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This year, Germany is celebrating

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the 25th anniversary of the peaceful revolution

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in East Germany.

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In 1989, the Communist regime was moved away,

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the Berlin Wall came down, and one year later,

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the German Democratic Republic, the GDR,

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and the East, was unified

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with the Federal Republic of Germany in the West

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to found today's Germany.

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Among many other things, Germany inherited

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the archives of the East German secret police,

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known as the Stasi.

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Only two years after its dissolution,

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its documents were opened to the public,

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and historians such as me started

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to study these documents

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to learn all about how the GDR surveillance state

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functioned.

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Perhaps you have watched the movie

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"The Lives Of Others."

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This movie made the Stasi known worldwide,

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and as we live in an age where words

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such as "surveillance" or "wiretapping"

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are on the front pages of newspapers,

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I would like to speak about how the Stasi

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really worked.

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At the beginning, let's have a short look

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at the history of the Stasi,

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because it's really important for understanding

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its self-conception.

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Its origins are located in Russia.

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In 1917, the Russian Communists founded

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the Emergency Commission for Combating

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Counter-Revolution and Sabotage,

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shortly Cheka.

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It was led by Felix Dzerzhinsky.

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The Cheka was an instrument of the Communists

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to establish their regime by terrorizing the population

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and executing the enemies.

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It evolved later into the well-known KGB.

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The Cheka was the idol of the Stasi officers.

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They called themselves Chekists,

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and even the emblem was very similar,

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as you can see here.

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In fact, the secret police of Russia

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was the creator and instructor of the Stasi.

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When the Red Army occupied East Germany in 1945,

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it immediately expanded there,

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and soon it started to train the German Communists

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to build up their own secret police.

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By the way, in this hall where we are now,

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the ruling party of the GDR was founded in 1946.

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Five years later, the Stasi was established,

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and step by step, the dirty job of oppression

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was handed over to it.

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For instance, the central jail

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for political prisoners,

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which was established by the Russians,

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was taken over by the Stasi

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and used until the end of the Communism.

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You see it here.

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At the beginning, every important step

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took place under the attendance of the Russians.

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But the Germans are known to be very effective,

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so the Stasi grew very quickly,

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and already in 1953, it had more employees

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than the Gestapo had,

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the secret police of Nazi Germany.

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The number doubled in each decade.

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In 1989, more than 90,000 employees

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worked for the Stasi.

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This meant that one employee

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was responsible for 180 inhabitants,

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which was really unique in the world.

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At the top of this tremendous apparatus,

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there was one man, Erich Mielke.

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He ruled the Ministry of State Security

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for more than 30 years.

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He was a scrupulous functionary

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— In his past, he killed two policemen

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not far away from here —

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who in fact personalized the Stasi.

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But what was so exceptional about the Stasi?

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Foremost, it was its enormous power,

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because it united different functions

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in one organization.

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First of all, the Stasi

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was an intelligence service.

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It used all the imaginable instruments

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for getting information secretly,

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such as informers, or tapping phones,

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as you can see it on the picture here.

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And it was not only active in East Germany,

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but all over the world.

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Secondly, the Stasi was a secret police.

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It could stop people on the street

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and arrest them in its own prisons.

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Thirdly, the Stasi worked

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as a kind of public prosecutor.

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It had the right to open preliminary investigations

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and to interrogate people officially.

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Last but not least,

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the Stasi had its own armed forces.

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More than 11,000 soldiers were serving

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in its so-called Guards Regiment.

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It was founded to crash down protests and uprisings.

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Due to this concentration of power,

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the Stasi was called a state in the state.

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But let's look more and more details

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at the tools of the Stasi.

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Please keep in mind that at that time

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the web and smartphones were not yet invented.

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Of course, the Stasi used all kinds

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of technical instruments to survey people.

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Telephones were wiretapped,

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including the phone of the
German chancellor in the West,

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and often also the apartments.

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Every day, 90,000 letters were being opened

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by these machines.

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The Stasi also shadowed
tens of thousands of people

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using specially trained agents and secret cameras

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to document every step one took.

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In this picture, you can see me

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as a young man just in front of this building

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where we are now, photographed by a Stasi agent.

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The Stasi even collected the smell of people.

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It stored samples of it in closed jars

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which were found after the peaceful revolution.

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For all these tasks, highly specialized departments

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were responsible.

