Bärbel Bohley

German artist and politician (1945-2010)

"All of these investigations," she said, "the thorough investigation of the Stasi structures, the methods with which they worked and are still working, all of this will fall into the wrong hands. These structures will be examined in great detail - in order to then take them over. They will be adapted a little so that they fit into a free Western society. You won't necessarily arrest the troublemakers either. There are finer ways to render someone harmless. But the secret prohibitions, the observation, the suspicion, the fear, the isolating and exclusion, the branding and silencing of those who don't conform - that will come back, believe me. Institutions will be created that work much more effectively, much more finely than the Stasi. The constant lying will also return, the disinformation, the fog in which everything loses its contours." Bohley in the spring of 1991 after Chaim Noll Quote Bohley in German Language after Chaim Noll