Ah the famous files! A German friend of a friend asked for it, there were two entries about what she had bought in a shop, something like half a kilogram of potatos bought on date + time.
Another discovered that her awful husband who was beating her up was a Stasi agent.
All sorts.
There must be some contemporary novels about this?
In the UK it is well known that MI5 maintained a similar, althought presumably less comprehensive, database of 'pfs' (personal files) for people they were interested in. They say that all this material has long been destroyed. However, a small number of heavily redacted files on known Nazis and Communists and supposed felllow travellers are available at The National Archives at Kew (and most are online through TNA's website). They make fascinating reading revealing the extent that MI5 conducted surveillance of the British population in general.
When I was a young active member of a suburban local Labour Party in the 80s we often talked in the pub about whether the security services were interested in us and whether there was a mole reporting back to MI5 HQ. Frankly we were no more a threat to society than a paperbag, but it gave us a frisson of excitement and sense of 'sticking it to the man'..
What an interesting and brilliant trip you are having, I was thinking of a mega book store in California when I was there a few years ago turns out it was Powells in Portland.
This looking at stasi files must be a real dilemma for people over the years an actual Pandora's box situation, personally I don't know what i would have done ,gone for a run to think about it, talking of which i got bitten by a Rottweiler last week whilst out running.
Katja I trust the German beer 🍺 is more varied than just Becks and Lowenbrau, have a great rest of the trip.
Now this is the question; did you guerrilla sign any of your books in the bookshop? I suspect not. Imagine the delight of some future reader when they pick up either book. It reads like a very high powered event. My father worked in San Francisco in 1970 and in later years would tell us about it, particularly when it appeared in TV shows. He seems to have liked the city. It is extraordinary that Wolf’s papers made their way to Stanford; an intriguing story in itself no doubt. Once the papers are available it provides you with a legitimate justification to visit the Golden State. In the same way Dr Sarah-Louise Miller used researching women in US military intelligence to visit Hawaii. I shall keep a look out for Troika. I have read Garton Ash’s The File, interesting book. Safe flight home.
There’s an interview with wolf in German on YouTube that I found interesting, he was still trying to re invent himself then , same with Egon Krenz, all trying to downplay their parts in the mechanism
When the Wall fell, the CIA simply paid Stasi bureaucrats huge sums for large sections of the Stasi files that were of interest to them. The individual files vary in content but are always of interest, both for who among your circle were informers, and how boring it must have been for nearly all Stasi officials.
It was, however, not boring for Markus Wolff, who was probably one of the most successful spymasters of all time. But then given the unique circumstances of a divided Germany, it was also not a difficult environment to recruit or infiltrate spies such as Guillaume.
Ah the famous files! A German friend of a friend asked for it, there were two entries about what she had bought in a shop, something like half a kilogram of potatos bought on date + time.
Another discovered that her awful husband who was beating her up was a Stasi agent.
All sorts.
There must be some contemporary novels about this?
In the UK it is well known that MI5 maintained a similar, althought presumably less comprehensive, database of 'pfs' (personal files) for people they were interested in. They say that all this material has long been destroyed. However, a small number of heavily redacted files on known Nazis and Communists and supposed felllow travellers are available at The National Archives at Kew (and most are online through TNA's website). They make fascinating reading revealing the extent that MI5 conducted surveillance of the British population in general.
When I was a young active member of a suburban local Labour Party in the 80s we often talked in the pub about whether the security services were interested in us and whether there was a mole reporting back to MI5 HQ. Frankly we were no more a threat to society than a paperbag, but it gave us a frisson of excitement and sense of 'sticking it to the man'..
Sounds as if another book for the reading list!!
What an interesting and brilliant trip you are having, I was thinking of a mega book store in California when I was there a few years ago turns out it was Powells in Portland.
This looking at stasi files must be a real dilemma for people over the years an actual Pandora's box situation, personally I don't know what i would have done ,gone for a run to think about it, talking of which i got bitten by a Rottweiler last week whilst out running.
Katja I trust the German beer 🍺 is more varied than just Becks and Lowenbrau, have a great rest of the trip.
Now this is the question; did you guerrilla sign any of your books in the bookshop? I suspect not. Imagine the delight of some future reader when they pick up either book. It reads like a very high powered event. My father worked in San Francisco in 1970 and in later years would tell us about it, particularly when it appeared in TV shows. He seems to have liked the city. It is extraordinary that Wolf’s papers made their way to Stanford; an intriguing story in itself no doubt. Once the papers are available it provides you with a legitimate justification to visit the Golden State. In the same way Dr Sarah-Louise Miller used researching women in US military intelligence to visit Hawaii. I shall keep a look out for Troika. I have read Garton Ash’s The File, interesting book. Safe flight home.
There’s an interview with wolf in German on YouTube that I found interesting, he was still trying to re invent himself then , same with Egon Krenz, all trying to downplay their parts in the mechanism
When the Wall fell, the CIA simply paid Stasi bureaucrats huge sums for large sections of the Stasi files that were of interest to them. The individual files vary in content but are always of interest, both for who among your circle were informers, and how boring it must have been for nearly all Stasi officials.
It was, however, not boring for Markus Wolff, who was probably one of the most successful spymasters of all time. But then given the unique circumstances of a divided Germany, it was also not a difficult environment to recruit or infiltrate spies such as Guillaume.