Introduction

Summary

Abstract

After German reunification, former members of the GDR elite (and in particular of its Staatssicherheitsdienst secret service, the Stasi) organized in various self-help organizations that united under the Ostdeutsches Kuratorium von Verbänden (OKV) umbrella. A major function of OKV is the defense of the GDR's historical legitimacy, against the prevailing opinion that the GDR was a state of injustice. This continuation of GDR discourses since the 1990s follows the GDR's political epistemology (to borrow from Andreas Glaeser), understood as specific knowledge-making practices governed by an inflexible political conviction. Today these epistemics lead to the continuing self-isolation of the OKV organizations, preventing them from linking up with other social groups that might otherwise support their goals. At the same time the GDR epistemics allow the OKV to defy any contention.

Keywords: GDR, postsocialist transformation, Ostdeutsches Kuratorium von Verbänden, memory, political epistemology

Getting access

On a bright June day in 2012, I headed to the Neues Deutschland building in East Berlin. My aim was to have a conversation with former Stasi members and sympathizers about their personal biographies and the way in which they understand the GDR and unified Germany. I was interested in the historiography of post-socialism, and wanted to learn more about the way in which the “losers” of the Wende reflected on their lives in the GDR, a state they had believed in, after its demise. During my initial quest for information, I soon found out that a group of former GDR cadres had united in a number of organizations, under the umbrella of the East German Board of Associations (Ostdeutsches Kuratorium von Verbänden, OKV). Quite unspectacularly, I had found their contact information on the internet, where they host regularly updated websites. Two of the organizations had immediately responded to my request for a meeting, and so it was that I trailed to Berlin to see their representatives.

In the course of the encounter, it turned out that my curiosity was met by theirs. A first meeting with two representatives of the OKV's general board (a former professor and a former Stasi officer) quickly turned into an interview apparently designed to assess my motives – most importantly, if I was not intending to publish a scandalous article in the popular press.