The History of the Stasi

East Germany's Secret Police, 1945-1990
1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-78533-024-7
Verlag: Berghahn Books

Buch, Englisch, 268 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 407 g

The East German Ministry for State Security stood for Stalinist oppression and all-encompassing surveillance. The “shield and sword of the party,” it secured the rule of the Communist Party for more than forty years, and by the 1980s it had become the largest secret-police apparatus in the world, per capita. Jens Gieseke tells the story of the Stasi, a feared secret-police force and a highly professional intelligence service. He inquires into the mechanisms of dictatorship and the day-to-day effects of surveillance and suspicion. Masterful and thorough at once, he takes the reader through this dark chapter of German postwar history, supplying key information on perpetrators, informers, and victims. In an assessment of post-communist memory politics, he critically discusses the consequences of opening the files and the outcomes of the Stasi debate in reunified Germany. A major guide for research on communist secret-police forces, this book is considered the standard reference work on the Stasi and has already been translated into a number of Eastern European languages.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gieseke, Jens

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme Totalitarismus & Diktaturen
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Deutsche Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Ideologien Marxismus, Kommunismus
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen Nachrichtendienste, Geheimdienste
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Gewalt Politische Unterdrückung & Verfolgung

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface

Preface to the 2011 edition

Introduction: Ten Years and Ten Days

Chapter 1. Antifascism – Stalinism – Cold Civil War: Origins and Influences, 1945 to 1956

Chapter 2. The Safest GDR in the World – The Driving Forces of Stasi Growth

Chapter 3. The Unofficial Collaborator – A New Type of Informer

Chapter 4. Blanket Surveillance? State Security in East German Society

Chapter 5. Resistance – Opposition – Persecution

Chapter 6. Wolf and Co. – MfS Operations Abroad

Chapter 7. Final Crisis and Collapse, 1989-90

Chapter 8. Legacy – Aufarbeitung – Culture of Memory: The Second Life of the Stasi

Notes

Select Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Gieseke, Jens
Jens Gieseke is head of the “Communism and Society” research department at the Centre for Contemporary History in Potsdam, Germany. He previously worked for fifteen years in the research division of the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records in Berlin. He co-edited Staatssicherheit und Gesellschaft (Göttingen, 2007); Handbuch der kommunistischen Geheimdienste in Osteuropa (Göttingen, 2008); and Die Geschichte der SED (Berlin, 2011).

Jens Gieseke is head of the “Communism and Society” research department at the Centre for Contemporary History in Potsdam, Germany. He previously worked for fifteen years in the research division of the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records in Berlin. He co-edited Staatssicherheit und Gesellschaft (Göttingen, 2007); Handbuch der kommunistischen Geheimdienste in Osteuropa (Göttingen, 2008); and Die Geschichte der SED (Berlin, 2011).