On reading my Stasi files

National Interest, The, Winter, 1994 by Frederic L. Pryor

Up to now, most of those who have been seriously punished by the German courts since the Wall has fallen have been those like the soldiers guarding the Wall who acted under orders to shoot at people trying to escape. Others are people like Vogel, who, as a well-known person with the highest political connections, have been a convenient target of the suppressed fury of many who suffered from the East German dictatorship. Schalck, who operated in the shadows away from public attention, has not raised such wrath and has been treated more gently.

Although I gained some interesting personal information from reading my file, from a public policy perspective does it make any sense to open them? Certainly no other former communist nation has done so. In fact, with the exception of Czechoslovakia, which requires a vetting of the secret police files by a committee before a person can occupy certain key posts in the government or the economy, all other nations have sealed the files, although in most countries there have been leaks to the press for political purposes--mainly by politicians trying to smear a rival. For instance, according to an alleged Polish secret police report that was leaked, even Lech Walesa was said to have supplied information to them. Of course, Walesa has denied the charge and there has been no verification. The Czech decision has also brought difficulties, since some of those named in the files as informal co-workers apparently never delivered any information; those making the files simply wanted to appear busier than they actually were. A particularly tragic case is Jan Kayan, a well-known dissident who cannot clear his name in court because he cannot read his file--only a committee is given this privilege.

The various post-communist governments have offered a variety of excuses for not opening up the secret police files: the files are in too great a disarray; there are not suitable personnel for the purpose; such a step would exacerbate existing social tensions. Perhaps an underlying worry of these governments is that almost all leading citizens had some contact with the secret police, often quite benign.

The political advantages for the government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl of opening the files seem, however, quite clear, as a brief recitation of some crucial political and economic events reveals. After the Wall came down in November 1989, Kohl spoke of a political union of the two parts of Germany. But it quickly became apparent that this would take five or ten years. In the early part of 1990 he suddenly changed tactics and spoke of an economic and monetary union instead. I was in Germany when he made the decision for a one-to-one exchange of East and West German deutschemarks, a decision he was advised against by a variety of economic experts, including the head of the Bundesbank.

Because productivity was much lower in the East than in the West and Eastern wages were not correspondingly as low, production costs after the one-to-one conversion would be higher in the East. This would, in turn, make competition with West German firms extremely difficult and, in a great many cases, would force them into bankruptcy. But a one-to-one exchange rate corresponded to the wishes of the East German citizenry, who did not quite understand how markets operated. Kohl bowed to their desires, a decision that raised the unemployment rate from about 3 percent to 30 percent in a matter of weeks and brought the East German economy rapidly to its knees. As a result, the political union followed quickly: Kohl accomplished in less than a year what political pundits had previously declared difficult to realize in five.