We just shut down the Stasi

At the end of 1989, when employees of the Stasi authority in Rostock wanted to make files disappear, they were prevented from doing so by demonstrators. Gerhard Rogge remembers the day that changed his life.

by Ilka Kreutzträger

At around 8 p.m. on December 4, 1989, Gerhard Rogge’s phone rang. With that call, his life began to change. He and his wife Ingeborg were to come to the State Security building in Rostock immediately. Demonstrators have been blocking entrances since an afternoon vigil to prevent Stasi staff from taking away files, and they needed support. "We called some other friends, packed some warm clothes and a thermos with hot tea and set off," says Rogge, who was 44 at the time.

Access to the Stasi authorities? "Dance on the volcano"

Rogge and his wife went to the back entrance of the gray Stasi complex on August-Bebel-Strasse. A wall with barbed wire enclosed the 1950s building, only interrupted by the three large entrances. Outside the smooth steel double gate and small brick porter's lodge, about 200 people had gathered that evening in the glare of searchlights mounted on the wall alongside surveillance cameras. "The mood in front of the gate was reminiscent of a folk festival," says Rogge. "But it was the dance on the volcano, because everyone was aware that we are standing on a border and that behind them is the troops that everyone in the GDR was most afraid of."

Destroy what can be destroyed

In the days before it had leaked out that the Stasi employees were destroying tons of files, films and disks all over the country. "More transports and the famous smoking chimneys were observed, and we started asking everywhere what was going on," recalls Rogge. Just two weeks ago, nobody would have dared to go directly to the entrance gates of the State Security. "I always felt queasy when I walked by there," says Rogge. "Because you knew there were people working there who could get you off the street or out of your house at any time, and there isn't a power in the world that can do anything about it."

But on December 4th, anger outweighed fear in many cities in the GDR. Five members of the New Forum had been negotiating with Lieutenant General Rudolf Mittag, the head of the Rostock Stasi authority, since the afternoon. They demanded access to the building, an independent investigative committee and a stop to the destruction of files. A decree by the Modrow government in Berlin, which banned the destruction of documents, strengthened their backs. Around 9 p.m., Mittag finally agreed to let some of the protesters inside. Rye was one of them.

"When the first shot is fired, it's all over" 

Rogge and the other men came into a pitch-dark courtyard. The murmur of the protesters reached them over the wall. "When we got used to the darkness, we saw that about ten meters away there were two groups of men in battle fatigues with steel helmets on their heads," says Rogge. "They were armed with submachine guns and all, and they were watching the goal. I could feel the tension they were under." They stood facing each other motionless for a few minutes. Then the first hands reached over the gate and the wall from outside.

"I felt a jolt go through the group of armed men," Rogge recalls of the moment of greatest fear that night. "They started to position themselves and it was clear to me:if the first shot is fired, it's all over." When the first heads appeared over the wall, Rogge heard an energetic voice:"No violence, no provocation!" And sure enough, the hands disappeared. The Stasi men lowered their weapons.

Citizens in the midst of the most sensitive files

Rogge was brought into the dimly lit foyer of the main building, where numerous demonstrators were already waiting. They formed two groups of about ten men each and rang two prosecutors out of bed, with the help of which they planned to properly seal the rooms in the building. The two groups began their tour of the nearly 2,000 rooms in the huge Stasi headquarters. The main building had four floors and a basement, there was the detention center, several connecting buildings, a high-rise building in which the district office of state security was housed, and the halls for the company's own vehicle fleet. "We had no idea of ​​the floor plan and walked around the building complex like counterfeit money," says Rogge.

If they met Stasi employees, they sent them home and sealed the office doors. "But the public prosecutors were more or less 'red' people, because otherwise they wouldn't have been in this position at all," Rogge recalls of the uncooperative lawyers, who obviously found it anathema that ordinary citizens now had access to the most sensitive files.

After walking through a myriad of emergency-lit corridors and offices, the men came to the room where all the information from the site's observation posts converged. A Stasi employee sat here, watching the monitors of the surveillance cameras and logging the reports coming in every minute. "This meticulous assessment of the situation ended when we entered the room and took the pen from his hand," says Rogge. Up to this point, the Stasi people simply could not have imagined that they could actually lose control.

"We just shut down the Stasi" 

It wasn't until six in the morning that the entire complex was empty, except for the police, who had taken over surveillance in the meantime. "We left there very exhausted and I had to go straight to work," says Rogge. "I remember meeting the postwoman on the way. I said to her:'We've just shut down the Stasi.' And she replied:'That's great.'" 

In the days following the eviction, an independent investigative committee was set up to liquidate the Stasi headquarters - essentially its own small town with medical care, a bank and an immense arsenal of weapons in the basement. Rogge was a founding member of this committee and still remembers one day when he once again walked through the endless corridors of the building with a Stasi employee. Herr Rogge, the man said to him, now you know more than anyone else in this building. "That's when I understood that he had installed me as his new boss in his thinking, which was used to military authority. I could have said to him now:'Do this and do that.' He would have carried out the most absurd orders."

A realization that the pastor's son, who had been involved in the peace movement since the early 1980s, found difficult to bear. Rogge never worked again in his profession as a graduate engineer for shipbuilding. He remained on the Independent Inquiry Committee until October 3, 1990. After reunification, he helped set up the state social authority in Rostock, which today takes care of the rights of children, young people, asylum seekers and the severely disabled. An authority that never existed in the GDR.