Letter to Susan G. Cole -a chilling film critic

In 2017 you wrote a film-critic about the documentary “Karl-Marx-City” for the Toronto “Now” magazine

I was born and grew up in the GDR and by the end I hated it for many reasons. I have no sympathy for any surveillance politics or authoritarian states.

But it did bother me endlessly that you, probably without ever thinking about, threw around utterly ridiculous numbers on how many people informed in my country.

You write that Karl-Marx-Stadt had about 92000 security officers and about 200000 informers.

Whole Karl-Marx-Stadt had about 300000 people living there…

The commission to investigates the crimes of the Stasi estimates that between every 70.-90.  person worked for the Stasi. 

The idea that every 5th person was working somehow for the Stasi came out of nowhere after the wall came down and did a lot of damage to our personal relations. 

There are many lessons to learn from my fucked up country and from the “socialist experiment”. Not to lie constantly to your people was one of them.

Journalist in the western world should at least be bothered to do some research as well.

For more information feel free to contact me.

One of the best movies about East Germany came last year into the Theater. The name is “ Gundermann”.