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Book 22 - Anna Funder "Stasiland"
Mar. 25th, 2018 08:08 pmAnna Funder "Stasiland : Stories From Behind The Berlin Wall" (Granta Books)
Hard to place in any specific genre. Funder investigates the GDR (before the Wall came down in 1989) and the life of the East Germans under the Stasi in interview form. She includes personal experience of her visits there and is written in novel/narrative form with a personal "I", so it takes a while to realise it's not a novel - though it's marketed as one - the main point being the disclaimer that names have been changed (to protect people who spoke to her I imagine). It's not quite a fully researched historical novel either, though she has some historical data etc in the sources at the back - it's more about how the wall affected people's lives, and how it is for them after the wall came down and I think it's a valid way to explore it - the personal accounts make it more real & go some way to educating people who might not know much history. There are plenty of dry history books around for exact details if you want that.
Much of the wall doesn't exist now, but for many of the people the wall is still in their heads. The "Mauer im Kopf". The wall persists in the x-Stasi minds as something they hope might one day come again, and in their victims' minds too, as a possibility. Many people are waiting still for the puzzle-women to reconstruct shredded Stasi files to find out what happened to their loved ones, why their hopes, careers, & aspirations never eventuated behind the Wall and at the rate the puzzle women work it will be about 375 years apparently before the job is completed - though many wait hoping to make sense of what happened to their lives before they can move on.
While the subject matter is depressing Funder manages to write without dragging you into the mire. There are some heart rending moments when some people are being interviewed, the woman with the sick child in hospital in the west while she is stuck in the east,and the death of Charlie. One is more gobsmacked at the level of ridiculous rules the Stasi applied on the people turning many into informers to save their own skin.
Among other research info,Funder found instructions to Stasi operatives on ways of crippling "oppositional" people.((From Directive 'Perceptions'('Richtlinien, Stichpunkt Wahrnehmung') It aims ""To develop apathy (in the subject)...to achieve a situation in which his conflicts, whether of a social, personal, career, health or political kind are irresolvable.. to give rise to fears in him.....to develop/create disappointments.....to restrict his talents or capabilities.....to reduce his capacity to act and.....to harness dissentions and contradictions around him for that purpose.... ""
In this atmosphere, no one knew whom to trust, and people had to live a weirdly schizophrenic life where they had to publically acknowledge known fictions as facts, and they had to continually tread a line between seeing things for what they were in the GDR, and ignoring these realities, in order to stay sane. People had to live "in a relation of unspoken hostility but outward compliance to the state".
A young woman, bright, committed and energetic has her life ruined because of a youthful indiscretion that sees her denied education and training, harried and imprisoned as is her husband who dies, or is killed, while in custody of the Stasi. Another woman is separated from her baby when the Wall goes up because she had to travel to western Berlin for the medical treatment and medicines that were not available in the east, and she opts to leave her baby to be raised in the western hospital rather than have him die with her in east Berlin. It is these individual stories that bring home the horror of the omnipresent police state and the persecution of people who otherwise would, given a chance and some openness, have probably been loyal members of society. But chance and openness are exactly what the state cannot afford, especially when every one of its citizens is seen as a potential, even probable, enemy.
Certainly Orwellian. Certainly frightening. Also, a reminder of what could happen when governments have too much control and become totalitarian, no matter what their political spectrum is.
(Btw the photograph on the front cover is of the author.)
Hard to place in any specific genre. Funder investigates the GDR (before the Wall came down in 1989) and the life of the East Germans under the Stasi in interview form. She includes personal experience of her visits there and is written in novel/narrative form with a personal "I", so it takes a while to realise it's not a novel - though it's marketed as one - the main point being the disclaimer that names have been changed (to protect people who spoke to her I imagine). It's not quite a fully researched historical novel either, though she has some historical data etc in the sources at the back - it's more about how the wall affected people's lives, and how it is for them after the wall came down and I think it's a valid way to explore it - the personal accounts make it more real & go some way to educating people who might not know much history. There are plenty of dry history books around for exact details if you want that.
Much of the wall doesn't exist now, but for many of the people the wall is still in their heads. The "Mauer im Kopf". The wall persists in the x-Stasi minds as something they hope might one day come again, and in their victims' minds too, as a possibility. Many people are waiting still for the puzzle-women to reconstruct shredded Stasi files to find out what happened to their loved ones, why their hopes, careers, & aspirations never eventuated behind the Wall and at the rate the puzzle women work it will be about 375 years apparently before the job is completed - though many wait hoping to make sense of what happened to their lives before they can move on.
While the subject matter is depressing Funder manages to write without dragging you into the mire. There are some heart rending moments when some people are being interviewed, the woman with the sick child in hospital in the west while she is stuck in the east,and the death of Charlie. One is more gobsmacked at the level of ridiculous rules the Stasi applied on the people turning many into informers to save their own skin.
Among other research info,Funder found instructions to Stasi operatives on ways of crippling "oppositional" people.((From Directive 'Perceptions'('Richtlinien, Stichpunkt Wahrnehmung') It aims ""To develop apathy (in the subject)...to achieve a situation in which his conflicts, whether of a social, personal, career, health or political kind are irresolvable.. to give rise to fears in him.....to develop/create disappointments.....to restrict his talents or capabilities.....to reduce his capacity to act and.....to harness dissentions and contradictions around him for that purpose.... ""
In this atmosphere, no one knew whom to trust, and people had to live a weirdly schizophrenic life where they had to publically acknowledge known fictions as facts, and they had to continually tread a line between seeing things for what they were in the GDR, and ignoring these realities, in order to stay sane. People had to live "in a relation of unspoken hostility but outward compliance to the state".
A young woman, bright, committed and energetic has her life ruined because of a youthful indiscretion that sees her denied education and training, harried and imprisoned as is her husband who dies, or is killed, while in custody of the Stasi. Another woman is separated from her baby when the Wall goes up because she had to travel to western Berlin for the medical treatment and medicines that were not available in the east, and she opts to leave her baby to be raised in the western hospital rather than have him die with her in east Berlin. It is these individual stories that bring home the horror of the omnipresent police state and the persecution of people who otherwise would, given a chance and some openness, have probably been loyal members of society. But chance and openness are exactly what the state cannot afford, especially when every one of its citizens is seen as a potential, even probable, enemy.
Certainly Orwellian. Certainly frightening. Also, a reminder of what could happen when governments have too much control and become totalitarian, no matter what their political spectrum is.
(Btw the photograph on the front cover is of the author.)
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