The Price of Truth

When the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, I was chief editor for domestic politics on the Tageszeitung (Taz), a left-liberal daily produced in (West) Berlin with circulation throughout the Federal Republic. The editorial offices of the paper are almost directly opposite the former Check-Point Charly, the famous border post between East and West Berlin, the one reserved for the Allies and for all non-residents of West Berlin. On that fateful night, Gunter Schabowski, a member of the East German politburo, announced - more or less unintentionally - the opening of the border, and practically the whole editorial staff gathered at the border post. Like everybody else, we could hardly believe it - it was simply unimaginable that we could now cross the border without official documents, without being frisked and searched. We ventured about a 100 metres onto the other side before turning back, for fear that the situation might suddenly change again, and we might be trapped. Everybody was happy and excited - people danced in the streets, laughing and hugging one another.

We, the editors and publishers of the Tageszeitung, then proceeded to launch, as quickly as possible, a locally produced East Berlin edition of our paper, distributed only in the GDR. After monetary union had been achieved and the GDR had joined the Federal Republic, the East German edition of the Tageszeitung was integrated with the West edition, and colleagues who had produced the East edition joined our staff. Some of my experiences in dealing with deep-seated differences on the role of the media, particularly in relation to national reconciliation, date back to that time.

In 1996 I was appointed acting chief editor of the Wochenpost, a position I held for a year. The Wochenpost was one of only three German weeklies distributed nationwide, its distinction being that it was an East German paper. I learnt a lot during my year with the Wochenpost, because I was suddenly forced to see the unification of the two German states from an East German point of view. I was forced to engage with the feelings of East Germans, whose initial euphoria over unification had long since evaporated.

The German debate

As far as engaging with the past and achieving reconciliation is concerned, the situation in Germany can hardly be compared to the one in South Africa. The essential difference is that in Germany, the public debate over the injustices of 40 years of dictatorship does not primarily take place in the society where these acts were committed, namely in East Germany; the debate is largely conducted by West Germans, generally only indirectly affected. The GDR no longer exists; it has been absorbed into the Federal Republic, so that many East Germans today feel that their former state has been 'swallowed' or colonised by the West. West German rules and regulations apply, West German judges rule on the injustices of the GDR and its organs of state, West German politicians lay down the law in the East German Lunder (federal states), and in general, West German editors determine what the German public gets to read, in the East as well as in the West.

Broadly speaking, there are at present three groups of people in Germany who discuss the problems of dealing with the past, of finding the truth and of achieving reconciliation. Firstly, there are the West Germans; secondly, there are those East Germans who actively participated in the peaceful revolution, who were persecuted as dissidents and opponents of the former GDR, who organised the civil rights movement against the communist regime, and who now demand that their former persecutors be punished; and thirdly, there is the overwhelming majority of East Germans. This majority feels that they are being put on the spot by the West Germans, that they are being condemned en masse as supporters of a dictatorship, and that the West has deprived them of their identity. Consequently, many of them now once again consciously distance and differentiate themselves, as East Germans, from the West.

Different perceptions of the media

Against this background, the attempt to establish the truth, and to throw some light upon the machinations of certain individuals during the GDR dictatorship, can easily turn into an unintended assault on the process of reconciliation. Even now, seven years after unification, different perceptions of the responsibility of the media still persist. As in other countries of the Soviet bloc, the task of the East German media was to inform the masses of the party line. East German journalists had little room for independent research, and never exposed any scandalous activities on the part of leading politicians. Differences among the party leadership could only be guessed at by carefully studying the official press. For instance, if a politician's placement in a photograph did not correspond to his position in the party hierarchy, this could indicate some sort of internal conflict or friction.

Even today, very few East Germans share the Western concept of the media as an organ of civil society, or as the 'fourth estate', i.e. the fourth pillar of democratic power, complementary to the legislative, executive and judicial organs of state. Most East Germans still regard investigative journalism as improper, especially when individual politicians are being exposed.