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The one which was tapping phone calls

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was completely separated

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from the one which controlled the letters,

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for good reasons,

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because if one agent had quit the Stasi,

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his knowledge was very small.

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Contrast that with Snowden, for example.

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But the vertical specialization was also important

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to prevent all kinds of empathy

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with the object of observation.

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The agent who shadowed me

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didn't know who I was

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or why I was surveyed.

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In fact, I smuggled forbidden books

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from West to East Germany.

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But what was even more typical for the Stasi

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was the use of human intelligence,

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people who reported secretly to the Stasi.

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For the Minister of State Security,

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these so-called unofficial employees

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were the most important tools.

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From 1975 on, nearly 200,000 people

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collaborated constantly with the Stasi,

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more than one percent of the population.

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And in a way, the minister was right,

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because technical instruments

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can only register what people are doing,

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but agents and spies can also report

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what people are planning to do

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and what they are thinking.

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Therefore, the Stasi recruited so many informants.

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The system of how to get them

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and how to educate them, as it was called,

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was very sophisticated.

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The Stasi had its own university,

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not far away from here,

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where the methods were explored

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and taught to the officers.

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This guideline gave a detailed description

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of every step you have to take

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if you want to convince human beings

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to betray their fellow citizens.

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Sometimes, it's said that informants were pressured

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to becoming one,

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but that's mostly not true,

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because a forced informant is a bad informant.

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Only someone who wants to give
you the information you need

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is an effective whistleblower.

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The main reasons why people
cooperated with the Stasi

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were political conviction and material benefits.

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The officers also tried to create a personal bond

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between themselves and the informant,

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and to be honest, the example of the Stasi shows

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that it's not so difficult to win someone

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in order to betray others.

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Even some of the top dissidents in East Germany

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collaborated with the Stasi,

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as for instance Ibrahim Böhme.

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In 1989, he was the leader of the peaceful revolution

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and he nearly became the first freely
elected Prime Minister of the GDR

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until it came out that he was an informant.

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The net of spies was really broad.

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In nearly every institution,

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even in the churches or in West Germany,

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there were many of them.

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I remember telling a leading Stasi officer,

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"If you had sent an informant to me,

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I would surely have recognized him."

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His answer was,

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"We didn't send anyone.

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We took those who were around you."

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And in fact, two of my best friends

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reported about me to the Stasi.

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Not only in my case, informers were very close.

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For example, Vera Lengsfeld,
another leading dissident,

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in her case it was her husband who spied on her.

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The famous writer was betrayed by his brother.

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This reminds of the novel "1984" by George Orwell,

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where the only apparently trustable person

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was an informer.

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But why did the Stasi collect all this information

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in its archives?

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The main purpose was to control the society.

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In nearly every speech, the Stasi minister

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gave the order to find out who is who,

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what meant who thinks what.

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He didn't want to wait until somebody

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tried to act against the regime.

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He wanted to know in advance

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what people were thinking and planning.

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The East Germans knew, of course,

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that they were surrounded by informers,

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and the totalitarian regime that creates mistrust

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and the state of widespread fear,

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the most important tools to oppress people

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in any dictatorship.

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That's why not many East Germans tried

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to fight against the Communist regime.

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If yes, the Stasi often used a method

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which was really diabolic.

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It was called "Zersetzung,"

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and it's described in another guideline.

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The word is difficult to translate because it means

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originally "biodegradation."

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But actually, it's a quite accurate description.

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The goal was to destroy secretly

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the self-confidence of people,

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for example by damaging their reputation,

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by organizing failures in their work,

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and by destroying their personal relationships.

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Considering this, East Germany
was a very modern dictatorship.

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The Stasi didn't try to arrest every dissident.

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It preferred to paralyze them,

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and it could do so because

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it had access to so much personal information

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and to so many institutions.

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Detaining someone was used only

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as a last resort.

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For this, the Stasi owned 17 remote prisons,

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one in every district.

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Here, the Stasi also developed

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quite modern methods of detention.

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Normally, the interrogation officer

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didn't torture the prisoner.

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Instead, he used a sophisticated system

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of psychological pressure

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in which strict isolation was central.

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Nearly no prisoner resisted

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without giving a testimony.

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If you have the occasion,

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do visit the former Stasi prison in Berlin

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and attend a guided tour
with a former political prisoner

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who will explain to you how this worked.

