Word: stasis
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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...Maiziere had twice outlasted rumors of Stasi links since his rise from political obscurity. Not this time. In early December the weekly Der Spiegel claimed that under the old regime he regularly provided information to the infamous Ministry of State Security, popularly known as Stasi. The magazine reproduced a Stasi file card indicating that an informant lived at De Maiziere's Berlin address. His code name: Czerny, the surname of a 19th century Austrian composer...
...Stasi stain, however, will be almost impossible to erase -- for De Maiziere as well as tens of thousands of other former citizens of East Germany. At its height, the ministry was the most powerful arm of the communists and had at its command 85,000 full-time workers, 109,000 paid informants and innumerable unofficial snoops who kept tabs on everything from visiting foreigners to the affairs of their neighbors. It kept files on 4 million of the country's citizens as well as 2 million West Germans. Placed end to end, the Stasi's records would reportedly stretch...
...final days of East Germany, the country's parliament was scandalized by the discovery that 56 of its 400 deputies, including 15 ministers, had Stasi ties. In fact, De Maiziere became leader of the conservative coalition that was elected to rule East Germany only after its most likely prime- ministerial candidate, civil rights lawyer Wolfgang Schnur, resigned in the wake of charges that he was a Stasi informant. Stasi officials remain in control of much of the newly privatized sector of the eastern economy...
...archives, some material still lies in sacks, a reminder of the confusing citizens' takeover of Stasi headquarters in the early days of the East German revolution. Last week rules were issued that permitted access to those charged with collaborating with the Stasi and those seeking rehabilitation from past slanders, among others. So far, several inquiries have been government background checks. Security and intelligence agencies are barred from the files...
Other Germans disagree. "You cannot build a new start on a lie," says Barbel Bohley, a leading civil rights activist from Eastern Germany. She warns of the possibility of a "corruptible parliament with members susceptible to blackmail" for their Stasi past. Says Karl-Dietrich Bracher, a political scientist at the University of Bonn: "If we were to have a general amnesty, there would be a general disgust with politics. Some kind of purification is necessary...