ABSTRACT

The Ministry for State Security was created immediately after the foundation of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). By the end of the 1980s, it employed 85,000 full-time employees and around 120,000 IMs or informers. Reports of the informers were collected by the Central Group for Evaluation and Information (ZAIG). In the course of 1989, the ZAIG reported extensively on the increasingly hostile public opinion in the GDR. On the basis of its reports, it made proposals for Soviet-style reform. There is a considerable irony that at many times the secret police seemed to be the official institution in the GDR that produced the boldest reform suggestions. Many persons active in journalism argue in the light of the concrete situation that the GDR mass media no longer reach the people. Progressive forces completely fail to understand the failure to engage in a political offensive against hostile oppositional forces and with the antisocialist pamphlets prepared and disseminated by these circles.