‘Oh,’ I say. ‘
Ja
?’
‘
Spezialdisziplin
,’ he repeats. ‘Do you know what that means?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘
Spezialdisziplin
is the science of recruiting informers.
Spezialdisziplin
is the art,’ he says, ‘of the handler.’ He pauses. ‘You should come to my house. It is directly opposite the academy at Golm. Do you know where that is?’
‘No, I don’t.’ He gives me train and bus directions.
The more prone to getting lost one is, the more one tries to compensate. My grandmother has a small spirex notepad bound discreetly to an undergarment as an
aide memoire
, and I have a lot of maps. I have a 1986 map of Potsdam in which the areas where there were Stasi buildings—anything from bunkers to multi-storey edifices to shooting ranges—are left blank. On another, a 1984 map of East Berlin, entire city blocks and streets in Stasi areas are simply not represented: they are pale orange gaps in the map. Out of curiosity I look up Golm, and find that it is a gap on the map, on the outskirts of Potsdam.
I follow Herr Bock’s instructions. I take the train from Berlin to the end of the line, and then I take two buses. His house is one in a street of identical semi-detached dwellings, each with a patch of lawn and a wire gate in front of it. It seems to be the only street that exists here, as though a town planner had an idea for a settlement that was begun before he thought better of it. The houses are covered in rough grey concrete, knobbly all over as if from cold. None of them, including Herr Bock’s, looks inhabited.
It is late afternoon. Herr Bock’s living room is, overwhelmingly, beige and brown: brown linoleum and dark veneer wall units, a brown couch and Herr Bock sitting camouflaged in it in a beige-and-brown diamond pattern acrylic cardigan. He has thick square glasses that give him underwater eyes, and an overbite. A moustache hangs on his upper lip. His voice is so soft I have to lean in to him.
‘You must not use my name,’ he says as an opener.
I agree.
He relaxes back into the couch and starts to hold forth. He says that the ministry was divided into two main sections: internal (called ‘Defence’) and external (‘Counter-espionage’). He taught a course for Stasi officers destined to work in Defence. This title is euphemistic. The internal service of the Stasi was designed to spy on and control the citizens of the GDR. The only way to make sense of its name is to understand the Stasi as defending the government against the people. I take notes like a student. Herr Bock outlines each department of the Defence. I write:
Main Departments:
Economy
State Apparatus
Church
Sport
Culture
Counter-terrorism
East Germany was a small country of only seventeen million people, but these Stasi divisions and sub-departments were replicated throughout its territory no fewer than fifteen times. In every corner of the nation, every aspect of your life had its mirror nemesis in a department.
‘Let us take,’ says Herr Bock, ‘as a specific instance the department of the church.’ The church—pastors and people—was the only area of society in the GDR where oppositional thought could find a structure and could coalesce into something real. Consequently, theological colleges attracted bright, independent-minded students. ‘All our people had to have theological training themselves so they’d pass for members of the churches they infiltrated.’ He crosses an ankle onto his knee. ‘How did we do it you might ask?’ He snaps his fingers. ‘Answer: we went into the theological colleges and recruited the students themselves!’ He rubs his hands together. They make a papery sound. ‘You know,’ he says, ‘we were supremely effective. It is not widely known that in the end, 65 per cent of the church leaders were informers for us, and the rest of them were under surveillance anyhow.’
I once saw a note on a Stasi file from early 1989 that I would never forget. In it a young lieutenant alerted his superiors to the fact that there were so many informers in church opposition groups at demonstrations that they were making these groups appear stronger than they really were. In one of the most beautiful ironies I have ever seen, he dutifully noted that, by having swelled the ranks of the opposition, the Stasi was giving the people heart to keep demonstrating against them.
