Zersetzung (, German for "decomposition" and "disruption") is a psychological warfare technique first used by the Ministry for State Security (Stasi) to repress political opponents in East Germany during the 1970s and 1980s. Zersetzung served to combat alleged and actual dissidents through covert means, using secret methods of abusive control and psychological manipulation to prevent anti-government activities. Among the defining features of it was the widespread use of counterespionage methods as a means of repression. People were commonly targeted on a pre-emptive and preventive basis, to limit or stop activities of political dissent and cultural incorrectness that they may have gone on to perform, and not on the basis of crimes they had actually committed. Zersetzung methods were designed to break down, undermine, and paralyze people behind "a facade of social normality" in a form of "silent repression".
Erich Honecker's succession to Walter Ulbricht as First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in May 1971 saw an evolution of "operational procedures" (Operative Vorgänge) conducted by Stasi away from the overt terror of the Ulbricht era towards what came to be known as Zersetzung ("Anwendung von Maßnahmen der Zersetzung"), which was formalized by Directive No. 1/76 on the Development and Revision of Operational Procedures in January 1976.Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic. Directive No. 1/76 on the Development and Revision of Operational Procedures Richtlinie Nr. 1/76 zur Entwicklung und Bearbeitung Operativer Vorgänge (OV) The Stasi used operational psychology and its extensive network of between 170,000 and over 500,000 informal collaborators (inoffizielle Mitarbeiter) to launch personalized psychological attacks against targets to damage their mental health and lower chances of a "hostile action" against the state.Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic: The Unofficial Collaborators (IM) of the MfS Among the collaborators were youths as young as 14 years of age.
The use of Zersetzung is well documented due to Stasi files published after the Berlin Wall fell. The exact number of victims is hard to ascertain due to the proliferation of other forms of abuse which people were also targeted with. The International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims states that there are between 300,000 and 500,000 victims of the Stasi's use of Zersetzung, direct physical torture and gross human rights violations. Considering Zersetzung by itself, the historian Mike Dennis estimates that in the years 1985-88 there were between 4,500-5,000 'Operational Cases' opened against different people each year.
Special pensions for restitution have been created for Zersetzung victims.
Definition
The Ministry for State Security (German: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, MfS), commonly known as the Stasi, was the main security service of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany or GDR), and defined Zersetzung in its 1985 dictionary of political operatives as
The term Zersetzung is generally translated into English as "decomposition", although it can be variously translated as "decay", "corrosion", "undermining", "biodegradation", or "dissolution". The term was first used in a prosecutorial context in Nazi Germany, namely as part of the term Wehrkraftzersetzung (or Zersetzung der Wehrkraft). In Western parlance, Zersetzung can be described as the active application of psychological destabilisation procedures by the State apparatus.
Context and goals
The German Democratic Republic (GDR) was established in October 1949 as a socialist state from the Soviet Zone of Occupation, and ruled by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). During its first decade of the GDR's existence, the SED under General Secretary Walter Ulbricht consolidated their rule by overtly combating political opposition, which it subdued primarily through the penal code by accusing them of incitement to war or of calls of boycott and processing them through the regular criminal judiciary.Rainer Schröder: Geschichte des DDR-Rechts: Straf- und Verwaltungsrecht , forum historiae iuris, 6 avril 2004.
In 1961, to counteract the GDR's practice of isolationism following the construction of the Berlin Wall, the judicial repression was gradually abandoned.Falco Werkentin: Recht und Justiz im SED-Staat. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, Bonn 1998, 2. durchgesehene Auflage 2000, S. 67. At the end of the 1960s, the GDR's desire for international recognition and rapprochement with the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) led to a commitment to adhere to the U.N. Charter.
On 3 May 1971, with the blessing of the USSR's leadership, Erich Honecker became First Secretary of the SED, replacing Ulbricht for an ostensible reason of poor health. Honecker sought to burnish the GDR's international reputation while fighting internal opposition by intensification of the Stasi'''s efforts to punish dissident behaviors without using the penal code.Sandra Pingel-Schliemann: Zerstörung von Biografien. Zersetzung als Phänomen der Honecker-Ära. In: Eckart Conze/Katharina Gajdukowa/Sigrid Koch-Baumgarten (Hrsg.): Die demokratische Revolution 1989 in der DDR. Köln 2009, S. 78–91. The GDR signed the Basic Treaty, 1972 with West Germany to respect human rights, or at least announce its intention to do so, and the Helsinki Accords in 1975.Art. 2 des Vertrages über die Grundlagen der Beziehungen zwischen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik vom 21. Dezember 1972. In: Matthias Judt (Hrsg.): DDR-Geschichte in Dokumenten – Beschlüsse, Berichte, interne Materialien und Alltagszeugnisse. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung Bd. 350, Bonn 1998, S. 517.Art. 1 Abs. 3 UN-Charta. Dokumentiert in: 12. Deutscher Bundestag: Materialien der Enquete-Kommission zur Aufarbeitung von Geschichte und Folgen der SED-Diktatur in Deutschland. Band 4, Frankfurt a. M. 1995, S. 547.Konferenz über Sicherheit und Zusammenarbeit in Europa, Schlussakte, Helsinki 1975, S. 11. Consequently, the SED regime decided to reduce the number of political prisoners, which was compensated for by practising dissident repression without imprisonment or court judgements.Johannes Raschka: "Staatsverbrechen werden nicht genannt" – Zur Zahl politischer Häftlinge während der Amtszeit Honeckers. In: Deutschlandarchiv. Band 30, Nummer 1, 1997, S. 196Jens Raschka: Einschüchterung, Ausgrenzung, Verfolgung – Zur politischen Repression in der Amtszeit Honeckers. Berichte und Studien, Band 14, Dresden 1998, S. 15.
