by David Young
Ministry for State Security (MfS)
The East German secret police, abbreviated to MfS from the German initials, and colloquially known as the Stasi – a contraction of the German name
Mutti
Mum, or Mummy
Neues Deutschland
The official East German Party newspaper
Oberleutnant
First Lieutenant
Oberliga
The top division of the East German football league
Oberst
Colonel
Oma
Grandma, granny
Ostsee
Baltic Sea
People’s Police
The regular East German state police (Volkspolizei in German)
Plattenbauten
Concrete slab apartment blocks
Polizeiruf 110
East German TV crime drama (literally ‘Police Call 110’, the equivalent to 999)
Räuchermännchen
Incense-burning figurine
Republikflüchtlingen
Official term for people who escaped or tried to escape from East Germany
Sauwetter
Dirty/rotten weather
S-bahn
Rapid transit railway
Scheisse
Shit
See
Lake
Sekt
German sparkling wine
Śnieżka
Snowball (a popular name for a female dog or bitch in Poland)
Stahl
Steel
Stasi
Colloquial term for the Ministry for State Security (see above)
Szkopy
A pejorative Polish slang term for German soldiers (literally ‘castrated rams’)
Tatort
West German TV crime drama (literally ‘Crime Scene’)
Tierpark
East Berlin Zoo
Trümmerfrauen
The ‘rubble women’ who helped clear up and reconstruct Germany and Austria at the end of the Second World War
U-bahn
Underground railway
Unterleutnant
Sub-lieutenant
Vati
Dad, or Daddy
Volkspolizei
See People’s Police above
Vopo
Short form of Volkspolizei, usually referring to uniformed police officers, as opposed to detectives
Wohnkomplex
Housing estate
Wyspa Teatralna
Theatre Island (in Polish)
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Some of the science in this novel is based on truth, but most of it is a fictional extrapolation from that truth.
Dr Uwe Gaissler is a totally fictional creation and is not meant to represent anyone, living or dead.
However, real-life research was undertaken at Humboldt University endocrinology department which was seen as part of a campaign to prevent homosexuality. This advocated the manipulation of the hormone levels of pregnant women to prevent them giving birth to homosexual offspring. A central part of that research was based on experiments on rats, and argued that sexual drive could be changed by hormonal implantations through the administration of androgens. The theory was defended because of high suicide rates amongst the homosexual population. Based on rat experiments, brain surgery was also proposed as a method of altering the sexuality of adult humans – although as far as I know, never actually carried out.
My story, though, is entirely fictional. Again, as far as I know, there were no experiments on humans and no financial support from any American pharmaceutical companies in relation to changing people’s sexuality. However, a report commissioned by the Charité Hospital released in 2016 confirmed that more than 900 other medical experiments were carried out by western pharmaceutical companies on East Germans between 1961 and 1990, including 320 clinical trials in the 1980s. The Stasi kept a close eye on the studies, and an office under Stasi control negotiated the contracts in order to raise hard currency for the communist state.
East Germany legalised homosexuality in 1968, apparently to show how progressive and egalitarian socialism could be. This was five years before homosexuality was fully decriminalised in West Germany. Nevertheless, East German homosexuals interviewed in a 2013 film denied that the state was indeed progressive in this way. ‘It was ultra-conservative,’ they said, and there were numerous examples of discrimination against, and active targeting of, gays.
The use of heterosexual ‘Romeos’ by the Stasi (more often than not, female secretaries) to glean information from West German politicians and businessmen is well-documented. But what is less well known is that the Stasi also used gay Romeos. The same 2013 documentary mentioned above, Out in East Berlin (by Jochen Hicks and Andreas Strohfeldt), includes an interview with Romeo victim Eduard Stapel. It wasn’t until Eduard accessed his Stasi file after the fall of the Wall that he discovered the full extent of the Stasi’s surveillance of homosexuals. However, the target of my Romeos, Georg Metzger, is a wholly fictional creation.
When the archives were opened after reunification in 1990, another major discovery was the Stasi’s links to the Red Army Faction (RAF). The Stasi trained RAF members responsible for the 1981 bombing of the US air base at Ramstein. And the Guardian reported in 2011 that one of the RAF’s founders had been a paid Stasi informer.
I should point out that the winter of 1976/77 was not – as far as I know – especially harsh, so Müller and Tilsner’s drive over the iced-up river is a bit of authorial licence. Although the Neisse at Gubin does freeze over completely in some years (and locals say it would be strong enough to hold a car in the coldest years – which included some during the DDR era), I don’t know if it did when the novel is set. Nevertheless, weather records show that in nearby Cottbus the minimum temperature recorded that winter was minus 17.5 ° Celsius, which was colder than the normal minimum, and the weather station at Ueckermünde – near the Polish border – recorded twenty-two days when the temperature never rose above zero.
Another bit of cheating by me for plot convenience concerns the footbridge connecting Guben and Gubin – it’s actually a modern construction and there wasn’t one in DDR times, although there was a road bridge. The Nazi tunnel under the Neisse linking Guben to Theatre Island is also fictional.
The Stasi’s Special Commissions – units that took over investigations from the People’s Police to keep them under wraps – were very real, and the subject of another German TV documentary in early 2017. And a special serious crimes squad with a national remit was indeed set up by the People’s Police, although not until the early 1980s.
