Customer Reviews
Forgiven but not forgotten? - By: Joachimski, 12 Mar 2008 
Timothy Garton Ash discovered after the reunification of the two Germanies, that the Stasi had kept a file on him under the code name "Romeo"(He thinks this name came from the Alfa Romeo he was driving at the time). They recorded everything about him from his first stayin West Berlinin 1978 as a student of history from Oxford who researched for his thesis on the Third Reich, & got specially interestedin his person when he spent some timein East Berlin where he was allowed to study archives for his work.
So these files brought the older Garton Ash of the nineties back to his professional beginnings, and, since he kept his own notes from the time, he isin the unique position of comparing his own view of his life & past events with the outward view of those informing on him. The first half of the book deals with the incongruities of personal memory & historical events & the forever shifting perception of how things happened & what your own role was. This is sometimes a trifle tedious, because, as Garton Ash himself says, as a priviliged foreigner he had no negative or even dangerous consequences to fear, compared with East Germans, whose file brought them to Bautzen prison for years or ruined their personal & professional life. On the other hand, the "outsider's" view of this total surveillance of every move you made, every personal contact you established, is grippingin its honesty.
In the second, more thrilling part of the book Garton Ash interviews all the people who spied on him, the "IMs" as they were lovingly called by the communist system of the GDR. And the author tries very hard to be fair, to find out what made these informers do their dirty work. There is a German saying: "To understand all means to condone all", & sometimes Garton Ash is dangerously close to that. Still, it's very unusual for a Briton to show so much understanding, that he even doesn't give the real names of his informers,in order not to cause them problems. And,in an ironic turn at the end, we learn that the British Secret Service had a file on the author, too.
Allin all, "the File" is a valuable counterpart of "The Balaton Brigade" by Georgy Konrad.
Fascinating example of the Stasi at work - By: Franz Bieberkopf, 23 Jul 2007 Garton Ash would be the first to admit that the Stasi treated him,like most foriegnersin the GDR,with kid gloves compared to the way they treated East German citizens they had cause to investigate.Having said that,this book is a great read,and shows how the Stasi went to work on foriegn residents of the GDR.
Garton Ash had the opportunity to read a copy of his file(now more or less impossible due to a new law of 2000)and then tried to find the IMs(unofficial collaborators)of the Stasi who passed on information about him.He makes it quite clear that he dosen't want most of them identified (can't say whyin this review,I'd ruin the story)and shows some understanding,even pity,for them.
Only four stars as it's too short,it could do with a more detailed considered approach.It's a great story of the old saw "Absolute power corrupts absolutely".Readers who never lived under totalitarianism will appreciate how lucky they are.The more perceptive will learn that those not as lucky as themselves had to make difficult decisions all the time.Pointing fingers & playing the blame game,as Garton Ash makes clear,is never a good way to gain any kind of understanding of such people.
A Stasi file from many perspectives - By: JohnC, 23 Jun 2006 
In part contemporary history,in part investigative journalism,in part memoir &in part essay,The File is a remarkable book. It is well-written, penetrating & readable.
Garton Ash livedin East Berlinin 1980, working on a doctoral dissertation on the Nazi period but also producing journalistic pieces on East Germany. He was the subject of Stasi surveillance & the core of the book is an account of what he foundin the file that the Stasi kept on him & his subsequent exploration of how it was put together by tracking down & interviewing informers & others & by drawing upon his own recollections & notes of the time.
The File also describes as historical phenomena the Stasi & the so-called Gauck Authority, which provides access to the Stasi files, & it contains a more general treatise on such themes as memory, attitudes to the past & the factors lying behind the darker side of the history of Europein the twentieth century.
There is a primary focus on the people who were involvedin Garton Ash's lifein East Germany: his friends, those who informed on him & Stasi officers. Their motivations, strengths, weaknesses & background are describedin a detail which is never tedious. The clear driving force behind Garton Ash's interest here is the desire to find out why people acted as they did.
Contrast & irony permeate the book much as they do a novel. Perhaps the most important are the intimate proximity of high European culture & systematic inhumanity, which Garton Ash calls the "Goethe Oak", & the choice between the heroic resistance of a Stauffenberg & the collaboration of a Speer. As he openly admits, he only has partial explanations for these phenomena.
Garton Ash's somewhat informal style is thoroughly appropriate. He has a marvellous ability to evoke a time & a place economically. He succeedsin conveying the thrill of piecing together information, identifying sources & persuading them to talk.
My only criticism is that the apparatus of a historical study, such as a bibliography, footnotes & an index, would have been beneficial.
