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Consolidation of the New State
The most important instrument employed by East German authorities to
guarantee their absolute rule was the State Security Service (Staatssicherheitsdienst,
commonly referred to as the Stasi). Founded in early 1950 as the secret
service branch of the Ministry for State Security (Ministerium fuer Staatssicherheit--MfS),
the Stasi came to exercise almost complete control over the population
of the GDR. During the first five years of its existence, Stasi personnel
were trained by Soviet instructors. In addition to its surveillance of
the East German population--which was carried out with sinister thoroughness
up until the final days of the GDR--the Stasi conducted extensive espionage
activities in the West, particularly in the FRG.
Aside from its approximately 100,000 full-time employees, the Stasi
could also rely on the assistance of nearly 2 million civilian spies,
or so-called informal employees (Informelle Mitarbeiter --IM),
who reported regularly from domestic listening posts or from abroad. Experts
agree that before its dissolution in 1990, the Stasi had developed the
most perfect spying system ever devised to watch over its own citizens.
It had truly realized the idea of the "glass-citizen," whose every activity
was known to and controlled by the state. In Stasi headquarters in East
Berlin, detailed information on individual citizens was collected in huge
archives, which survived, largely intact, the downfall of the East German
state.
An equally important role in building a permanent power base for the
SED was played by mass organizations. One of the most important was the
Free German Youth (Freie Deutsche Jugend--FDJ), founded in March 1946,
in which young people between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five were
to be indoctrinated as members of a new socialist society. Together with
its suborganization for youngsters from six to fourteen years of age,
the Young Pioneers--later called the Pioneer Organization "Ernst Thälmann,"
in memory of the chief of the KPD during the Weimar Republic, who was
killed in a concentration camp--the FDJ soon became an effective instrument
for influencing the coming generations. An important part of its influence
was that membership in the FDJ soon determined access to institutions
of higher learning, recreation and sports facilities, and ultimately career
opportunities.
Another important mass organization was the Free German Trade Union
Federation (Freier Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund--FDGB), which attempted
to motivate the workforce to achieve production goals and also provided
members with opportunities for inexpensive vacations at FDGB-owned seashore
resorts. Similarly, the interests of women were served by the Democratic
Women's Federation of Germany.
By the end of 1947, all facets of society were organized in associations
and groupings under the control of the SED. The GDR authorities also sought
to deprive potential enemies within the state of the traditions and institutions
upon which the state and society had been founded. A primary target for
complete transformation was the court system. Judges and attorneys soon
came to be used as mere instruments to carry out Marxist-Leninist goals.
The legality of actions was determined by the political leadership.
The SED also declared the traditional administrative division of East
Germany into five Länder an obstacle to "efficient" governance. The
five Länder, all grown out of long historical traditions, were abolished
and fourteen administrative districts established. This measure gave the
central government in East Berlin much greater control over the activities
in these districts, which were now much smaller, and, equally important,
allowed it to break with another aspect of Germany's despised bourgeois
history.
- The Ulbricht Era, 1949-1971
- Consolidation of the
New State
- Planned Economy
- The Warsaw
Pact and the National People's Army
- The Berlin Wall
- The "Socialist
State of the German Nation"
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