Over the following months, Funder spent hours in the company of spies, informers and ordinary people who were caught in the Stasi's net, simply because they applied to leave the GDR or went to the wrong bar.She shares Janet Malcolm's ability to get to the heart of her subject, and - better - she leaves room for them to tell their own stories.
Her producer, angry at her repeated suggestions that they should do more about the 'Ossis', complains that his compatriots are 'just a bunch of downtrodden whingers, with a couple of mild-mannered civil-rights activists among them, and only a couple at that'.ĭespite his insistence that she won't find 'the great story of human courage' she's after, Funder places an ad in the personal columns of the Potsdam paper: 'Seeking: former Stasi officers and unofficial collaborators for interview.' By 7.35 the next morning (Germans are early risers), her phone is ringing.
Working for a TV company in Berlin, she realises how uneasy Germany still is about its recent past and how far the Wall still casts its shadow. Instead, Funder does what few academics could get away with: she describes the innumerable lives that were claimed by the Stasi as though they belonged to real people, not numbers.
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