(continued)
The Political Running-board/Footboard Holder [?]: Registered Unofficial Collaborator and STASI Suspicions
With the exception of Helmut Kohl, to whom it apparently made no difference where someone came from, and likewise with the exception of the unspeakable Günther Krause, Angela Merkel’s rise, at the time of reunification, began with the support of people who had uniformly been collaborators with the STASI or who remain under suspicion of having done so. This includes Wolfgang Schnur, who while a STASI [agent] exposed the chairman of Demokratischen Aufbruch (Democratic Awakening– https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Awakening), Lothar Maiziere, who is suspected to be the informal collaborator “Czerny”, and Manfred Stolpe, assumed “secretary” of unofficial collaborators, who was in continual contact with Klaus Gysi, Minister of Culture and State Secretary for Church Questions in the DDR, and also the father of Gregor Gysi.
Ironically, Klaus Schnur had to get her on as the speaker of the board of the DA, and of all things Schnur and Lothar de Maiziere, the father of Horst Kasner’s buddy Clemence de Maiziere and Gunther Krause found occasion to warm Helmut Kohl up to Angela Merkel. The rest of the story is already known. It is interesting that Merkel got into the government as chancellor with the help of Thomas de Maziere, the grandson of her father’s buddy Clemence de Maiziere and the son of her own patron Lothar de Maiziere. Give and take over generations!
The Special Case/Outlier: Merkel’s Spying on the Dissident Robert Havemann
Since 1976, the home of the most important internal critic of the DDR, Robert Havemann, was under observation by the STASI with massive assistance from hundreds of Free German Youth activists. Angela Merkel was also there one day in 1980, completely publicly, at that time already married to Merkel and a leading Free German Youth cadet. For she can be seen in a photo closing in the tightly guarded house of Havemann. This house is located in a quarter of Berlin with which Merkel never had any business. Through her acquaintance with Havemann’s son, who lived outside the home, she would have known Havemann’s associates and not gone there without a special reason. She has the power to dispel the urgent suspicion [this raises]. But she does not deal with her past. Instead, she has led the faithful “Birthler agency” to pixelate the photo everyone recognized. (See schweizmagazin.ch/news/ - from May 9, 2008; spiegel.de/spiegel/ und de.indymedia.org)
It is interesting that Gregor Gysi, who represented Havemann against the authorities of the DDR—and naturally also against the STASI—has been presented by Merkel’s CDU and her “Birthler Agency” as a STASI informer. His talks with the STASI served to pursue the interests of his clients, and he had success, in that he brought about leniency [for them.]
The Resume
We have a chancellor who, with her entire personal environment and her strange ascent to become chancellor, was surrounded and supported by people firmly anchored in the DDR system, the most important being the State Security Service. It was not until the fall of the Wall that she made herself the opponent of the DDR dictatorship. Until then, she was a loyal servant of the system in which she wanted to continue to rise. And such a woman plays the judge of such weak natured people as Filbinger, who without murmuring let himself be used by the Nazi regime, while always secretly intriguing against it? One can say this much—she is not weak-natured. For whatever she declares as her credo, she also pursues with strong words—until the winds change, at any rate.
Would you want such a woman for your son, that you know has spent her whole life learning and doing the opposite of what she is doing now? It’s not a question of whether one can change their views. But whether or not one has really succeeded [in changing one’s views], and whether or not the track that person has run in before will not later bring him back to his accustomed ways again is an open question.
With Mrs. Merkel there are many reasons to assume that for her, the DDR has not been dead very long. The best example is her speech during the last election campaign, in which she remarked that one must not discuss whether all public places should really be monitored with cameras. She opined that such a thing one sho-uld “simply do.” Just so the STASI also never asked before it did something. If/when we have a chancellor with the unreconstructed mentality of a STASI supporter, nobody can be surprised if government surveillance soon looks no different than it did in the DDR.