Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall - Anna Funder

Poignant, thought provoking and brilliant

This is a remarkable book and piece of writing.
Anna Funder tells the history and modus operandi of the Stasi secret police from it's inception in 1949, through to the end and fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. Not only does she tell the story of the Stasi but also that of the whole regime of the DDR.
She does this, NOT, by spewing boring historical data, but by telling the stories of real German's in the third person, whose lifes were directly or indirectly affected by the Stasi.
These interviews with the Author were all conducted shortly after the fall of the Berlin wall.

We meet numerous ex-stasi men, some who have moved with the times and the'New' Germany, some who cannot and in their minds will always hanker for their old life in the DDR.

We meet a woman whose baby son needed specialist care in the Western side of Berlin and as a result, after a failed escape attempt spent years apart from her and came back to her a stranger , five years later after he recovered.
This woman also served time in the dreaded Hohenschönhausen prison and now is on the preservation committee of the same institution.

We meet the Stasi man who drew the line for the laying of the Berlin Wall, over 100 miles worth, who now acts as a tourist guide.

We meet Herr Scnitznel who was the television face of DDR propaganda for years, still spewing hatred against the capitalist western world.

We meet Julia, whose life was ruined before it began, due to the fact she had an Italian boyfriend that she wouldn't ditch upon Stasi request.
They made sure she could not gain employment in ANY of the jobs she applied for, despite the fact she was a graduate who spoke four languages. Later she threatens to complain directly to Honecker(secretary of state) and her persecution ends (she had ditched the boyfriend by this time of her own volition). Julia later ended up a victim of rape and had to undergo a physical from a male member of the Stasi, despite the fact there was a female officer available!

We meet Klaus a member of one of the biggest Rock bands to come from East Germany, whose group were told one day, 'they no longer existed', all their records disappeared from sale and no-one would hire them to play, effective overnight. Later they reformed and are now as popular as ever again.

Perhaps the best story in this book is that of Miriam, who was arrested at 16 for putting up anti-propaganda bill posters and later jailed when she unsuccessfully failed to cross the Berlin wall and was captured. When she was released and later married, her husband was arrested and imprisoned for applying to emigrate to the west. He died in captivity, the Stasi told her he hung himself, yet would not allow an autopsy on the body.

We also meet the puzzle women, who work painstakingly day after day, re-putting together huge sacks of ripped and shredded documents that the Stasi tried to dispose of in 1989.

The Stasi had files it seems on almost everyone, spouses informed on spouses, colleagues on each other etc until it bred such paranoia within itself that it imploded.
I think possibly the Stasi were even more cruel than the Gestapo that preceded them.

Some reviewers of this book criticize Funder for talking to much about her own observations and about herself. I feel this only adds to the book as her prose ebbs and flows beautifully throughout.
She has taken a broad historical subject and made it into an engaging and thrillingly enjoyable narrative.
The coverage and descriptions especially of Berlin read like a travelogue and I can wait to visit in a few weeks time myself.

This is a great book. Buy it and read it for yourself.

Book in wrong language

Unfortunately, we purchased this book in French and not in English as intended.
We gave it to a friend who reads French books.

ordinary, contemporary decency

Some of the reviews written above complain or find fault with Ms. Funders interjections or opinions during the course of her conversations with the people she meets yet I believe this adds very much to the charm and integrity of her account. She is reacting to the stories of people who lived under a regime that would have seemed incomprehensible to a girl born on the other side of the world (Australia, 1966) when the Wall had already been in existence for five years. It could have been something happening on another planet. It is significant, I think, that Ms. Funders never actually saw the Wall. It was gone by the time she got to Berlin. But the legacy of the Wall lived on in the damage it had done to the people imprisoned behind it and this is what her book is about. It is not a scholarly work with footnotes, nor is it a series of interviews conducted in English with an (unacknowledged) interpreter doing the donkey work which is what we have come to expect from our television superstars. This is not Gitta Sereny interviewing concentration camp commanders, nor even Hannah Arendt commenting on the 'banality of evil' as she witnesses the trial of Adolf Eichmann. No, this is a very different thing altogether. This is a young Australian woman of Danish descent (she thought that was close enough to "pass" as German, but it turned out it wasn't) who decided to study German as a kid to the bewilderment of her family. She liked the weird agglomerations of the language that made nuanced new words. She goes to Berlin and starts to meet people who lived under the DDR regime, already 7 years defunct by the time she gets there. That's where the stories come from. So she's judgemental. Why not? She can hardly believe what she is hearing. This is late 20th Century Alice in Stasiland -- just as weird as the Lewis Carroll original: there is no unemployment even if you are unemployed, this is a multi-party state even if there is only one party, the Wall protects you even if we shoot you for trying to leave. Something is seriously askew here. Objectivity in these circumstances would have led to the following "balanced" report from Berlin in former times: 'Obviously the Jews must be doing something deeply subversive, otherwise Herr Hitler wouldn't be so angry with them'. Indubitably. In fact, I find several parallels with this occasionally poetic (very rarely over-written) account of Ms. Funder with that of the "Berlin Stories" of Christopher Isherwood written from the same city during the early 1930s when the Nazis were just coming to power. In the same way as Isherwood she captures the feeling and mood of the city, the swampy setting, the wide grey streets, the bustling trams, the cavernous apartments with brown linoleum, the trees, the parks, the drunks, the feverish gaiety, the underlying gloom. Ms. Funder gives us a personal (and why not?) snapshot of a certain time and place just as Isherwood -- 'I am a camera' -- did for another period in the history of this city.

