Betrayal of Interpersonal Trust by Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter in the German Democratic Republic Mein Gott, hilf mir, diese tödliche Liebe zu überleben
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Abstract
Following the post-World War II division of Germany, the communist, single-party regime of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) maintained authority through the Ministry of State Security (Stasi), which itself employed an expansive network of unofficial collaborators (Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter) to gather intelligence on suspected dissidents. Collaborators often spied on loved ones, raising the question of what variables would result in social decision-making that valued the state above friends and family. When the models proposed by Stevens and Fiske (1995), Sternberg (1986), and Laursen and Faur (2022) are applied to the context of East German society, certain situational and personal factors begin to emerge that increased vulnerability to social pressure applied by the Stasi. The recruitment of collaborators created a general sense of paranoia that permeated all facets of life in the GDR, which essentially created a positive feedback loop of distress, the effects of which are still apparent today, after German reunification.
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