Selling Stasi documents in East Berlin

17 March 1990 - Tomorrow is election day in the GDR. Today, Stephen arrived back in Berlin from Seoul where he had been working at the World Convocation on Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation. I go to meet him at the airport. Hiring a car (and getting his first ever GDR parking ticket for stopping to ask where he could park), we stopped off at the Gendarmenmarkt in East Berlin. Here the synods of the previously-divided Berlin-Brandenburg Protestant church were having their first joint session. Less than 100 metres away from the Französische Friedrichstadtkirche where the synod is taking place there is a queue outside an unprepossessing building, now called the House of Democracy, and home to the various civic and human rights groups. They are selling a printed volume of Stasi documents, showing how the state security ministry has systematically tried to undermine and subvert opposition activity in the GDR (second hand copies are still available on Amazon). People around the church where the synods are meeting are flicking through the slim volume - some of them to see whether they were the targets of the Stasi. Later on we head back down to Greppin, in the middle of the Bitterfeld chemical works. I'm preaching tomorrow - election day.

Dismantling the Stasi ...

Today marks the 20th anniversary in Erfurt of the first occupation of a regional Stasi headquarters in the GDR. To mark the anniversary there is a time of remembrance at the former headquarters, a commemoration in the regional parliament, an academic symposium and a service of worship, under the theme, " ... and the truth shall set you free".

In his new book, Wo bleibt die Freiheit, Heino Falcke, then the Protestant dean of Erfirt, remembers the events of that day:

My wife belonged to the group, "Women for Change". The chair of the group, a doctor, phoned us on the morning of the 4 December, "There are containers being driven away from the Stasi on the Andreasstrasse and the chimney is pumping out black smoke. They are getting rid of the files. Get together who you can and block the gates." We phoned around and drove with our Wartburg to the Stasi. I blocked the entrance with the car and my wife went to the main door, where a number of women had already gathered. The group that quickly got bigger decided they should stop each of the cars. My wife, who had quickly been elected to be the spokesperson, managed to push her way through to the head of the Stasi, Major Josef Schwarz. She demanded that he end the destruction of the files. Meanwhile more and more people were pushing their way into the Stasi offices. The major demanded that my wife put a stop to this so that his people could carry on with their work. "But that's exactly what we want to stop," she replied. In the meantime the chair of the group, who had phoned us in the morning, arrived with three military attorneys , occupied the building under their supervision, and sealed the archives. This was the first occupation of a Stasi HQ and the risks were difficult to calculate ...

I had in the meantime gone to a meeting, from which I thought that I should on no account be absent. Soon after our arrival at the Stasi offices a big truck from the city council had driven past, and the driver had asked me what we were doing. When I told him he said, "Move your car away, I can block the gates better than you." I walked over to my wife and asked her if she thought she would be alright. She said of course, so I drove on to my meeting. She was right, but I still shake my head when I think about what I did. This episode casts a light on the character of the revolution. One of the protagonists described it as a "revolution in free time" or a "after-work revolution", because business just carried on as usual.