Knowledge of the Stasi in the East German Literary Sphere: Surveillance, Secrecy, and Revelation

*Knowledge of the Stasi* offers an innovative approach to studying the production and circulation of literature in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Flipping the approach of existing scholarship, the book explores not what the Ministry for State Security – or Stasi – knew about writers, publishers, editors and others involved in the GDR literary sphere; instead, we ask what these groups knew about the Stasi, how they acquired that knowledge, and how it circulated. In the process, we uncover the myriad ways in which those seeking to write, publish, or support critical literary production negotiated, circumvented, and actively confronted the threat posed by surveillance and control. The book shows that the Stasi was a kind of “public secret” (Taussig, 1999) – a known unknown that was positioned between revelation and concealment. It engages with theoretical frameworks drawn from anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and cultural studies to reconceptualise the relationship between knowledge, secrecy, intuition, trust, and agency in an authoritarian context.

The co-authored monograph combines original interviews, archive documents, and published and unpublished literary works. The focus throughout is on seven figures who operated in different ways as authors, editors, and organisers of literary subcultures. The book comprises a substantial introduction, outlining the empirical context and theoretical approach, and four chapters focused on a different aspect of the relationship between revelation, surveillance, and secrecy: intuition, trust, agency, and literature as knowledge. The book’s conclusion draws these aspects together and shows how they are interrelated.