Expose of the Stasi

This is a fascinating book about the activities of the Stasi, the secret service in former East Germany. Anna Funder is an excellent investigative journalist. Her expose of the Stasi is incisive, well written, interesting and at times, shocking and cathartic. Readers will be amazed at what they will learn from this very readable work.

Fascinating Subject Matter

With such interesting subject matter, this can't fail to be a good book. These stories of life in the GDR are honestly told from a human perspective and are in turn touching, horrifying and bewildering. Funder is keen to ensure that the stories of these lives are not forgotten and that is a worthwhile cause. It is hard to believe that the events in this book happened within living memory. Apparently terrible things get forgotten quickly, and it all seems like a far distant time and place. The theme that runs throughout is that there is already a culture of glossing over the horrors - the glass casing of a history that is not in the past, but in the very real present of those whose lives we are introduced to. It seems we are in danger of forgetting the existence of an entire population, and Funder spiritedly tries to ensure that this doesn't happen.

The fact that the subject is so interesting carries a book in which the writing is not always of the highest order. The matter of fact recounting of events and places is handled well, and the passionate way Funder puts her points across is convincing. When it falls down, however, is in the attempts at more poetic descriptiveness. Descriptions of spring sunshine on trees, for example, are clunky and have the feel of a school creative writing project and this grates slightly. But this is, after all, a work of journalism and it's the people and facts and events that make it what it is.

Definitely worth a read.

Poignant, thought provoking and brilliant

This is a remarkable book and piece of writing.
Anna Funder tells the history and modus operandi of the Stasi secret police from it's inception in 1949, through to the end and fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. Not only does she tell the story of the Stasi but also that of the whole regime of the DDR.
She does this, NOT, by spewing boring historical data, but by telling the stories of real German's in the third person, whose lifes were directly or indirectly affected by the Stasi.
These interviews with the Author were all conducted shortly after the fall of the Berlin wall.

We meet numerous ex-stasi men, some who have moved with the times and the'New' Germany, some who cannot and in their minds will always hanker for their old life in the DDR.

We meet a woman whose baby son needed specialist care in the Western side of Berlin and as a result, after a failed escape attempt spent years apart from her and came back to her a stranger , five years later after he recovered.
This woman also served time in the dreaded Hohenschönhausen prison and now is on the preservation committee of the same institution.

We meet the Stasi man who drew the line for the laying of the Berlin Wall, over 100 miles worth, who now acts as a tourist guide.

We meet Herr Scnitznel who was the television face of DDR propaganda for years, still spewing hatred against the capitalist western world.

We meet Julia, whose life was ruined before it began, due to the fact she had an Italian boyfriend that she wouldn't ditch upon Stasi request.
They made sure she could not gain employment in ANY of the jobs she applied for, despite the fact she was a graduate who spoke four languages. Later she threatens to complain directly to Honecker(secretary of state) and her persecution ends (she had ditched the boyfriend by this time of her own volition). Julia later ended up a victim of rape and had to undergo a physical from a male member of the Stasi, despite the fact there was a female officer available!

We meet Klaus a member of one of the biggest Rock bands to come from East Germany, whose group were told one day, 'they no longer existed', all their records disappeared from sale and no-one would hire them to play, effective overnight. Later they reformed and are now as popular as ever again.

Perhaps the best story in this book is that of Miriam, who was arrested at 16 for putting up anti-propaganda bill posters and later jailed when she unsuccessfully failed to cross the Berlin wall and was captured. When she was released and later married, her husband was arrested and imprisoned for applying to emigrate to the west. He died in captivity, the Stasi told her he hung himself, yet would not allow an autopsy on the body.

We also meet the puzzle women, who work painstakingly day after day, re-putting together huge sacks of ripped and shredded documents that the Stasi tried to dispose of in 1989.

