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Stasi
archives shake Germany again
By Heikki Aittokoski
- The archives of Stasi, the East German espionage service, are the
centre of controversy in Germany again. The files are believed to
contain sensitive information about the doings and wrongdoings of
Western politicians in the 1970s and 1980s.
- The controversy over Stasi is more intense now
than it has been for several years. The focal point of this debate is,
once again, Helmut Kohl, the Chancellor of unification, and the
long time patriarch of the Christian Democratic Union party.
- In the midst of the financial scandal that is
shaking the Christian Democrats, it was revealed recently that Stasi
espionage operations against West German politicians were even more
thorough than previously suspected.
- It has long been common knowledge that Stasi's
tentacles had extended to the very top levels of the West German
leadership. The best known event of the Cold War era occurred in 1974
when Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt was forced to resign when
it was revealed that his close aide Günther Guilliaume spied
on behalf of the GDR.
- Stasi followed influential West Germans quite
systematically. No less than 2400 people were employed by Stasi to
listen in on West German telephone conversations.
- A total of 25,000 people are believed to have been
targets of Stasi espionage in West Germany. It is estimated that about
9,000 pages of Stasi material exist concerning Helmut Kohl from the
years 1982-1989.
- The focus of the latest debate is whether or not
the material that has been found and is yet to be found in Stasi
archives should be made public.
- Kohl says that he will fight against the
publication of the material by all means possible, all the way up to
the country's Constitutional Court. He soon hopes to read the papers
that concern his activities.
- The law concerning Stasi archives, which was
passed immediately after reunification, is quite clear. The archives
may not be made public, if this would cause those who were targets of
the espionage to suffer.
- However, the law also has an exception. Documents
may be made public if they involve a historically significant person -
and Kohl undeniably is such a person. Joachim Gauk, the head of the
office dealing with the Stasi archives, has said that “historically
interesting” Stasi information on Kohl will be made public. This
only concerns public activities: for instance, private telephone
conversations between Kohl and his wife Hannelore concerning their
plans for the weekend, would not be made public.
- The aftermath of the CDU finance scandal makes the
Stasi material particularly sensitive. It seems evident that East
German officials had information about the questionable financial
sources of the CDU.
- Calls recorded by Stasi could well contain crucial
evidence linked with the scandal. The question is, if it is right to
use information illegally obtained by a dictatorship as a tool of the
law.
- “Absolutely not”, say most politicians,
regardless of their party affiliation. They feel that the use of the
archives would violate healthy principles of justice. The situation
would be similar to one in which a Finnish politician of the 1980s
were to be tried in court on the basis of information gathered by the
Soviet KGB during the Cold War.
- It is quite unlikely that the special committee of
the German Bundestag investigating the scandal will ask for access to
the Stasi archives, but nevertheless, the reports of the huge amount
of papers in the Stasi estate awaken fears in West Germany.
- Markus Wolf, the famous “man without a
face” who led the foreign espionage service of the GDR said recently
that the Stasi had “plenty of interesting information” about
politicians in the West. The East Germans were undoubtedly aware of
the sexual peccadilloes of various key individuals, and other
sensitive aspects of their private lives.
- Documents concerning West Germans were
systematically destroyed in 1990 during the time after the Berlin Wall
had come down, but the GDR still officially existed. For instance,
documents concerning Germany's great postwar conservative leader Franz
Josef Strauss were burned in Munich.
- The destruction had the blessing of all Western
political parties. It was not illegal in 1990 because no laws on the
Stasi papers had been passed yet.
- However, there was not enough time to put
everything in the shredder or furnace. The Stasi was a huge
organisation with archives all over the GDR. The remaining documents
can easily cause any number of scandals.
- FACT FILE: The massive estate of “The Firm”
- The East German intelligence service, or Stasi, was officially
known as the Ministry for State Security. Citizens of the GDR also
knew it by its nickname, “The Firm”.
- The main task of the Stasi was to spy on the country's own
citizens. It had about 90,00 full time employees and about 110,000
informers.
- Stasi was run for years by Erich Mielke (*1907), who
lives in a home for the elderly in Berlin. Foreign espionage was
headed by Markus Wolf (*1923), who is now a private citizen.
- The office, headed by Joachim Gauk, was established to deal with
the Stasi archives. Its 2800 employees have yet to go through much
of the material.
- Shelves of Stasi documents total about 180 kilometres, and
contain information on millions of people.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print
14.4.2000 |
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