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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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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
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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,
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where so many people had to escape
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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.