Right after i began working at the Ministry for State Security, I wanted to quit again, because I was given a position dealing with the church, and at that time, 1972, I felt it was unimportant. My thoughts ran like this: “Is this kind of work even necessary? Couldn't I do more for society in another profession?”

So I was seriously thinking about the possibility of getting out completely. But then I said to myself: “What if everyone did that? I mean, not liking your post and saying right away: I'm not going to do it.” There are always tasks in society that are not particularly well liked but have to be done. That's the reason I stayed on in the beginning.

Anyway, in time, by the end of the seventies, a change had taken place. I really had the feeling that I was doing something significant, that I was making an important contribution to the defense of the GDR. Over and above doing my actual job, I had submitted certain suggestions for “operative work” to the other regional administrations of State Security.

It was only in the second half of the eighties that I began to reflect in general terms on the effectiveness of our work. At that time it seemed to us that our information on the evolution of “hostile negative forces,” as we called them then, was not generating the appropriate political reactions. In early 1987, this culminated in my writing a proposal for dealing with all political groupings. I really thought that this would give me the chance to act for the good of society as a whole. This proved later to be a fallacy. But at that point in time I believed in it.

On your first day at the Ministry, you have to write out your statement of commitment, and you are told your place of work, your department, and the subject area you'll be dealing with.

Of course, you would have already been acting as an unofficial coworker, or UC. In addition, I had been inducted into the reserve cadre of the Ministry three years earlier. That meant that I received eighty marks a month more stipend, among other things.