← Back to the front page

This is What Life was Like in Communist East Germany

Tim Flight December 18, 2019 25 min

Berlin Wall - Checkpoint Charlie — A man peers over the newly-built Berlin Wall in August 1961. The Guardian

26. The GDR had the largest secret police network in the world, and its files on citizens cover 111km

Stasi surveillance shot of an old lady posting a letter in East Germany, c.1970s. RFerl

To maintain order, the GDR had the Stasi, the world’s largest secret police network. It’s estimated 1 in 90 East Germans worked as informants, and the Stasi employed 91,000 people at its peak. The Stasi’s headquarters in Berlin encompassed 40 buildings. The SED imposed mass surveillance in the GDR, whittling out dissidents and imprisoning them with little evidence. The Stasi arrested 250,000 East Germans, and also carried out covert operations abroad. Historians are still reading through the Stasi’s files on ordinary people and will be for a long time. Surviving records fill an incredible 111km of shelf space.

Written by

Tim Flight

I am a freelance historical and literary writer based in West Yorkshire, UK. I read for a funded PhD in English at the University of Oxford (Magdalen College) and graduated in 2016. I am a former lecturer in Medieval English Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. My publications include peer-reviewed articles in academic publications, and pieces in mainstream magazines such as History Today and Fortean Times. For more information, please see www.drflight.co.uk