Profiles in Collaboration

Profiles in Collaboration exposes the collaboration of five leading officials in the East German CDU with the Stasi, the secret police of the Communist regime in the GDR. One of the bloc parties licensed by the Soviets after WWII, the CDU-East was soon subordinated by the Communist Party (SED) and tasked with mollifying opposition and mobilizing support for the Marxist-Leninist regime among Christians and churches. Yet given its interactions with the churches and contacts with political figures in West Germany, the CDU represented a potential risk for the regime. Thus the CDU-East introduced an additional layer to the bureaucratic system not found in other Soviet bloc systems and an element of complexity to East German religious policy.

Robert F. Goeckel analyzes this complexity by exploring the cases of five leading CDU officials, four of whom agreed to collaborate with the Stasi and one who did not. He investigates what motivated them to collaborate (or not), how the Stasi recruited them, and how the Stasi "managed" their careers. In doing so, the extent to which these CDU officials sought to influence the churches and the state policy towards religion becomes more clear, along with how their consciences, political beliefs, and personal crises affected their commitment to act as informants. Ultimately, Profiles in Collaboration illuminates how the bureaucratic interests of the CDU were directly affected not only by the Stasi and other regime actors, but also policy shifts by the churches and West Germany.