katemc's review against another edition
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
A fascinating look/back at a crucial moment in history, from the perspective of a chronicling outsider. History is such an interesting discipline for all the approaches one can take to it. This approach of history through researched memoir/oral history is particularly compelling.
emmkayt's review against another edition
4.0
3.5. I read some of Timothy Garton Ash’s analysis of postwar Germany many (many!) years ago as an undergraduate, and was intrigued more recently to come across his now over twenty year old memoir. Its focus is narrow: as a young man in the late 70s/early 80s, he spent time doing research and writing in East Germany. After the Berlin Wall came down, Garton Ash learned that he, like so many East Germans, was the subject of a Stasi file, and that a number of people with whom he interacted were informers for the East German secret service. He applies to see his file, matches up what appears in it with his patchy memories and his diaries, visits his informers and the Stasi officers involved in his surveillance, and thinks about the socio-historical and moral implications of the whole thing.
I found the author’s visits to informers and officers, and his thoughts about the big picture very interesting. And it’s quite amazing, the extent to which the reunified Germany opened up the Stasi files. He muses interestingly about the effect on the staffers of the agency tasked with permitting individuals access to their files “However sober-minded and responsible the people, the procedures and the whole atmosphere, there is still a voyeuristic thrill to knowing such intimate details of other people’s lives.” And later, “How to work with poison every day and not yourself be poisoned?” These were passages that resonated significantly for me.
Garton Ash’s memories of the time when he was under surveillance were less gripping - Stasi surveillance extended so broadly that the fact one was being watched doesn’t necessarily make what one was doing at the time all that interesting!
I found the author’s visits to informers and officers, and his thoughts about the big picture very interesting. And it’s quite amazing, the extent to which the reunified Germany opened up the Stasi files. He muses interestingly about the effect on the staffers of the agency tasked with permitting individuals access to their files “However sober-minded and responsible the people, the procedures and the whole atmosphere, there is still a voyeuristic thrill to knowing such intimate details of other people’s lives.” And later, “How to work with poison every day and not yourself be poisoned?” These were passages that resonated significantly for me.
Garton Ash’s memories of the time when he was under surveillance were less gripping - Stasi surveillance extended so broadly that the fact one was being watched doesn’t necessarily make what one was doing at the time all that interesting!
komet2020's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
3.0
In The File: A Personal History, the author shares with the reader the experiences he had upon returning to what was once East Germany in the immediate post-Cold War years of the early 1990s from a series of visits he made to the Federal Authority for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). The purpose of these visits: to examine and analyze a secret file that had been kept on Timothy Garton Ash by the GDR secret police (the Stasi) who had unknowingly been surveilled during the late 1970s and early 1980s, when, as a young Oxford graduate, he had lived and worked in East Berlin.
The book goes on to chronicle the trek Garton Ash undertook to find out who the people were (many of whom were friends or associates of his during his time in the GDR) who had spied on him (i.e. acted as informers or IMs) and the Stasi officers who were responsible for keeping him under observation. Many of these people Garton Ash was able to interview. It proves to be a very revelatory experience, shedding light on how living in a totalitarian country by a secret police that, as a matter of routine, kept checks on virtually every citizen in the GDR. What I was surprised to learn was that, given a country of its size, the Stasi in the GDR had a much more extensive number of people working for it than the Gestapo had in Nazi Germany!
At first, I wasn't sure that I was going to like this book because it started off a bit slow. But as I became more immersed in the story, it was fascinating to be reminded --- as someone who had lived through the last 25 years of the Cold War --- of what the atmosphere was like in Europe in the late 1970s and 1980s. For anyone with an interest in Cold War history, I recommend reading "The File: A Personal History."
The book goes on to chronicle the trek Garton Ash undertook to find out who the people were (many of whom were friends or associates of his during his time in the GDR) who had spied on him (i.e. acted as informers or IMs) and the Stasi officers who were responsible for keeping him under observation. Many of these people Garton Ash was able to interview. It proves to be a very revelatory experience, shedding light on how living in a totalitarian country by a secret police that, as a matter of routine, kept checks on virtually every citizen in the GDR. What I was surprised to learn was that, given a country of its size, the Stasi in the GDR had a much more extensive number of people working for it than the Gestapo had in Nazi Germany!
At first, I wasn't sure that I was going to like this book because it started off a bit slow. But as I became more immersed in the story, it was fascinating to be reminded --- as someone who had lived through the last 25 years of the Cold War --- of what the atmosphere was like in Europe in the late 1970s and 1980s. For anyone with an interest in Cold War history, I recommend reading "The File: A Personal History."
mickymac's review
5.0
excellent book, intelligent, well-written exploration of the duplicitous world of East Germany. Garton-ASh unpicks the paranoia and motivations of a network of informers, showing compassion and sympathy for the agents who recorded trivia about him to support a repressive dictatorship. It also ends with the reflection that Britain has its own hidden spies, damaging people's lives by innuendo.