Images from the Stasi archives

Images from the Stasi archives PDF Author: Simon Menner
Publisher: Hatje Cantz Publishers
ISBN: 9783775736206
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 127

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Book Description
Almost 300,000 people worked for the East German secret police, per capita far more than were employed by agencies such as the CIA or the KGB. Not quite fifty years after the Berlin Wall was built, Simon Menner (*1978 in Emmendingen) discovered spectacular photographs in the Stasi archives that document the agency's surveillance work. Formerly secret, highly official photographs show officers and employees putting on professional uniforms, gluing on fake beards, or signalling to each other with their hands. Today, the sight of them is almost ridiculous, although the laughter sticks in the viewer's throat. This publication can be regarded as a visual processing of German history and an examination of current surveillance issues, yet it is extremely amusing at the same time. The fact that the doors of the opposite side-the British or German intelligence services, for example-remained closed to the artist lends the theme an explosive force as well as a tinge of absurdity.

Images from the Stasi archives

Images from the Stasi archives PDF Author: Simon Menner
Publisher: Hatje Cantz Publishers
ISBN: 9783775736206
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 127

Get Book Here

Book Description
Almost 300,000 people worked for the East German secret police, per capita far more than were employed by agencies such as the CIA or the KGB. Not quite fifty years after the Berlin Wall was built, Simon Menner (*1978 in Emmendingen) discovered spectacular photographs in the Stasi archives that document the agency's surveillance work. Formerly secret, highly official photographs show officers and employees putting on professional uniforms, gluing on fake beards, or signalling to each other with their hands. Today, the sight of them is almost ridiculous, although the laughter sticks in the viewer's throat. This publication can be regarded as a visual processing of German history and an examination of current surveillance issues, yet it is extremely amusing at the same time. The fact that the doors of the opposite side-the British or German intelligence services, for example-remained closed to the artist lends the theme an explosive force as well as a tinge of absurdity.

Reenactment MfS

Reenactment MfS PDF Author: Arwed Messmer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783775739115
Category : Historical reenactments
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In the archives of East Germany's Stasi secret police, there are countless photographs of failed escape attempts across the Berlin Wall. Here, German artist Arwed Messmer (born 1964) presents a complex collage of found, retouched and recontextualized visual records and Messmer's own photographs.

Secret Police Files from the Eastern Bloc

Secret Police Files from the Eastern Bloc PDF Author: Valentina Glajar
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1571139265
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
New essays exploring the tension between the versions of the past in secret police files and the subjects' own personal memories-and creative workings-through-of events.

Stasi

Stasi PDF Author: John O. Koehler
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0786724412
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 587

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Book Description
In this gripping narrative, John Koehler details the widespread activities of East Germany's Ministry for State Security, or "Stasi." The Stasi, which infiltrated every walk of East German life, suppressed political opposition, and caused the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of citizens, proved to be one of the most powerful secret police and espionage services in the world. Koehler methodically reviews the Stasi's activities within East Germany and overseas, including its programs for internal repression, international espionage, terrorism and terrorist training, art theft, and special operations in Latin America and Africa. Koehler was both Berlin bureau chief of the Associated Press during the height of the Cold War and a U.S. Army Intelligence officer. His insider's account is based on primary sources, such as U.S. intelligence files, Stasi documents made available only to the author, and extensive interviews with victims of political oppression, former Stasi officers, and West German government officials. Drawing from these sources, Koehler recounts tales that rival the most outlandish Hollywood spy thriller and, at the same time, offers the definitive contribution to our understanding of this still largely unwritten aspect of the history of the Cold War and modern Germany.

The Stasi Poetry Circle

The Stasi Poetry Circle PDF Author: Philip Oltermann
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780571331208
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Stasiland

Stasiland PDF Author: Anna Funder
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 1443406090
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell; shortly afterwards the two Germanies reunited, and East Germany ceased to exist. In a country where the headquarters of the secret police can become a museum literally overnight and in which one in fifty East Germans were informing on their fellow citizens, there are thousands of captivating stories. Anna Funder tells extraordinary tales from the underbelly of the former East Germany. She meets Miriam, who as a sixteen-year-old might have started World War III; she visits the man who painted the line that became the Berlin Wall; and she gets drunk with the legendary “Mik Jegger” of the East, once declared by the authorities to his face to “no longer exist.” Each enthralling story depicts what it’s like to live in Berlin as the city knits itself back together—or fails to. This is a history full of emotion, attitude and complexity.

