Chapter 3: Secret Police and Public Sphere: The East German State Security Service (‘Stasi’) between Media Control and Public Relations

There is already some research on the issue of how the German Democratic Republic's (GDR) State Security Service (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, MfS) and mass media were connected. This research examines topics such as the control of domestic press (Birkefeld & Müller, 1997; Fiedler, 2014, pp. 124–131, Heghmanns & Heintschel von Heinegg, 2003; Holzweißig, 2002, pp. 35–42), television (Staadt, Voigt, & Wolle, 2008), cinema (Geiss, 1997; Schittly, 2002, pp. 274–306) and West German media (Knabe, 2001; Turber, 1992; Winters, 1999). Media historian Anke Fiedler concluded that the State Security Service had two general objectives. First, it made use of its apparatus to control editors, print houses and broadcasters to protect their function as an element of the East German government. This was usually referred to as ‘political-operative protection’ (politisch-operative Sicherung). Second, the State Security Service provided the East German media with content and so-called ‘material for argumentation’. Fiedler considers this aspect to be governmental public relations (Staatliche Öffentlichkeitsarbeit). A decade earlier, Gunter Holzweißig came to a similar conclusion (Holzweißig, 2002, p. 37).