Stasiland
Anna Funder
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Character Analysis: Herr Christian
Funder includes the story of Herr Christian, a former Stasi man who now works as a private detective, as an example of a person who, for whatever reason, has escaped the GDR relatively emotionally unscathed. Funder’s representation of Herr Christian is rather neutral, much like the man himself. He is a man who is mostly untroubled by the morality of his actions, rather, he places his trust in those higher up the command chain to make such judgments, as he tells her “I’ve always had an acute sense of duty to obey the law... and I thought it was the right thing to do.” Although he did have some small moral qualms with the nature of his job uncovering East Germans attempting to smuggle themselves to the west, he was able to quash these through his trust in the ability of lawmakers to do what is just, and through his own enjoyment of the disguises he would wear.
Ironically, Herr Christian does appear to have some moral boundaries, though it is not at reporting refugees that he draws the line but rather at exposing unfaithful spouses in his private detective work, as he was once interrogated by the Stasi about an affair of his own. This suggests that perhaps the only way to emotionally escape East Germany after the fall of the Wall is to first have relative luck and then keep an emotional distance from the work, keeping your private sphere of ethical concerns closed to your own self-interests.
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Stasiland
Sample Essay
Published in 2002, Stasiland is a piece of literary non-fiction examining the lives of Germans living in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) under its state security service, the infamous Stasi. Stasiland is particularly interesting because of the ways it subverts many of the conventions of the non-fiction genre, with Australian author Anna Funder inserting herself into the text, so that we experience the stories of those she interviews and share her emotions of shock, disbelief, and sadness alongside her.
In brief, Stasiland follows Funder through three separate journeys to Germany taking place after reunification as she interviews a wide variety of those who lived in the former GDR. This cast of characters includes Miriam, a woman who suspects that her husband was murdered by the Stasi and whose story perhaps affects Funder the most. They meet twice, once at the very beginning and again at the very end, providing narrative resolution. Among others, Funder meets ex-Stasi men, a GDR rock star, and ordinary citizens who simply longed to escape. Mostly, the narrative is episodic, consisting of twenty-eight chapters with each chapter telling a different person’s story, although some more significant tales are given two or three chapters, and some chapters are dedicated to Funder telling a more personal story.
The majority of the narrative is linear, although Funder does sometimes jump back in time to flesh out the story with a memory of her own (e.g. her own brief visit to East Germany in the 80s). She also recalls the visit to the Stasi offices in Leipzig in 1994 which is where her interest in East Germany and its citizens really began. The bulk of the narrative concerns her 1996 and 2000 visits to Germany, the former ending with her return to Australia after news of her mother’s brain cancer. Although Funder doesn’t allow her own presence in the text to dominate the stories she recounts, the personal nature of the narration does let her predominantly non-German, English speaking audience connect with her experiences in the strange foreign world of Stasiland.
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