Runde Ecke: How an idealogical dictatorship turned calculated cruelty into a daily routine

They would steam open all your mail, record your every phone call, track your daily movements, and secretly enter your home to copy any document you hadn’t managed to hide.

If they suspected you might harbor anti-government sentiments, they would engage in a years-long clandestine campaign to ruin utterly your personal and professional life—merely to ensure you had neither the time, nor the resources, nor the will to oppose the state.

They were the Stasi, the East German secret police, and their Leipzig headquarters was the Runde Ecke. This stately “Round Corner” building now contains a wonderfully homespun “Power and Banality” museum that documents the Stasi era of terror in the very offices from which they waged ongoing war against their own citizens.

It's a surprising and disturbing window into the everyday middle management of running a dictatorship and reflexively cruel police state.
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