“Funder shows that victims of the Stasi were never fully healed following the collapse of the East German regime”
Anna Funder’s book, Stasiland, recounts the experiences of civilians and soldiers during the Cold War. In her book, Funder explores the idea that the victims of the Stasi will never be able to fully reconciliate with what they went through. This idea is explored through characters like Julia, Miriam and Frau Paul.
Julia, Anna’s landlord in the novel, explains her experience with the Stasi and how it affected her life irreparably. Julia is described as someone who is mistrustful, anxious and unable to submit to authority due to the nature of her experiences with the Stasi and the government. Julia explains to Funder how the government had been controlling her life and stopping her…show more content… Up until her interview with Major N., Julia had thought “the failed exam” and the “extraordinary unemployment” were all a coincidence. Julia later goes on to confess that she believes she is “definitely psychologically damaged” after her experiences with the Stasi and finding out she had been followed and her life investigated. Julia’s experiences with the Stasi under the East German regime lead her to develop deep psychological scarring and other issues like anxiety and inabilities to submit to authority. Funder’s portrayal of Julia’s story highlights the abusiveness and invasiveness of her experiences with the Stasi during the East German regime, and the lasting psychological damage she suffers because of it.
Funder, in her novel Stasiland, explores the idea that the victims of the Stasi were left with irreparable psychological damage, even after the fall of the East German regime through the stories and experiences of Miriam Weber. Miriam Weber claims she became and “official Enemy of the State at sixteen.” Since then, she had been put into solitary confinement, jailed and tortured for periods of time that would
