The Secret Lives Of The Stasi

An elderly woman posting a letter on a winter day in communist East Germany (GDR).

A woman pushing through the door of the U.S. Embassy in East Berlin. 

Stasi agents apparently watching a mark. These images are part of a collection of photos revealed by German artist Simon Menner, who spent two years sifting through the archives of the State Security Service, or Stasi, left behind after the fall of communism in Germany. 

An award being bestowed on a member of a Stasi phone-tapping unit. The Stasi was a network of secret police and informers, and the most-feared branch of the GDR's communist regime.

A photo from a series of pictures made for training Stasi agents in violent arrest techniques. At its height in the mid-1980s there was a Stasi officer or informant for every 63 people in the GDR, compared to one Gestapo agent for every 2,000 citizens under the Third Reich.

An instant photo of a bed in an empty apartment. When conducting secret apartment searches, such images were taken to help gloved Stasi agents restore things in time for the unsuspecting apartment owner's return.   

A photo documenting pro-Western sentiments inside a teenager's bedroom. One aspect of the Stasi's operations was referred to as "decomposition" -- the psychological torment of dissidents through actions that included destroying careers with anonymous, humiliating letter campaigns, breaking into apartments and switching medicines, or installing cameras to capture compromising pictures.

Western treats confiscated by the Stasi. In the GDR, possession of a Western dessert could get someone fired. 

A photo taken for training on how to monitor a mark. Menner, who published a book of the images he unearthed, says many of the most invasive images he saw, like people photographed naked inside their own apartments, were not included in his collection.

 

Unidentified officers in front of the Stasi headquarters, the Ministry for State Security, in Berlin. Menner says he is finished with exploring the archive of millions of once-secret Stasi photos, but says, "There is still so much more to see; it's endless material."