ABSTRACT
In August 2007, the Stasi Archive1 made global news when it revealed that the East German secret police, the Stasi, had standing orders to shoot East German border guards who were attempting to flee East Germany. The most sensational line in the document from 1 October 1973, splashed across CNN, read: “Do not hesitate to use your weapon even when women and children are present. The traitors often exploit them for their own purposes.”2 In an ill-advised move, Marianne Birthler, the federal commissioner for the Stasi files, used this document to underscore the importance of the Stasi archive, to emphasize that there is much more research that needs to be done, to raise the issue of bringing individuals involved in the repression apparatus to justice, and to end discussion on whether the Stasi Archive should be closed. When it was revealed that the Potsdam historian Matthias Judt had uncovered a fundamentally similar document 10 years ago, Birthler’s claims of the continued need for the Stasi archive rang hollow. She sheepishly admitted to the Berliner Zeitung that she had not been aware of the earlier document.3 Debate then raged in German newspapers as to whether it was finally time to dismantle the Stasi Archive. Leading Cristian Democrats like Reinhard Grindel and Arnold Vaatz criticized Birthler and called for the end of the Stasi Archive on the basis that its integration into the federal archive would end the more or less research monopoly that the Archive currently enjoys.4 Wolfgang Thierse, a Social Democrat leader and the vice-president of the Bundestag, argued vociferously that an integration of the Stasi archive into the federal system would reduce access to the files as the Stasi files would no longer be exempt from the privacy rules that govern access to other files.5 Given fears that East Germans may not as easily be able to view files the Stasi kept on them, Thierse proposed keeping the Stasi Archive as it is until at least 2019 by which time the vast majority of East Germans would have had sufficient opportunity to view their files. In a telling comment, Thierse pleaded: “The [Stasi Archive], the fruit of the 1989 Fall revolution, does not deserve this second-class burial.”6
