East Germany’s Ministry for State Security, or Stasi, was a mammoth state-run apparatus that specialised in foreign and domestic espionage. When it folded in 1990 after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, it left behind a legacy of miles and miles of files it had compiled on people from all walks of life, from West German chancellors to East German athletes, and just about everyone in between.

A law was hurriedly passed in 1991 that directed how the newly unified country dealt with these documents and the explosive information they sometimes contained, such as the contents of personal telephone calls, or revelations of husbands having spied on their wives for the state. The balancing act between protecting the privacy of individuals and disclosure in the interest of the public good has always been a delicate one.

But after former Chancellor Helmut Kohl (photo) fought successfully in Germany's Federal Administrative Court to keep his own Stasi file secret, some people feel that balance has been thrown off, and that the public good is now suffering. They want to make the files of prominent people easier to access.

Amending the Law

Germany’s governing coalition has put forward two amendments to the 1991 law. The first amendment, which enjoys broad support, would strike a paragraph that would enable as of next year the subjects of files to request that information in the original documents be blacked out.

Such a destruction of information, according to historians, would be an incalculable loss and could cripple historical research into the German Democratic Republic.

It's the second amendment, however, that has thrown a cog in the works.

It would reverse what Helmut Kohl did in the courtroom and make it easier for journalists and persons with a valid professional interest to access the files of prominent people, such as Mr. Kohl.

Should the prominent people in question not wish for their records to be opened, they could apply to the Gauck Authority (photo), the office in charge of the files, to keep the information sealed. But it would be the authority that would have the last say whether or not the file could be accessed, not the subject of the file.

The amendment’s proponents insist that the change would not mean shining a spotlight on every detail of a person’s private life that the Stasi may have uncovered.

"When the information has to do with a person’s public life or role in contemporary history, the file will be opened," Dieter Wiefelspütz, legal expert for the governing SPD party told the news magazine Der Spiegel. "But if the information in the file overwhelmingly touches on the private life of the individual, the files will stay closed."

Making People Victims Twice

But that argument doesn’t convince the conservative CDU/CSU parties or the Free Democrats. How can you be sure in distinguishing between public and private, they ask?

Joachim Jäger, Germany’s data protection commissioner, in way of example suggested a hypothetical conversation between Helmut Kohl and former US president Bill Clinton that the Stasi had bugged.

"If Kohl described another politician as a huge camel and Clinton laughed about it," he asked, "did he do that in his role as Chancellor or as a friend of Bill Clinton?"

He and other opponents said such distinctions would be difficult, if not impossible to make and that they could be used for political purposes.

They want to give the last say to the subjects of the file. If that person says the file should stay closed, the file would stay closed, public interest or no public interest.

"Why should we turn these people into victims of the Stasi once again?" he asked.

The amendments, which were meant to be voted on this Friday, have been sent back to committee.