Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall

I had this book bought for me many months ago, but left it on the shelf until recently.
Having little or no insight into the problems of living in East Germany, I found it very well written, and very engaging. Incidently it is written as non-fiction, but presented in such a narrative way that you would think it was ficticious, and for me reading history is made easier when presented in that format.
It was a grim but interesting journey into life under the control of the 'stasi'. This police state, controlled not only by the state, but also by ordinary people in the street forced into having to 'work' for the state, to control the citizens by some of the most cruel methods, makes for a painful read. It highlights a period before 'The Wall' came down, where Russian communist control continued the deprivations of WW11.

Total Information Awareness (1/1 people found this helpful)

Anna Funder gives a sharply cut and moving (in)human face to the now defunct German Democratic Republic by interviewing former Stasi members (the top, foreign spies, informants, organizers) and their direct or indirect victims.
In `a world where there was nothing to buy, nowhere to go, and where anyone who wanted to do anything other than serve the Party, risked persecution or worse', the Stasi's aim was to know everything about everybody with all means, even radiation. As the author poetically states: everybody had `a mirror Nemesis' in a Stasi department. The result was that everyone suspected everyone else and turned into an `internal emigration' for the sheltering of their secret inner lives.
In fact, the Stasi was a formidable organization (one informant for every 6,5 citizens) created in order to defend the government against its own people.
Anna Funder exposes the real Stasi mentality: `The most important thing you have is power" (Chief E. Mielke). Its colossal archives were partly shredded after the fall of the Berlin Wall (15000 sacks) and are being puzzled together. A truly Herculean task.
The author paints a society built on ideological fiction (human nature was a work-in-progress which could be improved by Communism) and on blatant lies (a multi-party democracy, no former Nazis, not responsible for the Holocaust).
But what is left after the collapse? A `Wall in the Head'. The victims are still heavily marked (psychological damage by the terrifying effect of total surveillance) and some Stasi men still hope that the Wall will be built again.

Anna Funder wrote a formidable evocation of life in a communist one party state protected by a wall.
A must read.

Personal, and great for it. (6/8 people found this helpful)

Like negative reviews here, I agree that this is a very personal book. However, I do not accept this is a valid criticism - it never claims to be anything else, and it is also warm, vivid, fascinating and well written. These are stories from the past, and (almost) present that collectively provide a rich and absorbing picture. It's not an endlessly footnoted history text...so what?

Disappointing (3/11 people found this helpful)

The history of the Stasi and their place in the DDR regime could make a fascinating and important book. This, unfortunately, is not that book. Instead, this is the journal of an Australian writer living in eastern Germany as she meets various people with experience of the Stasi. It reads rather like a travel book, and - like most travel writers - Ms Funder believes that she is more interesting than her subject. We are treated to repetitive and pointless accounts of her thoughts, her train and bus journeys, her dreams, and her time spent doing nothing in her almost-empty apartment.

The real content of the book consists of 11 interviews with people connected (as employees or victims) with the Stasi. Except in two cases, Ms Funder makes her interviewees into charicatures (the heroic victim who refused to betray her friend, the raving former propogandist, the swave covert operative in a black BMW) and has often told us how to judge them before she has even met them. Their stories are compelling, but they are constantly interrupted by Ms Funder's descriptions of her own reactions. The repeated interjections of "I'm startled", "I think to myself...", "I imagine..." are tiresome.

I am judging this book harshly because it has been so celebrated elsewhere. In particular, I am disappointed that the judges of the Samuel Johnson Prize undermined the value of their prize by awarding it in 2004 to this superficial and journalistic account of an important subject.

Too much Funder, not enough GDR (4/8 people found this helpful)

I found the book ultimately disappointing - the author spends far too much time and energy on her opinions and feelings and a lot of the situations she describes feel contrived and, in some a few cases, outright fiction. I would have preferred a more straightforwardly factual account, with less of Funder's stylistic experimentation. The words of her interviewees, stark and real, paint a far more vivid picture than she ever could.

Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall

Anna Funder

Reader Reviews:

An insight into East Germany (0/0 people found this helpful)

Total Information Awareness (1/1 people found this helpful)

Personal, and great for it. (6/8 people found this helpful)

Disappointing (3/11 people found this helpful)

Too much Funder, not enough GDR (4/8 people found this helpful)

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