Erich Mielke

4 results

Torn Stasi documents, earmarked for destruction, after the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 in the former Stasi HQ. Photograph: Getty
Stasi files catalogue tragedy and trauma of four toxic decades

Some 30 years on, the files are still there. Locked away from the daylight in climate-controlled rooms, shelf after shelf of battered orange cardboard(...)

Roland Jahn, a former civil rights activist and now the third custodian of the Stasi files: “This is about giving people, particularly the younger generation, a chance to interact with the Stasi and SED dictatorship with documents and files from the archive”
East German Stasi archive goes online

A quarter century ago, officers of East Germany’s Stasi secret police worked around the clock to destroy decades of files. When the overworked shredde(...)

Two West German policemen prevent people from approaching as East German police, the vopos, stand on and near a fallen portion of the Berlin Wall onNovember 11th 1989.
How the Berlin Wall fell: a chronology

East Germany ceased to exist four days before its 41st birthday, on the day of German unity: October 3rd 1990. But the emotional end of East Germany c(...)

Stasi prison memorial director Hubertus Knabe: condemns ex-Stasi officials who, in his view, attempt to whitewash the GDR’s record of state repression. Photograph: Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty
Edward Snowden finds an unlikely admirer in former Stasi agent

A former agent in East Germany’s secret police, the Stasi, has praised NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden as a “hero” and dismissed as “hypocritical” es(...)