British journalist Luke Harding, who had experienced treatment on the part of Russia's FSB in Vladimir Putin's Russia that was similar to Zersetzung, writes in his book:
In practice
The Stasi used Zersetzung essentially as a means of psychological oppression and persecution.Klaus-Dietmar Henke: Zur Nutzung und Auswertung der Stasi-Akten. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte. Nummer 4, 1993, S. 586. Findings of operational psychologySüß: Strukturen. S. 229. were formulated into method at the Stasi's College of Law (Juristische Hochschule der Staatssicherheit, or JHS), and applied to political opponents in an effort to undermine their self-confidence and self-esteem. Operations were designed to intimidate and destabilise them by subjecting them to repeated disappointment, and to socially alienate them by interfering with and disrupting their relationships with others as in social undermining.
The aim was to induce personal crises in victims, leaving them too unnerved and psychologically distressed to have the time and energy for anti-government activism.Pingel-Schliemann: Zersetzen. S. 188. The Stasi intentionally concealed their role as mastermind of the operations.Jens Gieseke: Mielke-Konzern. S. 192f.Pingel-Schliemann: Formen. S. 235. Author Jürgen Fuchs was a victim of Zersetzung and wrote about his experience, describing the Stasi's actions as "psychosocial crime", and "an assault on the human soul".
Its techniques were established effectively by the late 1950s. Zersetzung was rigorously defined in the mid-1970s, and was carried out in a systematic manner in the 1970s and 1980s.Süß: Strukturen. S. 202-204. It is difficult to determine how many people were targeted, since the sources have been deliberately and considerably redacted. It is known that tactics varied in scope, and that a number of different departments implemented them. There was a ratio of four or five authorised Zersetzung operators for each targeted group, and three for each individual.Süß: Strukturen. S. 217. Some sources indicate that around 5,000 people were "persistently victimised" by Zersetzung.Consider the written position taken by Michael Beleites, responsible for the files of the Stasi in the Free State of Saxony: PDF, accessed 24 August 2010, and 3sat : Subtiler Terror – Die Opfer von Stasi-Zersetzungsmethoden, accessed 24 August 2010. At the College of Legal Studies, the number of dissertations submitted on the subject of Zersetzung was in double figures.Günter Förster: Die Dissertationen an der "Juristischen Hochschule" des MfS. Eine annotierte Bibliographie. BStU, Berlin 1997, Online-Quelle (Memento vom 13. Juli 2009 im Internet Archive). It had a comprehensive 50-page Zersetzung teaching manual, which included numerous examples of its practice.Anforderungen und Wege für eine konzentrierte, offensive, rationelle und gesellschaftlich wirksame Vorgangsbearbeitung. Juristische Hochschule Potsdam 1977, BStU, ZA, JHS 24 503.
Units involved Almost all Stasi departments were involved in Zersetzung operations. First and foremost amongst these was the headquarters of the Stasi's directorate XX (Hauptabteilung XX) in Berlin, and its divisional offices in regional and municipal government. The function of the headquarters and Abteilung XXs was to maintain surveillance of religious communities; cultural and media establishments; alternative political parties; the GDR's many political establishment-affiliated mass social organisations; sport; and education and health serviceseffectively covering all aspects of civic life.Jens Gieseke: Das Ministerium für Staatssicherheit 1950–1989/90 – Ein kurzer historischer Abriss. In: BF informiert. Nr. 21, Berlin 1998, S. 35.
The Stasi made use of the means available to them within, and as a circumstance of, the GDR's closed social system. An established, politically motivated collaborative network (politisch-operatives Zusammenwirken, or POZW) provided them with extensive opportunities for interference such as the sanctioning of professionals and students, expulsion from associations and sports clubs, and occasional arrests by the Volkspolizei, the GDR's quasi-military national police. Refusal of permits for travel to socialist states, or denial of entry at Czechoslovak and Polish border crossings where no visa requirement existed, were also arranged.Hubertus Knabe: Zersetzungsmaßnahmen. In: Karsten Dümmel, Christian Schmitz (Hrsg.): Was war die Stasi? KAS, Zukunftsforum Politik Nr. 43, Sankt Augustin 2002, S. 31, PDF, 646 KB.
The collaborators (Partner des operativen Zusammenwirkens) included branches of regional government, university and professional management, housing administrative bodies, the Sparkasse public savings bank, and in some cases head physicians.Hubertus Knabe: Zersetzungsmaßnahmen. In: Karsten Dümmel, Christian Schmitz (Hrsg.): Was war die Stasi? KAS, Zukunftsforum Politik Nr. 43, Sankt Augustin 2002, S. 31, PDF, 646 KB. The Stasi's Linie III (Observation), Abteilung 26 (Telephone and room surveillance), and M (Postal communications) departments provided essential background information for the designing of Zersetzung techniques, with Abteilung 32 procuring the required technology.Pingel-Schliemann: Zersetzen, S. 141–151.