In addition to this cultural difference, East Germans in general laboured under the perception of being second-class citizens of the united Germany. In 1989-1990, West German journalists never realised what an emotional minefield they were entering in East Germany. They were proud of anything they were able to expose, such as the secret involvement of high-ranking East German church leaders or pro-democracy politicians with state security organs, and they could simply not understand why East Germans did not want to hear about these things. On the other hand, East Germans resented the fact that West Germans were poking their noses into East German affairs. This resentment grew as more and more skeletons came tumbling out of the cupboard, making many East Germans feel collectively exposed as a nation of police informers and traitors.

Nuremburg and de-Nazification

There is another important factor that distinguishes the German scenario not only from South Africa, but also from the other Eastern European states. The debate around injustices in the GDR can only be fully understood against the backdrop of the failures and inadequacies of coming to terms with the crimes of Nazi Germany. After the Second World War, the victorious powers conducted the Nuremburg Tribunal against Nazi war criminals. In addition, the Allies established so-called 'de-Nazification commissions', which summoned Germans to give evidence about their conduct under Nazi rule, to declare whether they had ever been members of the Nazi party, and so forth. Most Germans regarded these trials and tribunals as 'victors' justice', and many experienced the end of the war not as a liberation from Fascism, but rather as a humiliating defeat. Consequently, the crimes of Naziism were mainly swept under the carpet.

In the GDR, this was done by means of a simple but effective rhetorical mechanism. Describing itself as a socialist state on the road to Communism, the GDR was by its own definition anti-fascist, and denied all liability for Nazi crimes. From the GDR point of view, the historical heirs and successors to Naziism were the capitalists in the West, i.e. in the Federal Republic. In the West, on the other hand, the real process of coming to terms with German Fascism started only in the sixties, when the student movement successfully pushed the demand for a public debate on the continued presence of fascist elements in the Federal Republic, both on the level of mentality or ideology, and in the identity of certain office-bearers.

In 1968, the generation of the student revolt was shocked and dismayed to discover how many Nazi crimes had been undisclosed, and how many Nazi criminals had built up successful careers in the Federal Republic. It was the same West German generation which, in 1990, wanted to ensure that the collapse of dictatorship in the GDR would not once again end up in a huge cover-up.

The Stasi

Together with civil rights activists and dissidents in the former GDR, these politically committed West Germans successfully demanded public access to the files of the East German secret service - an achievement not matched in any of the other formerly communist states. Joachim Gauck, a former minister of religion and civil rights activist from the East German town of Rostock, was appointed as head of an enormous department, which has the sole task of ploughing through the files of the East German secret police and making them accessible to the public. The so-called 'Gauck department' has

3000 employees - twice as many as the Federal department of internal affairs. Every East or West German citizen who attracted the attentions of the East German secret service can obtain access to his or her file from the Gauck department.

The East German bureau for 'state security', or Staatssicherheit (Stasi for short), was a state within the state, an organisation aiming for total surveillance of the population. It did so with the aid of its informers, the 'informal collaborators', or Informelle Mitarbeiter (IM), who were literally everywhere. Stasi computers stored information on more than a quarter of all GDR citizens, in addition to files on more than two million West German citizens.

It is hardly surprising that after unification, the press was eager to gain access to this wealth of information. It did so by both legal and illegal means. When the GDR collapsed in the autumn of 1989, several Stasi archives were stormed by angry groups of citizens, and a wealth of information was offered for sale in what could be called a grey zone of the information market, quite independent of the Gauck department.

On the basis of this unofficially obtained material, the West German press made startling revelations in the course of two stormy years after the collapse of the GDR in November 1989. For instance, it transpired that almost all leading figures in the newly established pro-democracy parties in the GDR had either been former Stasi informers, or had even been planted in those organisations by the Stasi. Consequently, since there were hardly any uncompromised East German politicians to be found, the most influential political posts in the East were filled with West German appointments, and the East Germans found themselves marginalised. What West German journalists regarded as clever investigative journalism, aimed at establishing the truth, often appeared to East Germans as an attempt to discredit their leaders, so that their positions could be taken over by West German appointees.

