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The Stasi: Surveillance In Film

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The German Democratic Republic executed overreaching surveillance on their own civilians. This network was known as the Stasi. Stasi agents and informers or associates turned citizen on citizen and created a network of people with privileges (the informants) and those who’s entire lives had been ruined by this network. The Stasi even surpassed that of the KGB in the Soviet Union. The Stasi had more than seventeen million informers. They had one agent per 166 East German citizens. The KGB in contrast, had one agent per 2,000 Soviet citizens.1 “The Lives of Others” directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck illustrates this reality almost perfectly. The films follows a Stasi agent, Gerd Wiesler, as he begins surveillance on the playwright Georg
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