Not all of them are Stasi-Kinder that number also includes people who suspect their parents were victims, for example. (They had not been in touch since Keil’s incarceration.) He has now requested his late father’s file to find out more.Ĭhildren, grandchildren and other close relatives now account for 10-12% of new requests to view files, or about 5,000 of 50,000 new requests last year. When he went to his parents’ home in Berlin to confront his father, his mother told him that he had died only two days earlier. Gerd Keil, whose own family informed on him to the Stasi, with partner Manuela Keilholz.

Some faced underage recruitment through their parents others, like Keil, clashed with them.

Dubbed “Stasi-Kinder”, or “Stasi children”, by the German press, they don’t necessarily consider themselves victims or perpetrators – yet their early lives were deeply enmeshed with the Stasi system. Three years on, a new group are slowly making their voices heard: the children of Stasi spies or informants. In 2012, a law was introduced allowing Germans access to their late parents’ and grandparents’ secret service files, if they suspect the Stasi has played a role in their lives. Since then, the archive has received 3m requests from Germans who want to view their own files – far more than anyone expected. In a radical case of historical reckoning, the Stasi archives were opened to the public in January 1992, just over a year after Germany’s reunification. Twenty-five years after reunification, Germany is still grappling with the legacy of East Germany’s dictatorship, in particular the Stasi – the secret service that ran one of the world’s tightest surveillance networks. Keil’s brother is not named in his file, but referred to by a Stasi code name his reports contain information Keil says only he and his brother knew.

His body is gripped by a brief, violent spasm, painful to watch.

Social spy agent