A Stasi Kerbloch card The Stasi used several other card systems to assist their postal surveillance. The Kerblochkarten (English: Kerbloch cards) system allowed storage of data encoded as a series of hand-made notches. Like other punch card systems, groups of cards could then be automatically processed by a machine based on the presence of notches […]
Read More… from Stasi / Facebook / Big Data DAAD Day 11 – Kerblochkarten
The early days of the Stasi were marked by the development of new systems for monitoring the population. In the 1950s, having already incorporated a post-WWII file system used for denazification, the MfS implemented three new index card types to track citizens, all of which were stored in a central card index. These cards were […]
Read More… from Stasi / Facebook / Big Data DAAD Day 10 – Card systems of the Stasi
The implementation of zip codes across West Germany in 1961 made it much easier to monitor postal traffic between east and west. The Berlin Wall was erected in that same year, leading to a heightening of Cold War suspicions and increased emphasis on monitoring movement of information between east and west. The 1960’s also saw […]
Read More… from Stasi / Facebook / Big Data DAAD Day 9 – MfS Department M (1960’s developments)
The Stasi Mediathek website published by the BStU is an amazing resource. One can search for example “Abteilung M” (English: Department M) and find a range of digitized original documents related to the Stasi’s postal surveillance. This is an example of a letter that the Stasi Department M removed from the Deutsche Post in 1962. […]
In the early years of the Department M, or Division VI as it was known at the time, there was no vocational training so the few dozen employees had to conceive of their own workflows. At that time, the standard set for workers who examined the contents of mail was to read “500 letters per […]
Stasi Department M workers removed enormous amounts of mail from Deutsche Post each day for inspection. Mail was identified visually based on handwriting, types of letters, or specific addresses. Surveillance of mail was technically illegal in the GDR. Still, mail was withheld on an official basis “in order to prevent attacks” by western intelligence agencies, […]
Read More… from Stasi / Facebook / Big Data DAAD Day 6 – MfS Department M (postal control selection)
In 1989 Department M had 10 divisions, which were subdivided into 36 units. The head office, which consisted of 8 divisions and their corresponding units, was located in East Berlin. The divisions were organized based on mail destinations (western, non-communist countries for example), types of mail (like parcels or telegrams), or function within the scope […]
The Stasi surveilled the post of the GDR for nearly 40 years, starting with the founding in 1950, until the fall of 1989 when the Berlin wall fell. The number of workers in Department M rose from a few dozen in the beginning, to nearly 2,200 by the end. The largest office occupied two buildings […]
Read More… from Stasi / Facebook / Big Data DAAD Day 4 – MfS Department M (the workers)
The Ministry for State Security’s Department M was tasked with “postal control”, or the inspection of domestic and international letters and packages. They conducted their work thanks to cooperation with Deutsche Post which, as another state institution concerned with “security of the state,” was subject to the same politics and power infrastructure of the single […]
Read More… from Stasi / Facebook / Big Data DAAD Day 3 – MfS Department M
The former East Germany’s Ministry for State Security (more popularly referred to as the MfS or “Stasi”) is widely known for the inventive and clandestine gadgets that appear in films like Das Leben der Anderen (English: The Lives of Others) or on exhibit at the Stasi Museum in Berlin. Some of my favorites from the […]