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One more question needs to be answered:

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if the Stasi was so well-organized,

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why did the Communist regime collapse?

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First, in 1989, the leadership in East Germany

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was uncertain what to do against

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the growing protest of people.

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It was especially confused

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because, in the mother country of socialism,

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the Soviet Union,

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a more liberal policy took place.

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In addition, the regime was dependent

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on the loans from the West.

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Therefore, no order to crash down the uprising

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was given to the Stasi.

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Secondly, in the Communist ideology,

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there's no place for criticism.

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Instead, the leadership stuck to the belief

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that socialism is a perfect system,

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and the Stasi had to conform that, of course.

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The consequence was

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that despite all the information,

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the regime couldn't analyze its real problems,

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and therefore it couldn't solve them.

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In the end, the Stasi died

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because of the structures

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that it was charged with protecting.

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The ending of the Stasi

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was something tragic,

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because these officers

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were kept busy during the peaceful revolution

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with only one thing:

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to destroy the documents

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they had produced during decades.

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Fortunately,

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they had been stopped by human rights activists.

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That's why today, we can use the files

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to get a better understanding

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of how a surveillance state functions.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)

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Moderator: Thank you. Thank you very much.

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Thanks.

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So Hubertus, I want to ask you a couple of questions

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because I have here "Der Spiegel" from last week,

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"Mein Nachbar NSA." My neighbor, the NSA.

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And you just told us about my neighbor,

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the spies and the informant from Eastern Germany.

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So there is a direct link between these two stories

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or there isn't?

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What's your reaction as a
historian when you see this?

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Hubertus Knabe: I think there are

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several aspects to mention.

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At first, I think there's a difference

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for why you are collecting this data.

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Are you doing that for protecting your people

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against terrorist attacks,

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or are you doing that for oppressing your people?

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So that makes a fundamental difference.

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But on the other hand side,

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also in a democracy, these
instruments can be abused,

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and that is something where we really have

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to be aware to stop that,

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and also the intelligence services

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are respecting the rules we have.

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The third point, probably,

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we really can be happy that we live in a democracy,

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because you can be sure that Russia and China

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are doing the same,

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but nobody speaks about that

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because nobody could do that.

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(Applause)

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Moderator: When the story came out first,

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last July, last year,

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you filed a criminal complaint

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with a German tribunal. Why?

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HK: Yeah, I did so because of
the second point I mentioned,

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that I think especially in a democracy,

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the rules are for everybody.

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They are made for everybody, so it's not allowed

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that any institution doesn't respect the rules.

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In the criminal code of Germany, it's written

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that it's not allowed to tap somebody

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without a permission of the judge.

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Fortunately, it's written in
the criminal code of Germany,

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so if it's not respected, than I think

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an investigation is necessary,

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and it took a very long time that

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the public prosecutor of Germany started this,

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and he started it only in the case of Angela Merkel,

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and not in the case of all the
other people living in Germany.

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Moderator: That doesn't surprise me because,

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— Yeah? (Applause) —

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because of the story you told.

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Seen from the outside, I live outside of Germany,

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and I expected the Germans to react

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much more strongly, immediately.

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And instead, the reaction really came only

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when Chancellor Merkel was revealed

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as being wiretapped. Why so?

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HK: I take it as a good sign,

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because people feel secure in this democracy.

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They aren't afraid that they will be arrested,

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and if you leave this hall after the conference,

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nobody has to be afraid that the secret police

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is standing out and is arresting you.

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So that's a good sign, I think.

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People are not really scared, as they could be.

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But of course, I think, the institutions

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are responsible to stop illegal actions

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in Germany or wherever they happen.

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Moderator: A personal question,
and this is the last one.

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There has been a debate in Germany about

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granting asylum to Edward Snowden.

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Would you be in favor or against?

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00:18:46,576 --> 00:18:48,114
HK: Oh, that's a difficult question,

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but if you ask me,

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and if I answer honestly,

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I would give him the asylum,

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because I think it was really brave what he did,

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and he destroyed his whole life

384
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and his family and everything.

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So I think, for these people,
we should do something,

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and especially if you see the German history,

387
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where so many people had to escape

388
00:19:09,241 --> 00:19:11,427
and they asked for asylum in other countries

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and they didn't get it,

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so it would be a good sign to give him asylum.

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(Applause)

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Moderator: Hubertus, thank you very much.