Night and fog lead to the mists of the morning. - By: , 22 Jun 2001 Berlin, a city divided ,in a country the same.Where the War has broken everything, the lives of the people, families, fathers & sons. Here is where the streets end themselvesin politics. This is where the ruins are removed, only to make a Death-Zone. Walls proliferate, & the biggest of them all falls across Berlin, like a scabin maintainance of a wound. The roads are cleared, the debris liesin peoples hearts instead, piled upin consequence. West & East, Berlin streets echo with the footsteps of each other.In the East , dark memories mass, still cling to pockmarked buildings, survivors of the battle. In the West, new glass shines back the blinding sun of to-morrow or even the day after. Underpinning all, like the sand beneath Berlin itself, are the Nazis & their man, Adolf Hitler. Into this comes the boarding school boy from the land of continuity, out of Oxbridge, to take on the World. Perhaps he knows how it is to be dispossesed & disowned for he wandersin the half - light of that city, Berlin,East & West,inexperienced yet perceptive,in sympathy with its people. There he finds discontinuity, schism,division,all played out on the streetsin a banality of pursuit, of shadowing, after a haunted truth. It seems the personal is political,in a sadness beyond telling, typed out by informersin a message to the blind, between lines of false praise to the Ministry. Minds made ghosts, wanderingin Friedrichstrasse,in Unter den Linden, wafting across bounderies at their masters whim. Immaterial themselves, they sieze,in paradox, the minutia of each moment, record each step & breath of their "object", that unofficial stranger whose footsteps guide their own. It must mean something,in their amorphous eyes - this Englishman, walkingin the damp & dark with a woman of the DDR. So they hide & watch time burn & sift the ash for meaning. And it meant nothing! Nomore than just two people holding the hours between them. Two lives stepping together through their own shadows. All is marked down for other eyes, a life made menu of a forgotten meal, placedin its file by other hands like treasured dust. It was licenced craziness all this, a State paid metaphysic to find meaning. What they found was emptiness & defeat. Sometimes they found themselves, here where everything & nothing was proven. This was a self-made crisis & the only way to understand it was by the heart. But the heart was walled in! Swimmers, minus the micro-chip, they were drownedin the miles of information. They sufferedin this lonely place, made speechless by the ocean of words. Silence, stagnation, watchfulness,the organs of a State with its back to the wall. Down came the Wall. All "The Files" woke up. Previously forbidden eyes now viewed themselves. Now began an autopsy using light. Everything was revealed, betrayals, greed, fear,the jottings of lives lost to themselves,seeking securityin the shadows of power. Men & women,but mainly men, of quiet desperation, servants of a State which sought the narritive of itselfin the rape of its citizens. The authors "File" turns up. Buff-coloured, dusty,faded,stained by theft. The child he never knew he had, another self, strange, out of the hands of strangers. It is a coffin & a grave as well, borne from a shelf. It beckons as if below the earth. So he ,in his turn, pursues light, truthin that darkness, through the shuttered places of the I.M.'s (informers).He meets them, finds faces busted by the years & the knowledge of deceit. They live within walls still, now cardboard thick, everything they have ever done , contained inside the files of others. The clock ticks for them, a hunter, each moment is transfixedin a landscape of memory. They wait to be broken as ifin a circus of pain. The past they made now stands by their door on watch. They have no-one & nothing to write about. Their nakedness & their life draws jeers & prosecution, hate & laughter. Humanity divided, plundered depths, a heart the same. The author deals also with those Stasi officers who dealt with him. Often he find themin a form of hiding, desperate for their cases back & their importance. They are unrepentant, having done no more than any guardian does or would. Many are dressedin the cheap leasurewear of the poor, their big bellies wrappedin the colour of poverty & a rich anger. They live onin a new silence,in new traps of meaning,from words turned informer. Backin England ( or is it Britain) he visits M.I.5. His experience of the secret police sits like a crow upon his shoulders. It pecks at his heart. Is the Stasi mind-set everywhere? Herein England too? The file he hasin Berlin moulders inside him, like stale food, forcing him to vomit up a neccessary question. Fatherless boys, war-torn societies,these are part of the cause, the author thinks, of the whole tragedy of his & the others files. And I thought " How manyin M.I.5 went to boarding school & were brought up minus mum & dad?" But the author has learned. Love saves a lot of wasted time.He tells us he will try to be a proper parent to his children,a father to his boys. This is a useful bookin our continued discussion of Europes past ,present & future.
Well written and enjoyable, though not without failing - By: , 15 May 2001 Garton Ash was fortunate enough to have been at the right place & at the right time, & his experiences have led to an enjoyable read.
However, the depth to which this book addresses the issues of the Stasi is questionable. Lets not forget that Garton Ash was submitted to the mildest of the human rights abuses that the Stasi have been known to have committed, & this along with many other issues lead to 'The File' being an example of the Stasi's activities, but by no means representative of their worst.
Nevertheless, an entertaining read.
