randform

In a comment to my previous post I was asked wether I “want back GDR”.

here my answer:

I don’t want to have the former GDR back.

But I think the bad deeds of e.g. the STASI are not automatically correlated to every GDR-feature. Like e.g. the GDR had a very good waste-management (sero-system) which was neglected in the west (images) for no good reason.

The former GDR was not – as it claimed with its name – a german democratic state. I visited the GDR rather often (most of my relatives lived in East Berlin) and in fact GDR-authorities were threatening me already as a ten year old for my political opinions (but thats another story).

People who were opposing the official politics were suppressed, where the methods ranged from occupational ban to imprisonment (and sometimes execution – according to Wikipedia there were 164 death penalties made to the order of the STASI).

Although torture was forbidden in the GDR (here an excerpt of the GDR constitution) some methods of the STASI, like sleep deprivation could be called psychological torture. Also the conditions within prisons (here a panorama tourr through the STASI-prison in Berlin-Hohenschoenhausen) could be seen as torture like in particular the socalled water cells which were cells without a window and no furniture and 2 cm water on the floor. As a torture not as immediate life-threatening as waterboarding but still scary and cruel.