Joachim Gauck

Former Federal Commissioner for the STASI files of the former GDR

Mr. Gauck headed the federal agency responsible for the files of the secret police network of the former German Democratic Republic, better know as the STASI.The Stasi employed 90,000 people full-time, 174,000 more as unofficial collaborators and maintained files on more than one third of the population.Access to these files and questions of privacy were to become controversial political issues during and after the reunification of the two Germanies.

Executive Board Room, Willits-Hallowell Center

A documentary by director Tamara Trampe and cameraman Johann Feindt. It profiles, through a series of grueling interrogations, a Dr. Jochen Girke, an operative psychologist who worked for the Stasi specializing in training interrogators and prison psychologists (in the GDR).

Monday, February 25

Co-sponsored and organized by:the German Consulate and the Department of German Studies at Mount Holyoke College, the DEFA Archive at the University of Massachusetts, and the Five College Faculty Seminar in German Studies.