The Berlin Wall

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“The wall is the thing that defined him”
Funder explores how lives were fundamentally reshaped by the wall Anna Funder’s investigative account of the totalitarian rule of the GDR and the impact the creation of the Berlin Wall, Stasiland, provides insight into the manner in which the wall altered the lives of those who it imprisoned. The author portrays the lives of the victims of the Stasi to have been affected in a devastating way following the erection of the wall. She further demonstrates the life of Stasi operatives to have been entailed in their beliefs being reaffirmed following the fall of the wall, crystalizing their communist beliefs. Funder further demonstrates the wall to have represented a major restructure of German society. …show more content…
Funder enlightens the reader of the manner in which the wall created an overwhelming sense of paranoia amongst GDR citizens, by presenting statistics to demonstrate the presence of the Stasi by informing her audience that the Stasi employed a vast network of “one informer for every 6.5 people”. By exposing a statistic, Funder presents to her audience a palpable measure of the manner in which the Wall ensued in the creation of a totalitarian state. This allows Funder to rationalize the contempt felt towards the GDR and Stasi by demonstrating how the Wall and the Stasi ensued in shaping the GDR to have been a highly regimented and constrained society. Such a portrayal of the manner in which this power of the wall shaped the lives of Funder’s interviewees is seen through Herr Christian who sought to continue such practices of total surveillance into the new German society by working as a private investigator. Furthermore, Funder asserts the total control of the Stasi to have impacted on the lives of the people by referring to the smell samples kept at the Stasi headquarters. By informing her audience of this absurd practice, Funder conveys the length to which the Stasi were prepared to go to protect the wall, suggesting the wall drove the GDR to ludicrous methods to maintain power of the people, shaping East Germany to a Mecca of fear and paranoia, evidenced by Miriam being presented as highly suspicious by avoiding Funder by failing to return calls and
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