The typed-out top section of this index card lists just six words: “Breakfast 2 Eggs, cooked 4 ½ minutes, pricked beforehand”. It might appear strange that, among the thousands of files left behind by the Stasi after the collapse of the DDR, such an apparently mundane document would stand out – but the notoriety of this index card comes not from what it details, but for whom it was prepared. This item was discovered in the desk of Ursula Drasdo, the personal secretary of Erich Mielke, who was head of the East German State Security Service, or Stasi, for more than 30 years. It provides detailed instructions on how to serve his breakfast.
On the left of the index card there is a small rectangle. This represents a tray, upon which should be placed a carafe of coffee with a separate pitcher of milk. At the upper left of the central square, a triangle marked “egg cup” sits above a circle marked “egg”. To the right of that, there’s a large circle labelled “bread”, then a white napkin, a spoon and some jam. In the lower section, there is a triangular napkin and a plate with an egg, a spoon and a knife. Above that a single word is encircled: “salt”. This is not a lavish meal, but there is an eerie precision to these ordinary details.
A classified directive issued in 1958 states the mission of the Stasi very clearly: “The Ministry of State Security is entrusted with the task of preventing or throttling at the earliest stages – using whatever means and methods may be necessary – all attempts to delay or to hinder the victory of socialism.” Erich Mielke assumed leadership of the organisation in 1957 and remained in charge until the collapse of the regime. In that time, he built up a whole empire of control. Before 1953, the Stasi employed around 4,000 people. By 1975, that number had increased to 59,458; by 1989, as many as 105,000. And that’s without counting a huge network of unofficial collaborators and informers.
Mielke’s life seems to span across wholly distinct eras. Born in tenement housing in Wedding in 1907, his father – a poor, uneducated woodworker – was a sympathiser of the Communist Party of Germany, the KPD. Growing up, Mielke saw violent street fighting between the police, fascists and communists. By 1931, the KPD had adopted a policy of avenging each slain worker by killing two police officers. That was when Mielke joined an operation to assassinate a notoriously brutal police officer. After the success of the mission (the policeman was shot in the back, collapsing in the foyer of Babylon Kino), Mielke escaped to Moscow. There, he survived the Stalinist purges before leaving in 1936 to serve as an operative in the Spanish Civil War. On April 25, 1945, he returned to Germany, arriving on a Soviet aircraft along with other exiled German communists. Appointed head of the Stasi, he established one of the world’s most complex regimes of surveillance and collaboration, but also issued orders to combat countercultural groups: a 1983 directive was called Harte gegen punk, “Toughness against Punks”.
This precisely-detailed plain breakfast would seem to be a reflection of Mielke’s austere personality. But he would remain in charge of the Stasi even when the DDR attempted to liberalise, allowing its citizens more freedoms and consumer goods. To Mielke, though, a closer relationship with the West meant a greater need for surveillance. Absurdly, East Germany even began to “sell” its dissatisfied citizens to West Germany under a secret enterprise called Kommerzielle Koordinierung – and spent the resulting funds on Western products like blue jeans, bicycle tyres, men’s socks, outdoor shoes, tea towels, wine and chocolate.
Why are the instructions so detailed? Other index cards found in Mielke’s offices appear similarly obsessive: “draw the curtains on the two windows at the front near the minister”, “leave the door to the cloakroom open”, position the “wastepaper basket in the corner between the desk and the telephone”. But this logic of control contained some contradictions. By the 1980s, Stasi informers were spread so effectively in dissident groups that they often played leading roles there, sometimes pushing for more extreme positions. In the end, the apparent ease of the collapse of this highly-organised surveillance state seemed to surprise Mielke. In a later interview he asked: “How did it come that we simply gave up our DDR, just like that?”
