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The File A Personal History Timothy Garton Ash Books

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The File A Personal History Timothy Garton Ash Books

If you're interested in the Stasi and domestic spying in general, this is certainly a good book to pick up. Like most books on the topic it also manages to cover more general goings on within East Germany and behind the Iron Curtain. In particular, there is a small section of the book devoted to the authors experiences with the solidarity movement in Poland.

I started reading this book with no knowledge that Mr Ash (the author) was a journalist. Therefore, I was somewhat disappointed that the book read with the uncanny tenor of that profession versus a more common man's analysis of their file and those involved with it. Since Mr Ash was reporting on goings on within East Germany and Poland, hence the creation of his file, there were points throughout the book where it seemed less about his file and more about the work he'd done. Although they are inextricably linked, I at times felt that the balance between the two tilted too far towards a biography.

That being said, the opportunity to read about Mr Ash's experiences interviewing those intimate with his file was very enjoyable and provided insights into both Eastern Germany and human nature itself. This is made all the more interesting by his review of the Stasi files about the informers themselves as well as the history of the Stasi agents. These sections of the book were by far my favorite and made the entire experience worthwhile.


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The File A Personal History Timothy Garton Ash Books Reviews

Excellent book.
I particularly liked the way he developed the comparisons of how he remembered the events through a journal and how the Security Department recorded the events and their interpretations
This book addresses the Big Brothers of East Germany during the cold war. The author details what he went through to obtain his own file, and the reactions of the people who acted as spies or government agents. We know that secret police organizations are often nefarious, but we don't know the details until we read books like this one. Enlightening.
Ash's story of his own Stasi file from his stay in Berlin reveals the awful ways in which the police state turns friends, family, and neighbors against each other. From this account, the reader gets a sense of the deeper wounds such a state inflicts upon society, wounds not of imprisonment or suppresion, but an erosion of trust.
In The File Timothy Garton Ash confronts the people who informed on him after opening a file that the Stasi kept on him during his time in East Germany (GDR). He gains access to the files of the individuals who informed on him to the Stasi and also to the informants themselves by first stating that he has a professional interest as a historian and secondly, a personal interest because they participated in keeping records on him. When questioning the informants he often inquiries whether they remember informing on him, how they became informants, what these informants felt about informing and themselves while they were doing it, and how do they feel about informing and the East German government now. Often when confronted the informants seem to want to project blame elsewhere. To them they either did no harm or they were just doing their job. It was the Stasi or GDR who deserved to be blamed.

The only thing that within the book that I wish was done differently was the author's placing blame on people or to find them as either good or bad. The questioning of whether they felt blame or guilt was quite different then him asserting these characteristics on these individuals. Although it is unfair to fault him for this, his personal investment somewhat diminishes the historical, objective approach I desired from the book. I would have preferred him to allow the reader to decide for him/herself the guilty or not guilty verdict.

The File is a historical analysis of one file and one person's experience with the Stasi and East German Government. Because the author is analyzing his own life there is a deal of personal bias when it comes to how an particular informant/person should be viewed, however, this does not diminish from the book. Instead, it offers greater insight into how this individual felt about the GDR, the role of the Stasi in East German society, and the role of the East German citizens as informants. Furthermore, the personal approach The File offers allows the audience to experience for themselves the emotions and events of the author's life.

All in all The File is an excellent case study into East German Society, the East German Government, the Stasi and the experiences of a captalist foreigner residing temporarily within a communist government/society.
While my experiences were not nearly as extensive as the author's, I too had some contact with East Germans in the 1980s and from what I'm told, I had a Stasi file. So I was interested in reading this book. Unfortunately, the book is a bit of a difficult read. Garton Ash's style is a bit unwieldy at times and the book can tend to wander off subject a bit as well as present some prose that is not easily readable. If you are looking for a book on the Stasi, this one only partially fits the bill. There is indeed a good deal of information on the Stasi and what became of them after the wall fell, and there are some good stories from the author's time in East Germany. However, the author seems to be just as hung up on things like memory, his own personal history and public acceptance. He is obviously highly critical of the process of informing and highly protective of personal privacy, but he never quite explains clearly why he feels so strongly about it, beyond the obvious opposition anyone would have to the prying eyes of the secret police. This is one of those books in which you have to get past a whole bunch of other things, including the author's personal hangups to get to what you really want out of the reading experience. Since there are very few other books on this topic available, this one is worth checking out. It will be just good enough to hold your interest, but not as great as it could have been.
If you're interested in the Stasi and domestic spying in general, this is certainly a good book to pick up. Like most books on the topic it also manages to cover more general goings on within East Germany and behind the Iron Curtain. In particular, there is a small section of the book devoted to the authors experiences with the solidarity movement in Poland.

I started reading this book with no knowledge that Mr Ash (the author) was a journalist. Therefore, I was somewhat disappointed that the book read with the uncanny tenor of that profession versus a more common man's analysis of their file and those involved with it. Since Mr Ash was reporting on goings on within East Germany and Poland, hence the creation of his file, there were points throughout the book where it seemed less about his file and more about the work he'd done. Although they are inextricably linked, I at times felt that the balance between the two tilted too far towards a biography.

That being said, the opportunity to read about Mr Ash's experiences interviewing those intimate with his file was very enjoyable and provided insights into both Eastern Germany and human nature itself. This is made all the more interesting by his review of the Stasi files about the informers themselves as well as the history of the Stasi agents. These sections of the book were by far my favorite and made the entire experience worthwhile.