Event · Twentieth century · Germany
The Stasi
1950–1990
Ministry for State Security of East Germany, 1950–1990. Roughly 91,000 full-time staff and on the order of 170,000–190,000 unofficial informants by 1988–89.
Facts
- Founded
- 8 February 1950.
- Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Stasi
- Minister
- Erich Mielke, November 1957–November 1989.
- Source: Stasi Records Archive / standard histories
- Scale
- About 91,000 full-time employees (1989); about 173,000–189,000 unofficial collaborators (IM) in 1988–89.
- Source: Helmut Müller-Enbergs; BStU figures
The record
The Stasi opened mail by the tens of thousands daily, hid microphones, and kept scent samples. Directive 1/76 made Zersetzung — covert social and psychological destruction without open trial — a central method.
Citizens occupied offices in late 1989 to stop shredding. The Stasi Records Act of 1991 let people read their files. This page files the ministry; the Berlin Wall is the border that paired with it.
Images
Connected
Links in both directions: what this page points to, and what points here.
Articles
Desk pieces that belong with this record.
The StasiEast Germany did not maintain control through a heavy armed presence on every street corner. Instead, it constructed a state apparatus built on files, covert listening devices, and formal pledges of cooperation.Read 
The Berlin WallThe story of totalitarian power is never purely about abstract political doctrine, it is a visceral, bloody tally of human lives sacrificed to an all consuming ideological idol.Read
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