'The Fate of an Entire Generation': The Ethical Responsibilities of the Target

• In Event: Days of Our Lives in Secret Police Files

Abstract

“‘The fate of an entire generation’: The Ethical Responsibilities of the Target towards Her Own Informer” reflects on Morrison’s experience teaching in East Germany in the 1980s through an exchange program between Brown University and the (former) Wilhelm-Pieck-Universität Rostock. Of particular note in this talk are Morrison’s Stasi—or secret police—file and the self-published memoir of the person informing on her. In this presentation, Morrison discusses what her informer or IM “Georg” writes in his Stasi report about her. She explores the self-published (in the early 2000s) memoir of “Georg.” It has proved vital in contextualizing his actions within a life history reflecting many historical crises of the twentieth century. These include “Georg” being drafted into a German cavalry infantry unit in late 1944 at age 17 and being sent at age 18 to Soviet labor camps for over a year. Eluding easy categorization, Georg’s memoir deviates from the standard “Old Communist” memoir as described by Catherine Epstein. His experiences at Soviet camps do much to explain his willingness to adapt himself to his new circumstances—even to the point of writing an IM report about the target in question.
Morrison concludes by probing several ethical dilemmas for the target writing about her own file: How much should she reveal about her IM? Should people’s names and details be changed and if so how and how much? After all, he informed on her—what is her responsibility to him?

Author

• Susan Signe Morrison, Texas State U