A new study documents how the secret police in Communist East Germany tried to influence the Green Party in West Germany. Bad news for the Greens? Not at all. They're the ones who commissioned the study.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo
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The 360-page study, entitled "The State Security Ministry and the Greens", was written by historians Jens Gieseke and Andrea Bahr. It details how 15 to 20 members of the Green Party in 1980 cooperated closely with the secret police, or Stasi, in Communist East Germany.
The most prominent was Berlin Bundestag deputy Dirk Schneider. In addition, some 450 to 500 sources provided information to the East Germans about the inner workings of the party, which was founded in 1980.
That may sound damaging to the Greens, but it isn't. In fact, the party itself engaged Gieseke and Bahr, after a 2013 study by the state archive for Stasi files about spying by West German parliamentarians and a subsequent recommendation by the Bundestag that the Greens investigate their past.
"We're setting a good example in this regard," Green Party political director Michael Kellner told DW. "It would be good for the other parties to take the chance to look at their own pasts."
Indeed, far from being an indictment of Stasi infiltration of the Greens, Gieseke and Bahr's study is a portrait of a largely failed attempt by the Communist German Democratic Republic (GDR) to co-opt the nascent left-wing party on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
Citizens stormed the Stasi headquarters in East Berlin in 1990Image: picture alliance/AP Images/J. Finck
A 'wild' grassroots party
The Green party coalesced out of a heterogeneous movement that opposed conservatism and nationalism in West Germany. But the Greens also butted heads with the Communist regime in East Germany by supporting private citizens' initiatives across the border.
At the same time as the Stasi was trying to acquire Green collaborators, members of the party were forbidden from entering the GDR.
"The Greens were a late child of the 1960s in West Germany," Gieseke told DW. "They were specifically anti-nationalist, anti-anti-Communist and not interested in restoring German unity. The Greens were most inclined to accept the GDR as a state, but on the other hand they also laid claim to the right to be politically active across national borders. They saw the grass-roots political initiatives in East Germany as their natural allies. That's why there was a blanket ban imposed on all known Green Party members by East Germany in 1983."
The Greens say that they can look back with pride upon the actions of many party members during the 1980s.
"We were the only party in which there were groups of people who smuggled printers and photocopiers into the GDR, often disguised as diplomatic deliveries," Kellner says. "Not all Greens did this, but there was a section of the party that did."
Even a look at the most prominent Stasi collaborator underscores the limits of the East German secret police's influence.
Dirk Schneider was a long-term Stasi collaboratorImage: picture-alliance/ZB
The Permanent Mission
For a time, Dirk Schneider was the Greens' domestic-policy speaker. He was a good catch for the Stasi and did his best to align the Western German party with the official policies of the East German regime. But his closeness with East Berlin was so well-known that his fellow party members nicknamed him "the GDR's permanent mission within the Greens."
"Schneider tried to influence the Greens' domestic policy," Kellner says. "But I'd say, and the study confirms, that he failed in the end."
Many Greens may have been critical of the United States in the 1980s, but that didn't mean they were willing to toe Kremlin-dictated lines.
"There was a 'left' wing of the party that in the wake of the peace movement was always somewhat anti-American and tended to give more credit to the Soviet side where the arms race was concerned," Gieseke says. "That was the point of connection for the Stasi. But there were limits to that. It wasn't possible to push through a truly pro-Soviet line within the Green Party."
In 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Schneider left the Green Party and joined the Party of Democratic Socialism, the successor to the East German Socialist Unity Party, in re-unified Germany. In 1991, his cooperation with the Stasi, for which he was paid, was revealed, and he left politics in 1996. He died in 2002.
Germany is still grappling with the copious files left by the StasiImage: picture-alliance/dpa/Archiv Gesellschaft für Zeitgeschichte
More to come?
Schneider had been in contact with the Greens since 1975, before the party was formed, and the Stasi sought to infiltrate and exert influence on all of West Germany's political parties.
So the historians who carried out the study on the Greens see lots of possibilities for further research.
"It would be very interesting for the bigger parties with longer histories than the Greens, namely the SPD and the CDU-CSU, to have their own past investigated," Gieseke says. "We found that the sources the Stasi placed with the Greens were ones who were acquired in the 1970s and even the 1960s and who later joined the Greens. That shows that there's a lot for the SPD to investigate, and for the CDU as well."
