Former member of the SED establishment

You were born in 1930 as the son of two famous German communists in Berlin. Due to the prominence of your parents, you had a very protected upbringing. You studied mathematics and Marxist economics in Moscow and Berlin, and you know every important person in the East German party hierarchy. You are very intelligent; so far during your academic life you have published over 40 papers. Your membership in the SED and your good connections allowed you to advance rapidly in East German academia. You have been the president of East Berlin's Humboldt University, one of the most prestigious posts in East German academia, for the past 10 years. Influenced by your parents, you have always had a keen interest in literature and the arts. You even published one paper on the relevance of Goethe's Leiden des jungen Werthers to modern communism.

You are convinced that capitalism and even West Germany's more moderate social market economy inevitably lead to exploitation of the masses by an oligarchy of rich capitalists. Your travels to the West have shown you the benefits of the Western form of government, which you mainly perceive to lie in the ability to consume. At the same time, you have seen the unemployment lines in Western Europe and the ghettos and slums of New York and Los Angeles. You find the difference in life-style between the upper class and the working people shocking. All this has supported your view that the socialist approach to life is better and more humane, even though there are admittedly some downsides. (See: Wage and Price Policy in East Germany).

As for your feelings about unification, you think it has proceeded entirely too quickly and in a fashion which is more akin to annexation than unification. You also think that the government and the people in the West are shirking an important responsibility. Specifically, there is a clause in the constitution of the Federal Republic which states: "This Basic Law will become invalid on the day that a unified German parliament meets." Unification, then, should bring about a rewriting of the constitutional basis of the Federal Republic and should reflect some influence of East German ideals. The time for this change is nearly over and no one in power shows any sign of thinking of unification as anything but the annexation of five new states into the existing political order.

Your task, then, is to make sure that the members of your group don't forget even for a second what a rotten deal unification is: for the legacy of a collective lifetime spent building a workers' state, for women, for the environment, for social justice on both sides of the border. Be vociferous and make plenty of allegations of wrong-headedness and croneyism. On the side, though, you figure that as long as unification is going to take place, it might as well be paid for by the rich Westerners. It was their idea, and they can certainly afford it!

Parallel to your reign at the Humboldt University you held the rank of general within the Stasi. You are one of the masterminds of East German counter espionage. Western intelligence data claims that you are responsible for at least three murders of former East Germans in the West; you know that that number is too small. Prior to the fall of the Wall, you started the project of purging all documents that proved that you and a select group of other high-ranking East German SED officials were ever involved in any activities that could be held against you.

*Additional off-site links -

Berlin

• Berlin
• Historical Information on Berlin

Goethe

• The full text of Goethe's Werther in German
  
• A biography of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  

STASI

• Effects of Stasi
• Stasi Personal Account
• The East German Secret Police (Stasi)
• More on the Stasi
• Biography of Erich Mielke, long-time Head of the Stasi
• Access to Stasi Files 1
• Access to Stasi Files 2

*All off-site links will be displayed in new pages