Divided reactions

Discussions between East and West Germans around guilt or culpability in connection with Stasi involvement are extremely difficult. This became abundantly clear to me as early as 1990, when I was working on the editorial board of the Tageszeitung. The editorial staff of the paper's East German edition had just been integrated with the West German board, when a computer disc listing all the undercover apartments rented by the Stasi came into our possession. We were extremely enthusiastic, the list was something of a scoop: if the Stasi had needed so many safe meeting places, this clearly proved how close-knit its network of undercover agents must have been, and how many collaborators it must have had.

Our East German colleagues did not share this enthusiasm at all - in fact, they wanted not to publish the list. We, the West German editorial staff, were totally bewildered - we simply could not understand how anyone could wish to suppress such a vital document. If we had obtained a similar list of undercover apartments used by the West German secret service, we would have published it without a moment's hesitation. But our East German colleagues objected to publication, both on principle and on practical grounds. On principle, they felt that publication would only serve to open old wounds, and would not be constructive. The practical objection was that the apartments might be occupied by new tenants, who would now be wrongly suspected of Stasi connections which they never had.

To counter this second objection, we sent off reporters on random investigations of listed apartments, most of which turned out to be empty. This did not change the minds of our East German colleagues, who were eventually outvoted, which meant that we went ahead and published the list. Subsequently, all fears relating to publication proved groundless: not a single person was victimised as a result of our action. Nevertheless, the whole debate, and our final decision in favour of publication, left the editorial staff deeply divided. Most East German colleagues subsequently left the paper, feeling that their views and sentiments were being disregarded.

In most cases, 'informal collaborators' denied their involvement as long as possible. When confronted with irrefutable evidence, they claimed that they had been forced to cooperate, and that they had only passed on information which could not harm anybody. The truth is that the particular dynamics of German unification have led to a situation where past collaboration with the Stasi has become more and more acceptable in East Germany, in the former GDR. Because so many people were, in one way or another, connected with the secret service, there is a growing resentment against accusing fingers being pointed from the comfort of the West.

In this way, investigative journalism from the West tends to become an obstacle, rather than an encouragement, to self- critical analysis of the recent past in the East. On the other hand, if the West German media had refrained from exposing the underbelly of East Germany's dictatorship, these injustices would most probably have been swept under the carpet, just as the Nazi crimes were swept under the carpet in West Germany 40 years ago.

The judiciary has the same problem as the media. In Germany, more court cases were conducted against the perpetrators of grave injustices during the GDR's 40-year history than in any of the other former communist dictatorships in Eastern Europe. At the end of August, judgment was handed down in the case against the former members of the politburo, the most powerful men in the former GDR. They had been charged with being politically responsible for the killing of GDR citizens attempting to flee to the West. The last secretary-general of the GDR, Honecker's successor Egon Krenz, actually succeeded in creating the impression that the verdict against him was symbolic of the condemnation of the whole GDR by the West. In his closing statement, Krenz claimed that not his personal offences had been on trial, but socialism.

In an address to his followers immediately before the passing of sentence, Krenz admitted that he and other GDR leaders had, of course, made mistakes, for without such errors, the GDR would never have broken down. However, Krenz said, he felt in no way accountable to a West German prosecutor for past mistakes.

National reconciliation?

To summarise, then: after the GDR broke down in 1990, Stasi files were made public, West German newspapers reported widely on abuses and injustices under the dictatorship, former functionaries of the regime were charged in court and all public servants guilty of collaboration with the Stasi were dismissed. Today, seven years later, it is difficult to decide whether these actions did, in fact, create the conditions for social and national reconciliation. Over the past few years, most East Germans have been preoccupied with getting their everyday lives back on track under the totally different conditions of capitalism. Few have been either willing or able to confront and work through their own recent past. It is probable that this process can take place only once relations between East and West Germans have normalised. n

Jurgen Gottschlich is political columnist for the Tageszeitung. This article is adapted from a paper Gottschlich delivered at recent Media Peace Centre workshops in Cape Town, Grahamstown and Durban on the media and the TRC.

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