Erich Mielke: The Stasi File That Could Have Brought Down Erich Honecker
On the 15th January 1990, thousands of East German protesters stormed the Stasi Headquarters in Berlin. Once seen as the centre of civil oppression where Erich Mielke’s Stasi operated with impunity, the protestors stormed the building without fear as the GDR crumbled following the fall of the Berlin Wall the previous November.
Their actions that night preserved hundreds of thousands of documents that documented the citizens of the GDR in detail. By 1989, the Stasi held archives containing nearly 180 kilometres of documents focusing on the State's activity during their 40-year reign. The state security of the GDR employed 91,000 full-time employees and up to 189,000 unofficial spies who provided them with intel on their citizens. Those who stormed the headquarters that night helped to preserve the history of the organisations deepest and darkest secrets. Today, files that were destroyed either by hand or by the burnt-out shredders found soon after, are being painstakingly pieced back together to reveal even more secrets.
Found inside the head of the Stasi’s office safe was something special. It was where Erich Mielke kept his most precious secrets. Inside the safe was a red imitation leather briefcase filled with highly confidential files. There was one file, in particular, that shows us the power…
