Apartment block opposite the Stasimuseum, Berlin

Ostalgie: nostalgia for aspects of life in the former GDR

The Stasi were the internal security and police apparatus that developed in the Soviet Zone of Occupation that was created in a divided Germany after the end of the Second World War. Its forerunner was the Kommissariat, which itself was modelled along the lines of the KGB. The Stasi epitomised a society under intense, mass surveillance, a by-product of a Soviet system of paranoia. It was responsible for both domestic political surveillance and foreign espionage, and was overseen by the ruling Socialist Unity Party, who, in turn, were overseen by Communist Leaders within the Kremlin. The Soviet Union was at its height at this time, though still struggling economically, with rule over its vassal states from Estonia to Kyrgyzstan, and pervasive influence over its close neighbours from Poland to Yugoslavia. The GDR was its creation, and perhaps the most successful proxy state (with its own football clubs and East German designed automobiles), a riposte to the Allied Forces of the West. 

Under Erich Mielke the Stasi morphed from a highly effective police organisation concerned with counterintelligence to a State Department that infiltrated every aspect of daily life through a vast network of informants and collaborators. Relying upon a vast number of collaborators as well as regular employees it maintained files on approximately one-third of the population.

This system of absurdity was the balance of fear: the cold war between rival paradigms of thought. This was divided land, East and West, but within East Germany was also a divided mentality: a society benefiting from the ‘gifts’ socialism and a society struggling to escape from the malign might and paranoid mindset of Russian control.

And yet, there is also a nostalgia for this former socialist way of life, which is still strangely evident in the city today, from the museums that preserve the artefacts, literally the offices and prisons, to the trinkets and clothing in the flea markets, to the Trabant tours of the city.