summaries of 20 interviews

3 Overall Assessment
3.1 Motives for participation in the project and relationship with the interviewer
3.1.1 Attempts to deal with feelings of shame and guilt because of IM activities
3.1.2 Searching for narcissistic gratification
3.1.3 Search-sufficient / therapeutic object relationship
3.1.4 Desire to aggressively advocate for the Stasi, to justify it, the “West” against “right” to represent
3.1.5 The relationship with the interviewer
3.2 Recruitment
3.2.1 The bribed
3.2.2 The extorted
3.2.3 Convinced Socialists
3.2.4 The deluded
3.2.5 Date and place of contact with the Stasi
3.2.6 Reactions of candidates on recruitment
3.3 Duration and type of informal cooperation
3.4 Unconscious and conscious motives for cooperation with the Stasi
3.4.1 Search love and care by an understanding partner
3.4.2 Compensatory narcissistic deficits
3.4.3 Restitution own or parental failings
3.4.4 Satisfaction of hatred and revenge
3.4.5 Participation in the power and pleasure of a double life
3.4.6 Fear of punitive measures
3.4.7 Expectation of reward for cooperation
3.5 Relationship to the case officer and commitment to the IM activities
3.5.1 Cooperation with the case officer
3.5.2 Commitment to the IM activities
3.6 Personality structure and conflict
3.7 Mental processing of conspiracy
3.8 detection and contemporary view of IM activities

4 File location and personal statements of those interviewed
4.1 Ten acts perspectives (Helmut Müller-Enbergs)
4.1.1 Motives that arise from the Stasi documents
4.1.2 The lack of IM records
4.1.3 Mostly ideological motives
4.1.4 Mostly benefit considerations
4.1.5 Predominantly printing experience
4.2 Conclusion
4.3 Considerations for comparison between interview and record

5 Detailed representation of two selected cases

6 Final considerations
6.1 Subsequent editing of biographical narratives
6.2 Why it was many GDR citizens not possible to evade recruitment by the Stasi?
6.3 Processing of surveillance and repression in the GDR
6.4 Generalization of findings possibility and validity of interpretations
6.5 Social and individual disease

Appendix

Bibliography

Information about the authors

[Joao]

For the record, a book written in English appears to cover similar ground, including interviews with former unofficial collaborators:

Narratives of Guilt and Compliance in Unified Germany: Stasi Informers and their Impact on Society
by Barbara Miller

Analysing Stasi files and interviews with one time informers, the author examines the confrontation with this legacy in united Germany. She discusses the daily machinations of the state and the motivation and justification of being an informer.

The book is expensive but it appears to be based on the author's 1997 PhD thesis, which is available here: http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2416/

ABSTRACT

The following thesis examines both the individual and the societal confrontation with one particular aspect of the legacy of the GDR's Ministerium fur Staatssicherheit (MfS, or Stasi), that is the debate concerning onetime MfS informers (lnoffizielle Mitarbeiter, or IM).

The thesis is divided into two main sections. Section One describes and analyses specific aspects of the IM system. Characteristics of the population of IM are examined in Chapter 1, and the ten case studies which are referred to throughout the course of the work are presented. These former IM were interviewed by the author in 1994-95, and the MfS files of eight of them were subsequently viewed. The remaining chapters in Section One examine the following issues: the recruitment procedure (2); the daily work with an IM and his/her relationship to the MfS (4); the motivational factors behind an IM-Tatigkeit (3 and 5).

Section Two turns to the private and public confrontation with the IM legacy. The debate over former Stasi collaborators currently active in the political forum is considered in Chapter 6, and the handling of the IM issue by the criminal justice system in Chapter 7. The final three chapters are devoted to personal and interpersonal issues. Chapter 8 addresses the Tater/ Opfer debate. Chapter 9 focuses on the manner in which an IM sought to cope with this aspect of his/her biography at the time of active collaboration, and on how s/he seeks to justify this in retrospect. The final chapter examines the profound effect which the availability of the MfS files through the Stasi-Unterlagen-Gesetz has had and will have on the understanding of personal and collective history in the former GDR, and the work concludes that this is the most significant and far-reaching impact of this most extraordinary legacy.

[Joao]

Interesting reddit post: "Redditors of the former GDR who had access to your Stasi file, was any member of your family or friend actually spying on you? What was your reaction?"

They weren't spied on to gather information, for the most part. The spying was intended to destroy the life of the target. The act of spying was actually was both the means and the end. It was a way for sadists and authoritarians to get paid while they insinuated themselves into the lives of others. So no, nobody was disappointed not to be spied on.