Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Terms and Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The Filed Story of Niederungen
- 2 Contact Stories: The Author and the Officer
- 3 Conspiratorial Stories: The Securitate Sources MAYER, SORIN, and EVA
- 4 Captured Stories: Remote Audio Surveillance
- 5 Migrating Stories
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Appendix I Müller’s Surveillance Timeline (1974–93)
- Appendix II Author’s Accreditation by CNSAS
- Index
5 - Migrating Stories
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2023
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Terms and Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The Filed Story of Niederungen
- 2 Contact Stories: The Author and the Officer
- 3 Conspiratorial Stories: The Securitate Sources MAYER, SORIN, and EVA
- 4 Captured Stories: Remote Audio Surveillance
- 5 Migrating Stories
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Appendix I Müller’s Surveillance Timeline (1974–93)
- Appendix II Author’s Accreditation by CNSAS
- Index
Summary
Müller, Wagner, and Müller's mother left Romania by train through the border point Curtici on February 28, 1987. In the weeks leading to their emigration, two elucidatory reports about her past and future surveillance were filed in Müller's dossier. On January 22, 1987, Col. Cristescu, the head of the Timiş Securitate, and Major Radu Tinu, the new head of Service I/A, summarized Müller's case in a letter to Lt.-Gen. Aristotel Stămătoiu, the head of CIE (Centrala de Informaţii Externe; Foreign Intelligence Service; CRISTINA, vol. 1, 267–69). The Timiş Securitate officers offered several facts based on the little evidence extant in her file. For example, they stated that the goal of the Timiş Securitate had been all along to compromise and isolate Müller (along with Wagner and Totok) abroad, especially in West Germany, where she intended to emigrate. To this end, they had used sources SORIN, MANOLE, and MAYER, and other German Romanians who had emigrated to West Germany. Their task had been to expose Müller's and Wagner's negative character traits, their inconsistent literary positions, and their derogatory description of customs and traditions in Banat. Even Müller's trips to West Germany had been part of the same master plan, the officers boasted. However, this argument unconvincingly contradicts Pădurariu's earlier statements about allowing Müller to travel in order to dispel the idea that the opportunities of German-language writers were in any way restricted in communist Romania. The Timiş Securitate had observed immediate results, according to Cristescu and Tinu, seeing that Müller had been viewed as a Securitate agent both in Romania and in West Germany because of her repeated trips abroad. This does not align with the officers’ initial explicit reaction of surprise at the first mention of Müller being accused of collaborating with the Romanian authorities during her first trip to West Germany. In this inflated narrative, Cristescu and Tinu cunningly exploited various events that happened independently of the Securitate's efforts, and in doing so, they sought to impress the head of the Romanian foreign service.
Cristescu and Tinu also claimed credit for “various articles in the press of the émigrés” that had reacted negatively to Müller's Niederungen. To elucidate the success of this operation, the officers attached copies of their pieces de résistance: two denigrating letters sent to Müller's address in Nitzkydorf (fig. 5.1 and fig. 5.2).
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- Information
- The Secret Police Dossier of Herta MüllerA 'File Story' of Cold War Surveillance, pp. 228 - 242Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2023