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OK, heavy on information boards and textual information from hereon in for a while.

These were taken in the Stasi Museum, which is located in the former Stasi headquarters in Lichtenberg, Berlin. It exists to educate and inform people on the history of the former East German secret police. There are lots of information and books on the subject already - and you can search for them - so I'll just plough on ahead, OK?

This is outside board for the Stasi Museum on Frankfurter Allee:



One of the first things you spot in the museum (i.e. before you go upstairs) is this former Stasi surveillance unit vehicle.



Information board - "Entstehung und Ideologie"/"Origin and Ideology":

Even before the founding of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the Soviet occupation authority and the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) created a secret police force from which the Ministry for State Security (MfS) emerged in 1950. The GDR state security agency was modelled after the first Soviet secret police, the Cheka. The agents referred to themselves as Chekists - an expression of an elite consciousness and esprit de corps. The struggle against the "enemies of the socialist order" was their "class duty".

To the outside world, the Ministry for State Security presented itself as the guardian of "socialist law" and as an "organ of justice" that provided "security" for citizens. In reality, things were very different. Critical thoughts about the system or deviant behaviour were attributed to enemy influences from the West and declared "political-ideological diversion". This charge legitimised the secret police's right to intervene.



A profile of Robert Havemann:

Robert Havemann was born on March 11, 1910, in Munich. He studied chemistry and obtained his doctorate from the University of Berlin in 1935. He was arrested and sentenced to death in 1943 for his membership in a resistance group opposing the Nazi regime. After the war, the Berlin Magistrate appointed him director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin-Dahlem.

Dismissed from his post by the Americans without notice for political reasons, he immigrated to the GDR in 1950. He became the director of an institute at the Humboldt University in East Berlin, joined the SED and assumed important political functions. He was recruited as a secret informant by the Stasi. Havemann was later placed under observation when he made a public appeal for more freedom of information and expression in the GDR.

In 1964, he was dismissed from all of his university posts and expelled from the SED. This was followed by a publication and employment ban. Nevertheless, he was still able to publish his political and philosophical ideas in the West. Even house arrest and a trial for "hard currency smuggling" organised by the SED could not silence him.

Robert Havemann died on April 9, 1982, in Grünhelde, near Berlin.



Information board: "Auflösung und Ende"/"Dissolution and End":

In the fall of 1989, the Ministry for State Security waited in vain for orders from the state and party leadership to put down the uprising in the GDR. The Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), however, was at a loss, given the revolutions in Poland and Hungary and Gorbachev's reforms. They had no answer to the waves of people escaping via Hungary, the occupation of the West German embassies in Warsaw and Prague by East German refugees or to the mass demonstrations in their own country.

The new SED leadership decided in favor of a non-violent solution. Members of the Stasi were bewildered and demoralised in light of the situation. They offered no resistance to the occupation of district offices and administrations by rebelling citizens on December 4th and 5th, 1989. The Central Round Table called for the dissolution of the Ministry for State Security on December 7, 1989, and, after some hesitation, the Modrow government passed a corresponding resolution on January 13, 1990. The staff members were all dismissed or transferred to other state institutions by March 31, 1990. This marks the end of the Ministry for State Security.



Some photos from the dissolution of the GDR and the SED:



A profile of Dörte Neubauer:

Dörte Neubauer was born on March 4, 1968, in Rostock. She began her studies at the Medical University of Rostock in 1984. Unhappy with conditions in the GDR, she began writing her solutions and ideas on the walls of buildings in the bowntown area of Rostock with two boys from her church group. Dörte Neubauer was arrested for this by the Stasi in February 1986.

Upon being sentenced to two years probation, she was expelled from the university and became unemployed for some time; she finally found work in a laundry. At the same time, she applied for an exit visa to West Germany, which was denied. An attempt to escape in September of 1989 ended in her arrest. Her departure was approved after her release from jail in October. Dörte Neubauer immigrated to the Federal Republic of Germany on November 14, 1989, where she began her training as a nurse. After living and working in Munster for many years, she now calls Ribnitz-Damgarten home.



Information board: "Epilog"/"Epilogue":

During the winter of 1989/1990, the citizens of the GDR bravely and decisively demanded the dismantling of the East German secret police and access to the files of the Ministry for State Security. In the summer of 1990, the first freely elected Volkskammer (parliament) of the GDR passed a law which permitted the controlled opening of Stasi files. After massive protests by civil rights activists, this policy was also included in the German-German Unification Treaty.

On November 14, 1991, the Stasi Records Act was passed by a large majority in the German Bundestag. This led to the creation of the world's first constitutional agnecy with the power to open up the files of a secret police force for personal, legal and historical review.

The German Bundestag appointed Joachim Gauck the first Federal Plenipotentiary for the Stasi Files, and in 2000, he was succeeded by Marianne Birthler. Roland Jahn was elected Federal Commissioner in 2011.



Profile of Georg Dertinger:

Georg Dertinger was born on December 25, 1902, in Berlin. After completing his secondary education, he began studying law and economics, but then stopped in 1924.

He began working as a volunteer for the Magdeburgischen Zeitung (Magdeburg Newspaper) and became the political editor at the Nazi foreign news service "Dienst aus Deutschland". Dertinger joined the newly-founded political party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), in Berlin in 1945 and became director of its press department. He was general secretary of the CDU in the Soviet zone of occupation from 1946 to 1949 and became foreign minister in the first GDR government in October 1949.

Dertinger was arrested by the Stasi in January 1953 and accused of spying for western spy agencies. The supreme court of the GDR sentenced him to 15 years imprisonment. He was pardoned in 1964 after eleven years and five months in prison. He then worked for the Catholic publishing house St. Benno-Verlag in Leipzig. The Stasi continued to observe him, as it feared he would flee to the west.

