DIE STASI IM KINDERZIMMER

Film maker Kathrin Matern spent three years researching for her documentary. She tells very different stories and motivations for ‘participating’: here the promise of a degree course, there blackmail with the threat of disadvantages in a subsequent career. And then there is the ‘kick’ of being part of it: the conspiratorial flat, the betrayal, the confederacy with the secret service as a pubertal thrill. The protagonists’ parents react in various ways. In one case they, Stasi civilian informants themselves, support the recruitment. Others muster the courage to pen a submission in order to absolve their child from these spy services. One of the best-known cases of youths working for the Stasi is the Berlin social scientist Andrej Holm, who in December 2016 was appointed under-secretary for housing in Berlin and soon after was dismissed over revelations about his Stasi past. He had signed up as a 14-year-old. Yet how much responsibility do people carry who are not yet fully criminally liable? And regardless of that, how heavy is the burden these people have been bearing ever since? NaF