Herr Bock uncrosses his legs and spreads his knees. His feet, in socks and sandals, barely touch the floor. Outside, the light is leaving us. He is on a roll. ‘Now to our working methods. These were set out in Directives. There were four main areas.’ I write:
Working Methods:
Exposing of Moles (
Enttarnung
)
Recruitment of Informers
Operational Control of Persons (Surveillance)
Security Checks
Herr Bock’s passion is for recruitment. ‘Directive 1/79!’ he cries. ‘One seventy-nine! On the Conversion of and Collaboration with Informers!’ He takes out a handkerchief and wipes the corners of his mouth. ‘There was nothing willy-nilly about it. We had to decide where in society, on
objective
principles, there was a need for an informer. For example, we might need one in an apartment block, a factory, or a supermarket. Then a rational evaluation would be made: what sort of person do we need here? What qualities should they have? We would find three or four people who fitted the bill. Without their knowledge, they would be comprehensively observed and evaluated in order to determine whether they could be approached or not.
‘Most often,’ he says, ‘people we approached would inform for us. It was very rare that they would not. However, sometimes we felt that we might need to know where their weak points were, just in case. For instance, if we wanted a pastor, we’d find out if he’d had an affair, or had a drinking problem—things that we could use as leverage. Mostly though, people just said yes.’
It is dark now, but Herr Bock seems to be brightening right up. ‘The third method was “Operational Control of Persons”.’
‘What does that mean?’ I ask.
‘Well,’ he says, ‘they were controlled using means and methods, all the means and methods allowable could be used to control them.’ He puts his palms together, then closes them up between his legs. ‘It got pretty tough for some people, you’d have to say,’ he says.
These were the allowable means and methods:
Telephone tapping
Mobilisation of Informers
Shadow surveillance by Observational Forces
Use of Investigative Forces
Use of Technical Forces (including the installation of technology—
bugs—in living quarters of the subject)
Post and parcel interception
That leaves only one thing I can think of. ‘Did you use smell sampling?’
‘Oh, no, no, no,’ he says, ‘that was for criminals.’
‘Well who were the people you were doing the “Operational Control” on?’
‘They were enemies.’
‘Oh. How did you know they were enemies?’
‘Well,’ he says in his soft voice, ‘once an investigation was started into someone, that meant there was suspicion of enemy activity.’ This was perfect dictator-logic: we investigate you, therefore you are an enemy. ‘We searched for enemies in all the areas I mentioned: in the factories, in the state apparatus, the church, the schools and so on. In fact,’ he says, ‘as time went on there was more and more work to do because the definition of “enemy” became wider and wider.’
I put my pen in the crease of my notebook and peer into the gloom in his direction. Herr Bock says other professors at the academy spent their careers expanding the reach of the paragraphs of the law so as to be able to encompass more enemies in them. ‘In fact, their promotions depended on it,’ he says. ‘We talked about it among ourselves up on the sixth floor over there,’ an arm gestures towards the building opposite. ‘And I don’t mind telling you that some of us actually thought the paragraphs became a little too wide.’ I nod. If, by the mere fact of investigating someone you turn them into an Enemy of the State, you could potentially busy yourself with the entire population.
‘Too wide,’ he continues, ‘to be properly carried out. Within available resources I mean.’
‘What qualities did you look for in an informer?’ I ask Herr Bock.
‘Well,’ he says, leaning back and clasping both hands behind his head, ‘he had to be able to adapt to new situations quickly and make himself belong wherever we put him. And at the same time he had to have a stable enough character to keep it clear in his mind that he was reporting to us. And above all else,’ he says, looking straight at me, his eyes distorted and magnified through the glasses, ‘he needed to be honest, faithful and trustworthy.’
I look back at him. I feel my eyes too, getting wider.
‘I mean only towards the ministry, of course,’ he corrects himself. ‘We weren’t interested if he betrayed anyone else…’ He leans his head to one side, in thought. ‘In point of the fact he had to, didn’t he?’ he says. ‘Perhaps,’ he continues, ‘this ability is not a great quality in a human being. But it was vital for our work. I have to say that it is the same in all secret services.’
But it is not. Few secret services have informers reporting meticulously on activities at kindergartens and dinner parties and sporting events across the nation.
