75 years of Stasi: A former major remembers

An einem nebelverhangenen No­vembertag des Jahres 1989 saß der damals 38 Jahre alte Bernd Roth in den abgedunkelten Räumen des Gebäudekomplexes in Geras Hermann-Drechsler-Straße 1, der Bezirksverwaltung des Ministeriums für Staatssicherheit. Draußen auf den Straßen skandierten die Menschen „Stasi in den Tagebau“ und ähnliche Parolen, die es von den Leipziger Montagsde­monstrationen längst bis in die Thüringer Provinz geschafft hatten.

„Wir hatten Angst und diskutierten hitzig, wie es wohl weitergeht“, erinnert sich der ehemalige Stasimajor. „Mit uns – das Schicksal der DDR war mir da längst egal.“ Es war der 9. November. In Berlin wurde „Geschichte gemacht“, die Mauer fiel. „Wir wussten das nicht und hofften, dass zumindest jene Mauer halten würde, die uns in der Stasibezirksverwaltung von denen da draußen trennte“, erinnert sich Roth. Der berüchtigte DDR-Geheimdienst, der so stolz darauf war, jeden Widerstandskreis zu zerschlagen, selbst jenen, den es noch gar nicht gab, tappte sprichwörtlich im Dunkeln.

Dass auch Stasimitarbeiter dieses lähmende Gefühl der Angst kennenlernen sollten, das hielt ich, Harald Stutte, ge­boren 1964, für ausgeschlossen. Damals, in einer Phase meines Lebens, in der ich sehr intensiv mit dem Spitzeldienst zu tun hatte, wenn auch unter ganz anderen Vorzeichen als Roth: als Opfer. Jahrzehnte danach sitze ich dem großen, etwas fülligen 73-Jährigen mit der Basecap und der leicht abgedunkelten Brille gegenüber und hoffe, zu erfahren, woran es liegt, dass Lebensläufe mitunter in so diametral unterschiedliche Richtungen verlaufen.

Ich habe lange gesucht, bis ich einen ehemaligen MfS-Offizier gefunden habe, der bereit ist, über seine Vergangenheit als Geheimdienstler zu sprechen. Und so treffen wir uns an einem Wintertag im kargen Büro des Immobilienmaklers in ei­nem Gewerbegebäude seines ostthüringischen Heimatortes Unterwellenborn. Bernd Roth ist freundlich, spricht mit lauter Stimme, strahlt das Selbstvertrauen eines Managers aus und wirkt keineswegs so, wie man sich ehemalige Geheimdienst-Majore einer untergegangenen kommunistischen Diktatur vielleicht vorstellen würde.

The Ministry of State Security, founded on February 8, 1950 after the Soviet blueprint, was not a normal employer for the last 91,000 full -time employees. Anyone who, as on September 1, 1973 Bernd Roth, signed an obligation, made his oath, moved into service weapons and uniform, devoted his life to this institution, which did not provide any room for individuality, from which there was no escape to the end of the day.

Roth's path in “The company”, as the Stasi was called internally, was historically consistent because it comes from a proletarian-communist home. The grandfather was already part of the red resistance during the 1920 Kapp coup. Roth grew up in Unterwellenborn, a municipality, characterized by the “Maxhütte” of the former steel baron Flick, since 1948 of a state -owned operation and after 1949 the only steel mill of the young GDR. “My worldview was simple, black and white: the GDR was home to me. I was grateful that they made it possible for children from simple conditions like me to make and study. ”On the other hand, there were strengths that threatened this supposed idyll, 40 kilometers south of Unterwellenborn behind the zone border, where the Adenauers and Globkes were lurking who wanted to turn the wheel of history back – so the perception of the Roths.

In the EOS, the East German variant of the high school, the once good student Bernd Roth got into trouble. “I did not cope with the pressure to perform, with the classmates from rather bourgeois conditions,” he says. His mother, who had worked for the newly founded MfS for a limited time and helped to monitor domestic German letter traffic, conveyed “help”: a 30-year-old Stasimann took on the 16-year-old problem student, committed him as in “Informal employee”, i.e. the add -on of the secret service. “He took over my upbringing, was like a grief box for me,” said Roth, whose further path was designed. “Above all, for the first time in life, I had the feeling that I heard and respected to have a perspective,” he says.

After Roth had graduated from Abitur with the help of the father's friend and completed a three -year degree as an engineer for scientific device building, he was “Tschekist” in autumn 1973, as the Stasibedierte, alluding to the first Soviet secret service “Tscheka” became.

Was he convinced of his job? “Don't come to me with this nonsense,” he says and waves it off. “I did it because of the money.” As a 21-year-old sub-lieutenant with 800 marks, he was one of the better. “There was only this steel mill here, but I never wanted to work in such a dirty slingshot for a handful of marks,” he says.

How different my own life went: Shortly after graduating from high school, school friends and I tried to leave the GDR had been arrested on the Bulgarian-Turkish border. And so it happened that at the age of 19 in 1984 on daily in the Leipzig detention center of state security I opposite a dark-haired mid-thirties with deep-lying eye sockets, which had civil matters, but had “lieutenant” addressed. Nobody had names here, we imprisoned goods.

It was my first and last direct encounter with the Stasi, a Kafkaesque authority worn by names and faceless servants, unlimited and apparently all control.

