So it is with symbolism. Especially since what it is about during the 31 years of its existence has only become a symbol: the only institution in history in which 111 kilometers of spy reports of the Ministry of State Security (MfS) have been kept since the fall of the dictatorship of the German Democratic Republic (GDR).
And above all: those documents are available. For the victims of the Stasi – as the MFS has always been a well-known name among the people – but also for research and the media.
For this institution, which was admired all over the world and which was a model for countries with the experience of dictatorship, today, June 17, 2021, an era ends.
The “State Service for Documentation of the Stasi” marked on that history will be integrated into the Federal Archives of Germany. This was the decision of the Bundestag, with partly fierce opposition, especially from human rights activists from the GDR.
Proponents of this decision countered them with a correct and important remark: that the Stasi documents would remain open.
A living monument
Despite that, there is and remains the main difference in whether to preserve the poisonous legacy of the secret police of the GDR in a specially formed state institution or in some subdivision of the Federal Archives.
From a purely formal point of view, these documents are, regardless of their content, primarily just documents. Why then differentiate between those from the Stasi and, in order to stay in the genre, those from the Secret State Police (Gestapo) from the Nazi era?
This is the question to which the only correct answer was given by the establishment of the Stasi Documentation Service: because the people in the GDR brought the communist regime to its knees with their peaceful protests in 1989 and 1990. Because by storming the headquarters of the Stasi in Berlin and in other districts in the GDR, they stopped the already started destruction of the archive.
That act of moral courage, accompanied by the cry “My documents belong to me!”, Was more than symbolic. It was an urgently necessary act of justice for millions of victims of arbitrariness and abuse of power, a kind of living monument was needed.
The date is a symbol
The date of the founding of the Stasi Documentation Service was of great symbolic importance: October 3, 1990, when Germany celebrated its reunification.
Many East Germans wanted a different date: June 17, in memory of the popular uprising in the GDR in 1953. Then, only eight years after the end of World War II, the first attempt to unite the divided country failed.
In West Germany, June 17 was declared a day of remembrance and a national holiday. It was a serious gesture by politicians, but it has, however, been losing more and more of its strength and importance over the years as alienation between East and West has progressed.
For most of them, June 17 was just another day off in the middle of summer, when West German politicians swore in their speeches at German unity, which most of them probably no longer believed in themselves.
When that happened unexpectedly in 1990, thanks to the courage of the people in the GDR, the national holiday was abolished and replaced on October 3. That date, however, represents only a historical administrative act, but it is not a symbol of the German struggle for freedom and self-determination..
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