‘What was in it for the informers?’ I want to know how much they were paid.
‘It was pitiful actually,’ Bock admits. ‘They were hardly paid at all. Every week they had to meet with their handlers, and they were not paid for that. Every now and then they might have been given some money as a reward for a specific piece of information. Sometimes they were given a birthday present.’
‘So why did they do it?’
‘Well, some of them were convinced of the cause,’ he says. ‘But I think it was mainly because informers got the feeling that, doing it, they were somebody. You know—someone was listening to them for a couple of hours a week, taking notes. They felt they had it over other people.’
To my mind, there is something warmer and more human about the carnality of other dictatorships, say in Latin America. One can more easily understand a desire for cases stuffed with money and drugs, for women and weapons and blood. These obedient grey men doing it with their underpaid informers on a weekly basis seem at once more stupid and more sinister. Betrayal clearly has its own reward: the small deep human satisfaction of having one up on someone else. It is the psychology of the mistress, and this regime used it as fuel.
Herr Bock is still talking, and I am still taking notes. Every meeting with an informer had to take place in a covert location. ‘In fact,’ he says proudly, twisting his neck towards the stairs, ‘I have a covert location here upstairs in my house.’ His upstairs bedroom is still fitted out for the purpose, with a round table and brown vinyl-covered chairs. ‘Every informer,’ he says, ‘knew exactly what he or she was doing.’ He reaches behind himself to switch on a small lamp.
I look at my watch. It’s nine o’clock. ‘If you don’t mind me asking,’ I say. ‘What is it you do now, Herr Bock?’
‘I am a business adviser.’
I don’t say anything.
‘You look surprised,’ he says. ‘You are wondering what I could possibly know about business.’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘I work for West German firms who come here to buy up East German assets. I mediate between them and the East Germans, because the westerners don’t speak their language. The easterners are wary because of their fancy clothes, their Mercedes Benzes, and so on.’
Terrific. Here he is once more getting the trust of his people and selling them cheap. Stasi men are by and large less affected by the unemployment that has consumed East Germany since the Wall came down. Many of them have found work in insurance, telemarketing and real estate. None of these businesses existed in the GDR. But the Stasi were, in effect, trained for them, schooled in the art of convincing people to do things against their own self-interest.
‘We never thought, no-one ever thought, that it would all come to an end,’ he says. ‘It would not have occurred to anyone that our country could somehow cease to be. Just like that! Up on the sixth floor over there’—he gestures again with his head in the direction of the academy across the road—‘at the end of 1989 we used to joke around. We’d say, “Last one here turn the lights out” because, at the end there’d be no-one left in the GDR.’
I think I should leave too. I thank Herr Bock and pack up and walk to the bus stop. There is only one street lamp along this road, and it is right here. So that the bus will stop for me, I have to stand in its cone of light. I can’t see much beyond it; there are no lights on in any of the buildings around. Here I am, standing in a blank on the map, lit up for all to see. According to the timetable, it is forty-five minutes until the next bus comes. In ten minutes’ time, the cold will be through to my bones.
I pick up my little pack and walk back to Herr Bock’s. There are no lights on, but where could he have gone? No cars passed. The gate is stuck and it rattles. A piece of wire I can’t see bites into my palm. I imagine Herr Bock looking through his curtains, and in fact the moment the gate springs wide he opens the door. He is chewing.
‘I think I might call a taxi, if you don’t mind,’ I say. ‘It’s three-quarters of an hour till the next bus comes, and I’ll miss the connection for the Berlin train. May I come in?’
It is dim inside. He has turned off the lamp to watch television, and now he switches that off too. He swallows and says, ‘I don’t know anything about taxis. I don’t think they come here.’
‘Let’s try calling one, shall we?’ I say.
He is enjoying himself, here in the dark. ‘It might be a while,’ he answers, ‘they probably have to come from Potsdam.’ But he finds a phone book in the gloom anyway, and calls a cab company. We sit down. My eyes are adjusting. He takes something off a plate.