Surveilling Sex: Prostitution and the East German Stasi, 1950-1989
| dc.contributor.advisor | Todd, Lisa | |
| dc.contributor.author | Bailey, Jordyn | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-01-29T14:43:24Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-01-29T14:43:24Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2024-12 | |
| dc.description.abstract | This dissertation offers a new approach to the history of the East German Ministry for State Security (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, MfS, Stasi). It uses feminist methodologies of care to embed the experiences of female informers classified by the Stasi as ‘sexually promiscuous’ in broader frameworks of gender and sexuality research and explores the convergence of Stasi surveillance and prostitution control in the German Democratic Republic. The MfS and its extended arm, ‘Working Area 1’ of the Criminal Police (K1), considered ‘promiscuous’ women to be social pariahs, sources of venereal diseases, and threats to the Socialist state, but they also acknowledged that their connections to ‘class enemies’ made them valuable informants. To identify and exert control over women, the Stasi used the state’s existing carceral framework to take advantage of larger state efforts to regulate prostitution, a phenomenon that was expected to disappear under socialism, in East Germany. Therefore, the dissertation argues that only by examining prostitution, venereal disease, and the Stasi surveillance network in tandem, can we fully understand the gendered exploitation of lives in the GDR. This study uses previously unexamined Stasi files to explore state intervention into sexual lives that state socialism considered morally and medically dangerous. It begins by documenting female Stasi informers’ encounters with the police, and their frequent stays in social homes, workhouses, prisons and venereological wards prior to their recruitment. It then explores women’s recruitment experiences, which often involved threats of legal action if they did not agree to collaborate. Next, the study examines how female informers used their past experiences navigating the carceral and healthcare systems to ‘exit’ the Stasi surveillance system. The study is the first to detail the sexual abuse perpetrated by male officers on the female informants they considered ‘available.’ Finally, it analyzes constructions of Stasi informers in contemporary popular culture. By foregrounding the experiences of vulnerable women and making their roles as social and political actors visible, this dissertation offers a necessary new analysis of Stasi practices. It also highlights the broader historiographical need for greater focus on gender and sexuality within the Stasi. | |
| dc.description.copyright | © Jordyn Bailey 2024 | |
| dc.format.extent | xi, 293 | |
| dc.format.medium | electronic | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://unbscholar.lib.unb.ca/handle/1882/38239 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.publisher | University of New Brunswick | |
| dc.relation | Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) | |
| dc.relation | German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) | |
| dc.relation | Waterloo Centre for German Studies | |
| dc.relation | Central European History Society (CEHS) | |
| dc.relation | Gregg Centre for the Study of War and Society | |
| dc.rights | http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_f1cf | |
| dc.subject.discipline | History | |
| dc.title | Surveilling Sex: Prostitution and the East German Stasi, 1950-1989 | |
| dc.type | doctoral thesis | |
| oaire.license.condition | other | |
| thesis.degree.discipline | History | |
| thesis.degree.grantor | University of New Brunswick | |
| thesis.degree.level | doctorate | |
| thesis.degree.name | Ph.D. |