The Stasi Files

The Stasi Files PDF Author: Anthony Glees
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 484

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Book Description
Before the collapse of Communist East Germany the country ran one of the most extensive intelligence networks in the world. Its secret service, the Stasi, consisted of as many as 150,000 agents by the time of its demise in 1990. Much more than a junior partner to the Soviet Union's KGB, the Stasi was in fact a highly professional and ruthless organisation which was dedicated to principles of conspiratorial aggressiveness and the protection of the Communist cause. Anthony Glees is one of the last researchers to gain access to the Stasi Archive in Berlin before it was closed. Drawing on documentary evidence in the files he presents a fascinating portrait of the Stasi's interest in, among other topics, the burgeoning CND movement in Britain and the Labour Party's prospects of holding office. Along the way he explains the elaborate structure of intelligence officers, agents and sources who together constituted the troops on the ground for the Stasi's campaign against the UK. Revelatory and controversial, THE STASI FILES is the most important book on espionage to appear since THE MITROKHIN ARCHIVE.

The History of the Stasi

The History of the Stasi PDF Author: Jens Gieseke
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1782382550
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
A well-balanced and detailed look at the East German Ministry for State Security, the secret police force more commonly known as the Stasi. “This is an excellent book, full of careful, balanced judgements and a wealth of concisely-communicated knowledge. It is also well written. Indeed, it is the best book yet published on the MfS.”—German History The Stasi stood for Stalinist oppression and all-encompassing surveillance. The “shield and sword of the party,” it secured the rule of the Communist Party for more than forty years, and by the 1980s it had become the largest secret-police apparatus in the world, per capita. Jens Gieseke tells the story of the Stasi, a feared secret-police force and a highly professional intelligence service. He inquires into the mechanisms of dictatorship and the day-to-day effects of surveillance and suspicion. Masterful and thorough at once, he takes the reader through this dark chapter of German postwar history, supplying key information on perpetrators, informers, and victims. In an assessment of post-communist memory politics, he critically discusses the consequences of opening the files and the outcomes of the Stasi debate in reunified Germany. A major guide for research on communist secret-police forces, this book is considered the standard reference work on the Stasi.

Archives and Human Rights

Archives and Human Rights PDF Author: Jens Boel
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429620144
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Why and how can records serve as evidence of human rights violations, in particular crimes against humanity, and help the fight against impunity? Archives and Human Rights shows the close relationship between archives and human rights and discusses the emergence, at the international level, of the principles of the right to truth, justice and reparation. Through a historical overview and topical case studies from different regions of the world the book discusses how records can concretely support these principles. The current examples also demonstrate how the perception of the role of the archivist has undergone a metamorphosis in recent decades, towards the idea that archivists can and must play an active role in defending basic human rights, first and foremost by enabling access to documentation on human rights violations. Confronting painful memories of the past is a way to make the ghosts disappear and begin building a brighter, more serene future. The establishment of international justice mechanisms and the creation of truth commissions are important elements of this process. The healing begins with the acknowledgment that painful chapters are essential parts of history; archives then play a crucial role by providing evidence. This book is both a tool and an inspiration to use archives in defence of human rights. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/ISBN, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

A State of Secrecy

A State of Secrecy PDF Author: Alison Lewis
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1640124853
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
Secret police agencies such as the East German Ministry for State Security kept enormous quantities of secrets about their own citizens, relying heavily on human modes of data collection in the form of informants. To date little is known about the complicated and conflicted lives of informers, who often lived in a perpetual state of secrecy. This is the first study of its kind to explore this secret surveillance society, its arcane rituals, and the secret lives it fostered. Through a series of interlocking, in-depth case studies of informers in literature and the arts, A State of Secrecy seeks answers to the question of how the collusion of the East German intelligentsia with the Stasi was possible and sustainable. It draws on extensive original archive research conducted in the BStU (Stasi Records Agency), as well as eyewitness testimony, literature, and film, and uses a broad array of methods from biography, sociology, cultural studies, and literary history to political science and surveillance and intelligence studies. In teasing out the various kinds of entanglements of intellectuals with power during the Cold War, Lewis presents a microhistory of the covert activities of those writers who colluded with the secret police.