From BZ editors
Once a week, ex-rulers Eberhard Diepgen (CDU) and Walter Momper (SPD) discuss topics that move the capital in the BZ Berlin. Today it’s about checking members of parliament for previous Stasi cooperation.
Eberhard Diepgen: No, after 30 years that is questionable
The history of East Germany must not be suppressed or forgotten.
I don’t want to quell my anger at the talk that the GDR was not an unjust state and the whitewashing of actual and supposed achievements in the real socialism of the GDR.
It is necessary to deal with the structures of the Stasi and their task in state and society and the work of the Stasi memorial in Hohenschönhausen.
But a further examination of the Berlin parliamentarians for the more and more theoretical possibility of a Stasi amalgamation? More than 30 years after the end of the GDR and the Stasi?
Even if East German federal states carry out a further check of elected members of their parliaments in different forms, restraint seems necessary to me. This review of freely elected MPs no longer fits the ideas of our social and legal system. This includes the statute of limitations. It is intended to create legal peace and legal certainty.
All crimes in Germany are statute-barred at the age of 30, only murder is not statute-barred. Clear deadlines also apply to information about the criminal record. In my view, there is a lot of exaggeration with informal self-determination and the associated limitation of information. I don’t see why the review of Stasi activity after more than 30 years should be a legitimate exception.
With the argument that victims of Stasi injustice would have to be examined and then MPs would have to put up with it all the more, the Berlin Stasi representative overlooks the fact that potential Stasi victims want to assert a claim against the state, which amalgamation would be omitted.
The discussion about further scrutiny of MPs distracts from the crucial task of dealing with the foundations of an unjust state.
Walter Momper: Yes, out of respect for the victims
In any case, Berlin parliamentarians should be checked again for previous Stasi cooperation. However, this does not require a law, but a simple decision by Parliament to carry out a self-examination is sufficient, as has been the case in the past.
Only those who were of legal age on October 3, 1990, i.e. who are now over 50 years old, need to be checked. In the case of the younger MPs, there is no longer any point in checking them.
Of course, it is difficult to bear when there are MPs in an elected parliament who have actively worked on the Stasi’s suppression apparatus. Of course, respect for the victims of state persecution and violent measures requires transparency here.
It turns out that even decades later, new clues are still being found in the files of the state security service, which can be used to prove activity for the Stasi.
The number of deputies who might have worked for state security in the past is decreasing due to age. As a result, checking for Stasi cooperation has lost its central importance.
But out of respect for the victims of the Stasi rule, we must continue to proceed as we have done in the past and clarify that parliamentarians and members of the government did not work for the state security of the GDR.