Georg Dertinger died on January 21, 1968, in Leipzig.

Edit

I used to take a lot of photos looking into empty storefronts... pushing my camera right onto the window.

Dear tall-p, Your picture has a wonderful, rather wistful effect.....
Sylkat

I do like it

The Ministry for State Security constituted a central pillar for political prosecution justice in the GDR. It countered opponents of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and persons who stood in the way of those in power. As an official "investigative agency" which had all the authority of a criminal prosecutor agency, it could arrest, interrogate and seize property. It had its own prison facilities in which prisoners were held in extreme osolation. They generally obtained legal counsel only after the conclusion of the preliminary proceedings, which made effective defence impossible. In important proceedings, the sentence was often determined before the trial, at the political or secretpolice level. Justice, ultimately, was simply legal theatre.



Information board showing Stasi intelligence examples:



Profile of Jürgen Fuchs:

Jürgen Fuchs was born on December 19, 1950, in Reichenbach (Vogtland). He completed his military service after finishing his secondary education and vocational training with the Deutsche Reichsbahn. He began studying social psychology in 1971 in Jena. He subsequently became a member of the SED in 1973. He published poetry and prose and took and increasingly critical stance against the militarisation of the GDR.

In 1975, he was kicked out of the SED. This was followed by expulsion from the university and a publication ban. He then became a transportation and care worker for a church organisation in Berlin. After he protested the denaturalisation of Wolf Biermann in 1976, he spent nine months in a Stasi prison.

Jürgen Fuchs was denaturalised in August of 1977 and deported to West Berlin. He strongly supported the opposition in the GDR from West Berlin. He continued to be followed and "handled" by the Stasi while in the West. In 1990, he participated in the dissolution of the Stasi and temporarily worked for the Office of the Federal Commissioner Responsible for the Preservation of the Records of the Ministry for State Security of the GDR.

Jürgen Fuchs died on May 9, 1999, in Berlin.



Allies in the East:

The Ministry for State Security (MfS) was built up under the strict control of the Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB) and its predecessors. In the early years, Soviet "adviers" guided the MfS agents in their daily work. Their number was later reduced to 37 liaison officers, who worked in district administrations and headquarters.

The influence of the KGB extended even further. Close collaboration was contractually agreed to. Meetings took place at regular intervals, knowledge was exchanged and joint "operations" were planned. A joint database (SOUD) was created in the 1970s, with its headquarters in Moscow. There was a KGB station in Berlin-Karlshorst with several hundred agents who controlled spies in both the GDR and West Germany.

The Stasi also worked closely with the "fraternal agencies" of the other Warsaw Pact countries, especially in monitoring GDR citizens in "foreign socialist nations" and in combating escape attempts.



Enemies in the West:

The most important division of the MfS for foreign intelligence was the Main Administration for Intelligence (HV A). It was led until 1986 by General Markus Wolf and thereafter by General Werner Grossman.

The main focus of the HV A's operations was the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). The HV A was able to place its spies in public institutions, parties, and governmental positions in the FRG. They also acquired models, patents, and other information from enterprises and companies in the FRG. A well-known, but not the most important source was the "chancellery spy" Günter Guillaume.

The HV A was permitted to dissolve itself after the revolution in the fall of 1989; this led to the destruction of the largest part of its files. Around 12,000 files survived: The "Rosenholz" personnel files, information sent to the party leadership, and computer files with an overview of incoming information ("SIRA). The HV A had at the end more than 4,600 full-time staff members, around 13,400 unofficial collaborators (IMs) in the GDR and around 1500 in the Federal Republic of Germany.



Informers:

The "main weapon" of the Ministry for State Security (MfS) in the "struggle against the enemy" was the inoffizielle Mitarbeiter (unofficial collaborators), or IM. Their primary activity was monitoring their fellow citizens. As an informant for the MfS, the IM reported on all aspects of society; he provided for example information about colleagues, friends and fellow students. In 1989, the MfS had approximately 189,000 IMs. This included more than 3,000 West German citizens, spying for the MfS in the West.

The IMs expressed their willingness to collaborate with the MfS through sworn statements, either written or oral. There were many different motivations to work as an IM. These included everything from political conviction to a sense of duty or importance to a fear of repression. Many also hoped for professional or material benefits.



Agents:

The full-time agents of the Ministry for State Security (MfS) were the most reliable pillars of SED domination. The first minister for state security, Wilhelm Zaisser, thus referred to them as "comrades of the first order".

Aside from a few civilians, the full-time staff held military ranks. At the end, 61 generals stood at the top of the ministry. Women were primarily represented in subordinate positions and made up 16 percent of the staff in the 1980s.

The staff of the MfS were chosen using the strictest of criteria and were subject to stringent regulations. Even small instances of personal or professional misconduct could bring on comprehensive disciplinary investigations. Early retirement, so-called "release from duty", was rare due to secrecy requirements. Upon discharge, staff members were sworn to absolute secrecy and given a fictitious professional resumé ("cover").

Dear Tequila,
These people were Horrible.

Sylkat

Less vivid but more peaceful than those of Tequila's
and also surprising for what can be found there, the cemeteries.

Nice! Did you get a shot of Venus as a crescent, jetbuilder?

Here's my only shot of Venus.

That's great! I would love to acquire a telescope some day.

Dang the distance - I'm looking for a good home for my barely-used Meade LX200 10"...

Here's a pic of my best images so far with my new telescope.
[img][800:685]http://i275.photobucket.com/albums/jj314/jetbuilder/astrophotography/group.jpg[/img]