Stasi Berlin Normannenstrasse

Stasi prison April 14, 1985

9am.

Berlin.
Buy a map.
Change of plans.

Why not go directly where THEY are?
Why not confront THEM directly?
Normannenstrasse.
Lichtenberg.
Stasi.

East Berlin Stasi Headquarters Normannenstrasse (Stasi Museum).

I arrive around 10am.

The main building doesn’t look too threatening.
It’s quiet here, deserted, Sunday.
I ring on a back door.
Uniformed guy.

“What do you want?”
“I want out, here is my ID card.”
“It’s Sunday, nobody is here, come tomorrow.”

REALLY??!!
No joke.

The toughest secret service in the Eastern hemisphere rejects to take in what they call a “criminal element”, an "enemy of the most peaceful socialist state".

When I ran into repeated trouble earlier this year I approached the guy whom I assumed to be the Stasi connection in our company.

Upon my disgust of their doing, repression and my growing hopelessness he exclaimed cynically: “File an emmigration application. But it will be rejected for 100 years.” 

He smiled.

 

*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.