The File: A Personal History

I am studying Recordkeeping Concepts and Practices at the moment and this was recommended reading. It is a slim volume - 227 pages all up. Not onerous and fascinating for anyone who is interested in modern history, spying, archives and Germany - East and West - not to mention diaries and reconstructing one's own personal history and the challenges of reporting/writing.

Such powerful lines....here are some examples....

"What we call 'my life' is but a constantly rewritten version of our own past. 'My life' is the mental autobiography with which and by which we all live. What really happened is quite another matter. " (p.20)

and

"..a file opens the door to a vast sunken labyrinth of the forgotten past...the very act of opening the door itself changes the buried artefacts....for these are not simply past experiences rediscovered in their original state. Even without the fresh light from a new document or another's recollection - the opened door - our memories decay or sharpen, mellow or sour, with the passage of time and the change of circumstances....A door opens, but another closes. There is no way back now to your own earlier memory of that person, that event....so what we have is nothing less than an infinty of memories of any moment, event or person." (p.96)

and

"The domestic spies in a free country live this professional paradox: they infringe our liberties in order to protect them. But we have another paradox: we support the system by questioning it." (p. 220) ( )

After the fall of the Berlin wall, Garton-Ash, a journalist/writer, learned that the Stassi had kept a file on him while he was a student in Berlin in the early 1980's. He decided to review his file. He compares it against his diary to see how accurate the Stassi's information was. He also contacts, or tries to contact, those who informed against him and the Stassi agent(s) who managed his file.

This could have been a very engrossing book, but it does not live up to its promise. Much of it is a retelling of Garton-Ash's life in the 80's, which to tell the truth was not all that interesting. In addition, since the Stassi did not have the power of life and death over Garton-Ash, (or indeed any power over him, other than the ability to bar his entry to East Berlin), I could not really sympathize with his consternation over the fact the Stassi spied on him. His life was entirely unaffected by being spied on by the Stassi. In addition, his interviews with the informers and Stassi case managers were not enlightening--unlike in The Whisperers in which the interviews with Stalin's informers were poignant, touching and informative.

2 stars ( )

In the 1980’s Mr. Garton Ash lived in both East and West Berlin to do research about pre-war Germany. As such he was an object of interest of the Stasi. After the evaporation of the German Democratic Republic, Mr. Garton Ash was one of the many people who requested to see their Stasi file.

In this book Mr. Garton Ash compares the data he finds in the file with his own diary. He mixes this with a description of Central Europe in that decade, with pressure from Western peace movements and Polish and other dissident movements like Solidarnosc. Plus he looks up some of the former Stasi workers and informers found in his file.

I found that the book was averagely interesting read. The “chilling portrait of treachery and compromise” promised on the cover had a limited impact, as Mr. Garton Ash was a foreign subject and could only be evicted from the country. It does vividly portray however the undistinguished character (or the banality) of the people involved, and how the “uninteresting” elements of a conversation were just what the Stasi was after. ( )

I was enthralled by the Academy Award winning German film The Lives of Others and discovered this slim book about the Stasi and their aftermath by Timothy Garton Ash. Ash was a British student in East Germany and after the fall of communism and the making public of the Stasi records he returns to Germany to read his own file and interview those individuals who informed on him. It is a striking exploration of a police state and how individuals justify their behavior after the fact. My only disappointment is that it is still the book of an outsider, Ash was free to leave East Germans were not. I would love to see a book from the German perspective. That said, it is well-worth reading and a good investigation of an episode in German history that is often neglected. It is also worth finding Timothy Garton Ash's essay on Salon.com about the Lives of Others. ( )