What shapes us, becomes a compass of our way of life? For me it was experiences in school and friends as well as a GDR-critical parents' house that had increasingly alienated to my homeland: I was still pressed as a child at school to later commit myself for a longer military service if I wanted to visit an EOS. I excluded this and had to take a detour through vocational training with a simultaneous Abitur.

It was the years of the congestion, the patronage, the constant confrontation with a same system. A friend was killed in trying to leave the GDR over the wall, and another seriously injured. I was unadjusted, my desired course was denied to me, a dreary life after the GDR blueprint threatened, so that I dared to escape this country by fleeing with friends before the impending military service before the impending military service.

It failed in Bulgaria, I was imprisoned for thirteen and a half months, initially in custody of the Ministry of State Security, then did forced labor in the Naumburg prison-which, as I only know, the Swedish good mood group Ikea benefited. Almost 14 months after my detention, I climbed out of a bus in the small town of Gießen-and left everything behind: my GDR citizenship, an ugly red artificial leather pocket in which I have a few senseless Bought objects, my fears of an omnipresent system. I felt free, owned and overwhelmed by the multitude of options offering me.

While I was doing forced labor in Naumburg, Bernd Roth had already risen to the deputy head of a district office in the range of a captain – 20 kilometers south of Naumburg in the Eastern Thuringian city of Eisenberg. A considerable career jump for a 33-year-old. “There was not much going on in this provincial caff, very different from the neighboring district of Jena, a hotspot of the GDR opposition,” he says. The intelligence officer, which was originally specialized in defense against sabotage, espionage and treason in the economy, had to deal with the 20s line, which was also the deputy head of a district service, with the 20s line in the Stasijargon. The XX line was responsible for “state apparatus, church, culture, underground” – and thus also for young people who are critical of regime like me. “But it didn't really exist in Eisenberg,” said Roth.

“If the GDR had not collapsed, I would have retired with 65 in the range of a general, with a high pension and special care,” said Roth today. Does he regret that it turned out differently? “Not a second, I would have found it to throw. I deeply condemn the GDR system and then only thought, in autumn 1989, only: 'Thank God that it is over. . . '”

There were and are not many among the 91,000 former MfS employees who have their own responsibility in public of their own past, such as Roth. “I don't have to, I'm fine,” he says. However, adds that it is a need “because we do not take place in public discourse, excluded as accepted beating boys”-unlike other GDR institutions such as the People would also have received alive.

Roth wants to be part of the discourse as a contemporary witness, would like to explain that even in the Blessed Sacrament of the dictatorship, people who doubted the system at an early stage, his representatives “like the horny -angry, from all feared (Stasichef and Minister Erich) Mielke” despised . “For me, it was already clear to me in 1976 that the GDR was economically finished that the planned economy was over,” says Roth. “We knew best,” he explains. But the “diagnoses” of an increasingly excited GDR company had no effect on the “diagnoses” of an increasingly exhausted GDR company; “It was not wanted that the truth came to light,” Roth is convinced. “I wanted reforms, even a departure from the system of the” central planned economy “, but it happened – nothing!” So Roth continued to serve his service according to the regulations, and followed the military ranking up to a career plan apparently carved in stone, neutralized his grief ” With good food, noble drinks, high -quality clothing, expensive vacation in socialist countries ”. With 32,000 Eastern Mark annual earnings, he was a GDR top earner, status symbols were important to him.

He spent his free time in a singing club, in the west the folk band or songwriter was called, where many oppositional ones were wrong and “there was a completely different way of dealing than in the MfS – that captivated me”. Here he found what he missed so much in the company: openness, good conversations, friendships. “I would never have shit one of my friends, some of whom had also made some deployments of departure,” he emphasizes and admits: “Sure, in retrospect, it may be inconsistent, but that's how it was – the schizophrenia of a dictatorship.”

He found the time of the GDR collapse to be threatening-but he saw the Federal Republic as an opportunity. Roth and his colleagues were released on December 6th – Roth after 16 years of full -time Stasisity.

“As early as February 1990, I found an employer from the old federal states who told me: 'No matter whether they were a red or brown Nazi, I gave everyone a chance.'” She took Roth, remained loyal to his home town of Unterwellenborn, where he was Sold for 25 years. Politics is driving him around. “It is quite possible that one day we wake up in a dictatorship again,” he fears, because today he sees democracy as acute, even through incompetence in politics. “But I would be the first to defend her,” he claims.

It has become evening in the winter Unterwellenborn. We spoke a good four hours, the “Stasi victim” and the “perpetrator”, interrupted by calling customers who wanted to reconcile real estate tours with Bernd Roth. I take the critical self-reflection on the 73-year-old, but believe that he succumbs to some self-deception-if, for example, he praises the diversity of opinion of his MfS comrades or speaks about regime gegers, who were protected by MfS officers like him from the regime.

For me, the Stasi, which he served for 16 years, remains the most monstrous institution that this regime created to oppress people inside and outside of his sphere of influence, responsible for countless destroyed life, destroyed families, destroyed biographies. But this does not rule out that people with noble intentions also served in the Mielke authority, were deceptive and exploited. Life is never black and white. At the end of our entertainment, Bernd Roth gets up, hands my hand, says: “I'm sorry for what happened to you. I would like to apologize without feeling responsible. . . '”

Bernd Roth began to critically processed his history 15 years ago, published the book “Reports of a Stasi perpetrator” in-house. It is therefore avoided by former comrades as a nest threshold. “When I meet one on the street, you usually drop by each other – and go his way,” says Roth. “There is simply nothing left to say.”