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Directive No. 1/76 on the Development and Revision of Operational Procedures, which outlined the use of Zersetzung in the Ministry for State Security. The Ministry for State Security (German: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, MfS), commonly known as the Stasi, was the main security service of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany or GDR), and defined Zersetzung in its 1985 dictionary ...
Currently (2014) his research is focused on detailed investigation of Informal collaborators (sometimes known as undercover informers) and the Main Intelligence Administration "Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung") of the East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi), as well as on espionage and "Intelligence service Psychology". [1]
The Ministry for State Security (German: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, pronounced [minɪsˈteːʁiʊm fyːɐ̯ ˈʃtaːtsˌzɪçɐhaɪ̯t]; abbreviated MfS), commonly known as the Stasi (pronounced [ˈʃtaːziː] ⓘ, an abbreviation of Staatssicherheit), was the state security service and secret police of East Germany from 1950 to 1990.
The Stasi kept files on about 5.6 million people. [9] The Stasi had 90,000 full-time employees who were assisted by 170,000 full-time unofficial collaborators (Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter); together these made up 1 in 63 (nearly 2%) of the entire East German population. Together with these, a much larger number of occasional informers brought up ...
It had secret police, commonly referred to as the Stasi, which made use of an extensive network of civilian informers. [30] From the 1970's, the main form of political, cultural and religious repression practiced by the Stasi, was a form of 'silent repression' [31] called Zersetzung ("Decomposition").
An unofficial collaborator [1] or IM (German: ⓘ; both from German inoffizieller Mitarbeiter), or euphemistically informal collaborator (informeller Mitarbeiter), was an informant in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) who delivered private information to the Ministry for State Security (MfS / Stasi).
The Stasi under Mielke has been called by historian Edward Peterson the "most pervasive police state apparatus ever to exist on German soil". [6] During the 1950s and 1960s, Mielke led the process of forcibly forming collectivised farms from East Germany's family-owned farms, which sent a flood of refugees to West Germany.
The Stasi floors were set up to hold a maximum of 96 detainees; by 1962 there were 121, and by 1989, the year the Berlin wall was opened, there were over 300 inmates. [2] [6] The first director of the Stasi part of the prison was Lieutenant Willi Stettner, a former inmate of Buchenwald concentration camp. [25]