Stefan Wolle wears many masks: historian, museum director and expert on the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police. More recently, he’s stepped out of the ivory tower to consult on the script for a soap opera, Weissensee, a Romeo and Juliet-style story of forbidden love set in the former East Germany that debuted last month. Some commentators have likened it to the US show Dallas.
“It’s a real soap opera,” Wolle said, emphasizing the “real” as though he still can’t believe that he worked on it. He added, “I read the script and it was absolutely terrible, a catastrophe. It was not the language from the GDR [the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany] or the thinking of the GDR.”
Soap operas, of course, are not known for giving an accurate depiction of reality. But Wolle said he was glad to be a part of the show, which saw 5.6 million viewers tune in for the first episode, because it drew considerable attention to the atmosphere of anxiety that pervaded life in the former communist state.
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“The critics were not so bad on it, either. We might even make a second series,” he said.
Wolle’s effort with Weissensee follows a trajectory of revealing as much as possible about life behind the Iron Curtain. At the Round Table — a committee advising the interim East German government — he was regarded as the expert on Stasi files. In March 1990, together with Armin Mitter, he brought out the first edition of the secret Stasi files. The book became an immediate bestseller in East Germany, selling more than 200,000 copies in its first three months.
Since 2002, he has worked on the staff of the Free University of Berlin and in 2006 was elected Scientific Director of the GDR Museum in Berlin, where he describes his approach as “bottom up, not the top down.” The politics and ideology of the GDR, although featured, take a back seat to what clothes people wore and how they worked and interacted.
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“There are even trunks where visitors can touch the shirts and trousers from the former GDR,” he said. On Saturday, the museum will expand to twice its current size and add a restaurant serving food, “GDR style,” he said.
A somewhat weary Wolle sat down with the Taipei Times early Thursday morning, three hours after arriving in Taipei, to talk about two lectures he will give in Taipei: Is Germany Really United?, today, and Is Everyone Happy With Democracy? — The East German Experience, on Tuesday.
Taipei Times: Last November I spoke with Joern Mothes, a human rights activist in the former East Germany, who described himself as a dissident. Would you fall into that category?
Stefan Wolle: This is very difficult. I had no love for the GDR, but I wasn’t an activist in the human rights movement. I was in the background. In the last years of the GDR, it was possible to work in the Academy of Sciences and at the same time go to activities in the church.
For many, there was a kind of balancing act between the two. It was a little bit dangerous.
(Protestant churches in East Germany often served as venues for opposition activities because of their relative freedom from state control. Although some participants were not religious, they were united in their opposition to the regime.)
TT: That must have been very difficult: on the one hand seeking change, and on the other working at an institute that essentially maintained the status quo.
SW: Under the communist system, every man had two faces. And two languages and two [personas] in their heads. In my institute, I was very quiet. I only voiced my opinion at night when I was at the church.
TT: In early 1990 you worked as a researcher on the Stasi files, eventually publishing the first edition in the same year. How did that process come about, whereby a historian of early Russia was called upon to become a researcher in the Stasi files?
SW: It’s not so simple to explain. The history of the GDR was very strong in communist and Marxist indoctrination, but not so much in the older history. You could work on [pre-modern] history without problems in the last years of the GDR. But writing about the history of the Communist Revolution in Russia or about the history of the communist system, it was not possible. It was under strict control of the party. And the historians who worked on contemporary history were members of the party [who were] very strongly integrated into the system. I wasn’t part of that system.
TT: So historians that didn’t work on recent [GDR] history were invited to do research on the Stasi files after 1990.
SW: Generally, yes. What is important is that my scientific subject in the GDR was very early Russian history — a thousand years between me and the present time. Old Russian history was without ideological or political indoctrination.
In January of 1990, we saw the dissolution of the State Security apparatus. Political groups from the opposition searched for historians who were close to the opposition, those who weren’t [tainted] by the GDR past, and I personally knew activists from the opposition. They asked me if I wanted to work or take responsibility for the Stasi archives and I said yes.
TT: How did you feel about that?
SW: For a historian, working with the Stasi files was a dream. I was among the first free men to go into this archive.
TT: Did you have a Stasi file?
SW: Of course. A small one. I knew before I read my files everything contained inside.
TT: So there was nothing in the files that surprised you.
SW: That’s right. Nothing. I had problems — when I was a student. But that’s all.
TT: Did you ever work for the Stasi?
SW: No. They never tried to recruit me.
TT: How did you feel on Nov. 9, 1989, when the opening of the Wall was announced?
SW: It was a surprise for me. It was a great party and I was very happy. I had never dreamed that this could happen. Never, never, never. I was very pessimistic in the years before. It was the first time that we’d had a discussion about our own problems and it was very emotional. I was especially happy because it was so peaceful.
It is a difficult feeling. There was also a fear that it was the end of our movement, the democratic movement. This day was a new beginning but a time of problems, particularly economic problems. I didn’t have any illusions about it but I knew it was the demise of the German communist system.
TT: Speaking of economic problems, this is the basis of one of your lectures and how — and this is the second lecture — democracy is serving as a kind of scapegoat for the perceived lack of economic benefits of unification.
SW: It was a very happy and peaceful revolution and reunification and freedom and human rights and so on. For me, over the past 20 years there is no doubt in my mind that this was a good thing.
But the economic aspects of this transformative process were difficult. We had in East Germany a catastrophic year in 1989, before the end of the GDR, the economic development was on the level of the third world. It was a catastrophe.
After unification, Eastern factories could not compete. They could not operate in a free market. The products in the GDR, not all but a big majority, didn’t have a chance in the free market in the West. Also, former GDR consumers would only buy products from the West, which was perceived to be modern, chic and refined. The result of this was a clash in the job market in the GDR and the jobless rate increased dramatically. It is a crisis that still exists.
TT: So that’s what you mean when you question whether in fact Eastern and Western Germany are unified.
SW: Right, today the division is economic.
TT: A poll commissioned by the Federal Commissioner for the Redevelopment of the New Federal States authorized a survey conducted by the GDR Museum where you work. It showed that 57 percent of those surveyed were satisfied with life in the former GDR. It seems like a very high number.
SW: Yes, very high. The result of this economic poll is that many people in Germany especially in the former GDR, think the old communist system was better because there was no joblessness. Every person had a job in the former GDR. It was the law. [Unemployment is as high as 21 percent in some parts of the former East Germany.]
Many people don’t see a difference between the political system and the economic system. They think it is a bad system when I or my parents are jobless for a long time. In the former GDR everyone had work. And because many Eastern Germans are without jobs today, they don’t see democracy and liberalism as beneficial.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
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