The Stasi had files it seems on almost everyone, spouses informed on spouses, colleagues on each other etc until it bred such paranoia within itself that it imploded.
I think possibly the Stasi were even more cruel than the Gestapo that preceded them.

Some reviewers of this book criticize Funder for talking to much about her own observations and about herself. I feel this only adds to the book as her prose ebbs and flows beautifully throughout.
She has taken a broad historical subject and made it into an engaging and thrillingly enjoyable narrative.
The coverage and descriptions especially of Berlin read like a travelogue and I can wait to visit in a few weeks time myself.

This is a great book. Buy it and read it for yourself.

Book in wrong language

Unfortunately, we purchased this book in French and not in English as intended.
We gave it to a friend who reads French books.

ordinary, contemporary decency

Some of the reviews written above complain or find fault with Ms. Funders interjections or opinions during the course of her conversations with the people she meets yet I believe this adds very much to the charm and integrity of her account. She is reacting to the stories of people who lived under a regime that would have seemed incomprehensible to a girl born on the other side of the world (Australia, 1966) when the Wall had already been in existence for five years. It could have been something happening on another planet. It is significant, I think, that Ms. Funders never actually saw the Wall. It was gone by the time she got to Berlin. But the legacy of the Wall lived on in the damage it had done to the people imprisoned behind it and this is what her book is about. It is not a scholarly work with footnotes, nor is it a series of interviews conducted in English with an (unacknowledged) interpreter doing the donkey work which is what we have come to expect from our television superstars. This is not Gitta Sereny interviewing concentration camp commanders, nor even Hannah Arendt commenting on the 'banality of evil' as she witnesses the trial of Adolf Eichmann. No, this is a very different thing altogether. This is a young Australian woman of Danish descent (she thought that was close enough to "pass" as German, but it turned out it wasn't) who decided to study German as a kid to the bewilderment of her family. She liked the weird agglomerations of the language that made nuanced new words. She goes to Berlin and starts to meet people who lived under the DDR regime, already 7 years defunct by the time she gets there. That's where the stories come from. So she's judgemental. Why not? She can hardly believe what she is hearing. This is late 20th Century Alice in Stasiland -- just as weird as the Lewis Carroll original: there is no unemployment even if you are unemployed, this is a multi-party state even if there is only one party, the Wall protects you even if we shoot you for trying to leave. Something is seriously askew here. Objectivity in these circumstances would have led to the following "balanced" report from Berlin in former times: 'Obviously the Jews must be doing something deeply subversive, otherwise Herr Hitler wouldn't be so angry with them'. Indubitably. In fact, I find several parallels with this occasionally poetic (very rarely over-written) account of Ms. Funder with that of the "Berlin Stories" of Christopher Isherwood written from the same city during the early 1930s when the Nazis were just coming to power. In the same way as Isherwood she captures the feeling and mood of the city, the swampy setting, the wide grey streets, the bustling trams, the cavernous apartments with brown linoleum, the trees, the parks, the drunks, the feverish gaiety, the underlying gloom. Ms. Funder gives us a personal (and why not?) snapshot of a certain time and place just as Isherwood -- 'I am a camera' -- did for another period in the history of this city.

Expose of the Stasi

This is a fascinating book about the activities of the Stasi, the secret service in former East Germany. Anna Funder is an excellent investigative journalist. Her expose of the Stasi is incisive, well written, interesting and at times, shocking and cathartic. Readers will be amazed at what they will learn from this very readable work.

Fascinating Subject Matter

With such interesting subject matter, this can't fail to be a good book. These stories of life in the GDR are honestly told from a human perspective and are in turn touching, horrifying and bewildering. Funder is keen to ensure that the stories of these lives are not forgotten and that is a worthwhile cause. It is hard to believe that the events in this book happened within living memory. Apparently terrible things get forgotten quickly, and it all seems like a far distant time and place. The theme that runs throughout is that there is already a culture of glossing over the horrors - the glass casing of a history that is not in the past, but in the very real present of those whose lives we are introduced to. It seems we are in danger of forgetting the existence of an entire population, and Funder spiritedly tries to ensure that this doesn't happen.

The fact that the subject is so interesting carries a book in which the writing is not always of the highest order. The matter of fact recounting of events and places is handled well, and the passionate way Funder puts her points across is convincing. When it falls down, however, is in the attempts at more poetic descriptiveness. Descriptions of spring sunshine on trees, for example, are clunky and have the feel of a school creative writing project and this grates slightly. But this is, after all, a work of journalism and it's the people and facts and events that make it what it is.

Definitely worth a read.