The File Read Online Free Page A

the East and the peace movement in the West.
    My own diary has a quite different chronology. Instead of the G7 summit, I note a long conversation with the poet James Fenton about German literature, Macaulay, and the (remote) possibility of journalism’s being an art form. Instead of the crucial January 1979 Guadeloupe summit, which led to the Nato twin-track decision, I have lunch with Jay Reddaway, a friend from undergraduate days, at the Café Moskau in East Berlin and then an evening in West Berlin that apparently proceeds via drinks at Bilitis to dinner at Foofie’s (can this be real?) and then more drink at Ax Bax. The pope in Poland does feature, but the first direct elections to the European Parliament find me having breakfast at the Café Einstein, visiting an art gallery and failing to complete an article for
The Spectator
.
    Where the historical chronology dourly records “Gromyko in Bonn,” I am in Franconia, drinking too much smoked beer and visiting the scene of Hitler’s Nuremberg rally. In my diary, Nato’s momentous twin-track decision is completely ignored. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan finds me on the night train to visit Albert Speer at his gingerbread house in Heidelberg. While Jimmy Carter is threatening sanctions against the Soviet Union, I am occupied with preparations for aparty. So much for living “in the heat of the Cold War”—to use the deliberately mixed metaphor of my friend Mark Wood, the Reuters correspondent in East Berlin.
    For this year and a half, the Stasi’s intelligence is fragmentary. There is the observation report on my East Berlin evening with “Beret.” In a summary report from department XX/4 (churches) they have correctly identified “Beret,” as well as listing two other West Berlin contacts, Ingrid [surname blacked out by Frau Schulz] and Heinrich [surname blacked out], together with my West Berlin telephone number. They also record that I was born in a place called Winbredow (that is, Wimbledon), describe my Oxford college as “St. ansowts” (St. Antony’s) and give a date wrong by three months for a journey to Poland. They indicate that I am working, together with the English citizen Morris [surname blacked out], on the conflict between the churches and the regime in Nazi Germany. However, “it has been established that G. has extensive knowledge of cultural monuments and places, cultural
[sic]
and cultural personalities of the GDR and especially of the Bauhaus problematic. In June 1979 G. first identified himself as a so-called freelance contributor to the English weekly ‘Spekta,’ which wished to write a report on the antifascist resistance struggle.” The man from Spekta.
    This information derives mainly from department XX/4’s own inquiry into the Reverend Beech-tree and from a four-page report by Lieutenant Küntzel, of the Erfurt office, on a meeting with Contact Person “Georg” and IMV “Michaela.” The V after the IM indicates that “Michaela” belonged to the Stasi’s highest class of informer,those deployed in direct contact with the enemy. Lieutenant Küntzel reports that on June 30, 1979, Dr. Georg [surname blacked out], living in Schloss [name blacked out] in Weimar, was visited by an unknown person with an English or American accent who introduced himself as Tim Gartow-Ash, a freelance contributor to the English weekly “Spacktator.”
    This blacking out is, as you can see, often ineffectual, for there cannot have been many Dr. Georg [somebodies] living in a
Schloss
in Weimar. On the other hand, the law on the Stasi files grants the right to anonymity only to innocent third parties or victims, not to collaborators. A glance at my diary establishes the identity of Dr. Georg, as well as the fact that the Stasi has again got the date wrong.
    Dr. Georg was one of those older Jewish communists who were among the most interesting people to talk to in East Germany, indeed throughout communist-ruled Europe. I probably knew at the time