47 pages • 1 hour read •
Stasiland
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Chapters 9-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary: “Julia Has No Story”
Arriving home from work, Funder finds her landlord, Julia, watering the plants for her. Julia warns Funder about the drunks in the park across the street, one of whom, she claims, climbed a tree and stole a tape recorder from this apartment. Julia tells Funder that the drunks in the park can probably sense she’s foreign, as she doesn’t look German. Funder is surprised at this claim, and wonders how people have such a different view of themselves, compared to how others may perceive them.
Julia talks about an Italian boyfriend but is resistant to talking about how she broke things off with him in Hungary and ended up at a police station, which only makes Funder more interested: “I’m curious about her: a single woman in a single room at the top of her block, unable to go forward into her future” (94-95).
Julia finally tells of her experience growing up in East Germany, during which she acknowledged some harsh realities of the regime and blinded herself to others. She initially wanted to be a linguist. Her father joined the Stasi Party. Funder notes that she seems somewhat nostalgic for the old days of East Germany.
Chapter 10 Summary: “The Italian Boyfriend”
Julia continues her story. She meets her Italian boyfriend at the Leipzig fair (a biannual international trade fair) after which they begin a long-distance romance, and she recalls during his occasional visits to East Germany to see her, both were under strict surveillance.
She is sent away to boarding school (perhaps, she suspects, because of her contact with the west, as they wanted to isolate her) where she is often forced to watch what she calls “tv-torture,” state-run news that doesn't tell them anything about what is going on in the world. They are also required to watch shows denouncing the television programs from the west.
One day, the headmaster meets with Julia’s parents to convince them she must end things with her Italian boyfriend. The intentions of the headmaster are unclear; Julia is uncertain how much of a role the Stasi played in this meeting, if any. Julia takes the entrance exam for a university translation and interpreting course and fails (again it is unclear whether she truly failed, or the Stasi are pulling the strings). She finds it difficult to get a job as a receptionist or a waitress. At the employment office, she gets into an argument with an official who insists absurdly that she is not unemployed because “there is no unemployment in the German Democratic Republic!” (104).Depressed and withdrawn, Julia breaks up with her boyfriend in Hungary.
Chapter 11 Summary: “Major N.”
Julia receives a letter instructing her to come down to the police station. She is taken to a small room, where a man introduces himself as “N., Major, Ministry of State Security.” He asks her why she is not working, and Julia thinks he must know, because they have blocked her from getting a job. He repeats that there is no unemployment in East Germany. He brings out copies of letters she sent to her boyfriend. He makes her explain what certain words mean. He then tells her that she needs to give them information about the Italian man, which she refuses to do. He tells her not to relay this conversation.
Julia tells Funder she repressed this whole incident. She goes home, and she and her family try to figure out what to do, and decide on calling Erich Honecker, which is something that citizens could do to make a request or file a complaint. They don’t think that there’s any reason the Stasi should be after Julia, because she has always been a good citizen. She decides to inform Major N. of her decision to contact Honecker. He is at first angry and shows up at her doorstep. Finally, and mysteriously, the Stasi relent; shortly afterward, Julia is offered a job as a receptionist at a hotel.
Chapters 9-11 Analysis
Julia embodies a paradox that the book will return to again and again: a nostalgia for East Germany existing hand-in-hand with an awareness of the cruelty and callousness of the regime. To Funder, Julia claims there were no drunks before the Wall came down, but then amends her statement: there were no drunks in the park, because there was no homelessness problem. Nostalgia warps historical realities, and this is true not only for Julia but even more potently for the various ex-Stasi men Funder interviews.
Then again, this rosy view of East Germany is not only due to a personal nostalgia but due to the propaganda that the state dispensed by the regime on a daily basis: the television shows that forward the philosophy that Communism is medicine for the human soul. The propaganda becomes naked lies in Chapter 10, when Julia is belligerently told by an official in the Employment Office that she is not unemployed, when she clearly is. She drives the terrifyingly Orwellian point home with the line “There is no unemployment in the German Democratic Republic!” (104).
In Chapter 11, Julia acknowledges the perniciousness of the surveillance state after telling the story of meeting with Major N., who wants her to inform on her Italian boyfriend:“‘At the time I criticised [sic] other things—not being allowed to study or have a career. But looking back on it, it’s the total surveillance that damaged me the worst’” (113). She goes on to say that she believes it is worse when one represses it. The specter of the propaganda echoes through to the present: we will frequently see blame for the East Germans’ unhappiness laid on aspects of life other than the complete authority the Stasi exerted over their collective existence.
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