"The State Security Ministry and the Greens" will be published on Thursday, October 13.
Berlin's former Stasi slammer
Berlin-Hohenschönhausen is where the former East German secret state police, the "Stasi," had their central remand center. Today it is a memorial site to those who suffered persecution under the Communist dictatorship.
Image: DW/E. Jahn
Old building with a dark history
In 1945 the Soviet occupying forces turned the former commercial kitchen compound into an internment camp. The cellar was converted by the prisoners into a remand center. Victims reported that they were tormented by sleep deprivation, beatings, kickings, being forced to stand for hours or subjected to water torture. Food, clothing, and hygiene standards were terrible. Some 1,000 people died.
Image: DW/E. Jahn
Prison known as 'U-Boot'
In 1951 the newly-formed East German secret state police, the Stasi, took over the prison. During the 50s most inmates were those opposed to the communist dictatorship, such as reformers and strike leaders involved in the 17 June 1953 uprising. As there was never any daylight in the damp cells, the inmates nick-named the prison 'U-Boot," German for submarine.
Image: DW/E. Jahn
New building
At the end of the 50s a new building with more than 200 cells and interrogation rooms replaced the old cellar jail. Physical violence was replaced by psychological torture. After the Berlin Wall was built in 1961 most inmates were those who had attempted to escape or leave East Germany, but also writers and civil rights activists.
Image: DW/E. Jahn
Disguised prisoner transports
In the 70s most prisoners were brought through the city to the jail in Hohenschönhausen in these Barkas B 1000 vehicles. Made to appear outwardly as fish or vegetable delivery vans, these vehicles had five tiny windowless cells, which meant inmates had no idea where they had been taken. The Stasi succeeded in pressuring 90 percent of inmates to make damning statements in their first interrogation.
Image: DW/E. Jahn
Loneliness of a cell block
In prison every inmate was addressed not by name but by their cell number. To socially ostracize them they were often put into isolation cells for months, where even talking to the guards was forbidden. The only human contact was therefore with the interrogator - an insidious way to make inmates talk.
Image: DW/E. Jahn
Prison cell
Up to three inmates were housed in the different sized cells. They were unable to see anything through the cell windows, which were made of glass blocks. A mirror and hot water was only made available as of 1983. During the day inmates were not allowed to lie on their cots, at night they had to assume the same position: lying on their backs, facing the door with their hands on top of the blanket.
Image: DW/E. Jahn
Spy in the door
Inmates found being permanently watched in their cells through the spy hole in the door very stressful. Guards would keep a check on the prisoners even when they were washing or using the toilet. At night the lights would be switched on every ten to twelve minutes. Heating and light could only be controlled from outside the cells. This all served to make the inmates feel utterly powerless.
Image: DW/E. Jahn
Alarm system
A wire was mounted along the walls of the cell block corridor. When a prisoner was taken from his cell to be interrogated, the guards pulled the wire, which made red warning lights light up. Any inmate in the corridor would then have to face the wall immediately. This was intended to prevent prisoners encountering one another.
Image: DW/E. Jahn
Interrogation block
The cell block and the interrogation rooms where separated by barred doors. To this day the linoleum floor still smells of the disinfectant used in East Germany. All 120 interrogation rooms were equipped with double padded doors, behind which inmates where subjected to hours of questioning over several months. Prisoners were expected to incriminate themselves so that they could be sentenced.
Image: DW/E. Jahn
Interrogation
Stasi police used elaborate psychological interrogation methods. Initially they would threaten the inmate with long prison terms or the arrest of their family members. Panic and uncertainty were intended to wear them down. Those who cooperated were promised an easing of detention conditions: medical attention, a book, or half an hour of yard exercise.
Image: DW/E. Jahn
Prison yard
In these cell-like compounds inmates could see the sky and breathe some fresh air. They themselves called the yards "tiger cages." It was forbidden to talk, sing, stop, or to go anywhere near the four-meter (4.1-yard) prison wall. An armed guard was always on patrol above the wire mesh.
Image: DW/E. Jahn
Memorial site
The fall of the Berlin Wall put an end to the Stasi remand center. But only few interrogators were ever made accountable for what had happened behind these walls, and none were sent to jail. As the prison buildings and the interior survived unharmed, today's memorial site of Hohenschönhausen gives an authentic insight into the former East German justice system.
