In the old DD | NPO Radio 1

Approximately 111 kilometers of files, 1.7 million photos and tens of thousands of video and sound recordings. In 1989, it was the legacy of the Stasi, the secret services of the former East Germany. All information about our own citizens, collected during interrogations, in public spaces and even with hidden microphones in citizens’ homes. Privacy is a fundamental right for us, but that was not the case in the GDR.

The biggest puzzle in the world

After the fall of the Wall, much of this stasi archive was destroyed, the service literally threw everything into the shredder. A small part has been preserved, another part has been reconstructed from the remaining shreds. These extracts are sometimes called “the world’s largest puzzle”.

Historian Karin Bijsterveld researches these archives, which can sometimes be an oppressive experience: “The strange thing is that you also start to feel like a kind of spy. You hear a lot of personal information. Sometimes it feels like yesterday and you’re in the room with them.” His research uncovers heartbreaking cases of people who have been bugged for years, forced to betray their families and tortured – without any privacy.

Vulnerable democracy

These stasi archives not only contain a wealth of information, they also have symbolic value, says Bijsterveld: “It shows how things can happen when privacy hardly exists anymore. When the check is complete. And what happened once can happen again. Democracy is always vulnerable, fundamental rights can fail again.

“In some situations, a lot of information is collected, she continues, and we always have to ask ourselves: why are we collecting it, for whom and for what? Perhaps the legacy of the Stasi is that we ask ourselves these questions.

Painfully topical questions, they are. Because we live here in a free country where privacy is a basic right, but isn’t that right under pressure? We may not be spied on by others, but maybe we are by our smartphones. And we ourselves are also generous enough to share our private lives. Information that you might have preferred to keep to yourself at another time – when applying for a job, for example.

The value of secrets

What does all this data about us do to ourselves? Does it make us a different person? What if you don’t have the right to your own privacy? These questions are at the heart of the next episodes of the Atlas podcast. Next week, Petra Grays will talk to psychologist Andreas Wismeijer about the importance of being able to have a secret – exactly what has been made impossible for people in the GDR. “You can actually say everyone has secrets, it’s the most normal thing in the world,” says Wismeijer. “People who don’t have a secret often have a problem with that.”