A joke of a man

Stasi prison April 14, 1985

6pm.

A room makes a statement.

I’m led in, asked to sit down.
Simple furniture.
Table. Desk. Typewriter.
The Big Cheese on the wall.

Original Stasi interrogation room as documented by the civil activists when storming the Stasi headquarters during the peaceful revolution end of 1989.

I’m waiting, alone for 10 minutes.
In comes a joke of a man.
Young. Late 20s.
"Mr. Schubert."

I was interrogated before.
When I got arrested with my friends at church punk festivals in Jena.
After I unsuccessfully tried to leave the country via the Czech border in 1980.
Being driven out of houses we occupied in some quarters to celebrate the Sex Pistols, Exploited and the Dead Kennedy’s.
During the interrogations at the same police post all of us screamed “Who killed Bambi” to object the questioning and to entertain each other across different rooms.

We were young.
Anti-establishment.
We didn’t agree with the regime.
But we had dreams and hopes and music.

This dude though, who sits across the table behind that ugly desk had neither.
I bet my life on it.

*Testimony -> Start. This blog entry is part of a linear narrated testimony of the contemporary witness Jens Thieme who was imprisoned 1985-1986 as a political prisoner in various GDR prisons by the GDR Ministry of State Security. Stasi prison, Stasi jail, Stasi detention.