Eisenhüttenstadt’s football team, BSG Stahl, did once play in the East German Oberliga, and was forcibly relegated in an illegal payments scandal. However, it actually happened a few years earlier than the fictional events in this novel.
The massive overburden slag-removing machine known colloquially as the ‘reclining Eiffel Tower’ does and did exist at Lichterfeld, although it’s now a museum piece (and well worth a visit). You can also still visit a working lignite mine in the Lausitz at Welzow Süd, which I’d thoroughly recommend. It’s like being on the set of a science fiction film.
Another visit that’s worth making is to the pretty little town of Bautzen, home to the hated Stasi prison of the same name, which is now preserved as a memorial. There was a women’s section, but I don’t think it included Cell 13. When you visit, pay attention to your fellow visitors and be respectful towards them. When I was looking round, I spotted a man lying down on one of the prison bunks, and began talking to him in my halting German. It transpired he was a former prisoner, jailed for some fairly trivial anti-state activity, making his first visit since he was incarcerated there in the 1970s.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many thanks to the various people who have helped to make my Karin Müller series a success so far – especially readers, reviewers, bloggers and library and bookshop staff.
Former East
German and ex-BBC World Service colleague Oliver Berlau very kindly once again checked my initial manuscript for errors, particularly things about the DDR. As always, any remaining mistakes are wholly my fault.
Stephanie Smith also kindly read an early draft and provided useful insights, as did fellow crime writers Steph Broadribb (aka Stephanie Marland) and Rod Reynolds.
Some of this book and its plot were run past the writers’ group set up by past students of my year (2012–14) on the City University London MA in Creative Writing (Crime Thriller option) – including Steph and Rod. It’s been great this year to see another in our number – Laura Shepherd-Robinson – agree a publishing deal. What a fantastic historical crime novel Blood and Sugar is. Watch out for it in 2019!
Many thanks to the other members of the group: Rob Hogg, James Holt and Seun Olatoye. I’m sure they’ll all have books on the shelves before too long.
For embarrassing themselves in helping to promote my last book around launch day, I’m very grateful to John Cornford (giving out promotional postcards at various motorway service stations), Pat Chappell (doing the same at Richmond station) and Jat Dhillon (bombarding the BBC newsroom with flyers).
Huge thanks are also due to my departing editor Joel Richardson, who’s gone to pastures new at Michael Joseph – and to the editor who took over from him, Sophie Orme, ably assisted by Rebecca Farrell. All three played important parts in the development of this novel.
And many thanks indeed to my fabulous literary agent Adam Gauntlett of Peters Fraser and Dunlop, who first spotted the potential in Stasi Child and managed to secure a new deal for the series this year – meaning there are now a total of five novels under contract. So at least two more after this!
Also, well done to the foreign rights team at PFD (Alexandra Cliff, Marilia Savvides, Rebecca Wearmouth, Laura Otal and Silvia Molteni) who’ve so far sold the Karin Müller series to eleven territories around the world, with hopefully more to come.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Young was born near Hull and – after dropping out of a Bristol University science degree – studied Humanities at Bristol Polytechnic. Temporary jobs cleaning ferry toilets and driving a butcher’s van were followed by a career in journalism with provincial newspapers, a London news agency, and international radio and TV newsrooms. He now writes in his garden shed and in his spare time supports Hull City AFC. You can follow him on Twitter @djy_writer.
Also by David Young
Stasi Child
Stasi Wolf
Read on for an exclusive letter from David Young and a chance to join his Readers’ Club . . .
A message from David . . .
If you enjoyed A DARKER STATE – why not join the DAVID YOUNG READERS’ CLUB by visiting www.bit.ly/DavidYoungClub, or you can order the first and second books in the Karin Müller series now.
By joining my Readers’ Club, you’ll get access to exclusive content – including an unpublished chapter from my debut, and the first in the series, STASI CHILD.
Hello,
First of all, I’d like to thank you for deciding to read A DARKER STATE, and I very much hope you enjoyed it. Although it’s part of a series, I’ve tried to make sure each novel has a distinct story within it, so that new readers will not feel they’ve missed out by not having read my previous two novels, STASI CHILD and STASI WOLF. There’s no need to go back and read them – but I really hope you do. Both were longlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award, and STASI CHILD won the CWA Endeavour Historical Dagger.
People often ask me why I decided to set my series in East Germany. The idea came from a tour I arranged for my indie-pop group at the end of the noughties. I’d started the ‘band’ – really it was just a singer-songwriter project (and I can’t sing, although some of the songs are OK!) – as an escape for an increasingly unfulfilling day job as a news editor in the BBC’s international TV newsroom. Someone I met at a party, who was in a Ska band, mentioned that German venues loved booking UK bands, no matter how good they were (or weren’t). So – in my fiftieth year – I had one of my many mid-life crises and decided to book a little tour for myself. It was one of the best experiences of my life – a dream come true.
Only one of the regular members of the ‘band’ was available, but we managed to cobble together a group via adverts on Gumtree. We had just one day-long rehearsal before we set off – horribly under-prepared – for six dates, five of them in Germany. Things went from bad to worse, when at the first venue – in the Netherlands – the other musicians decided sampling the delights of a Dutch coffee shop was more interesting than sound-checking or helping me set up the equipment. The gig was awful – we played to about two people. But the next night, in Berlin – what was once the Mitte area of East Berlin – was much better. We supported an up-and-coming band who’d had loads of Radio 1 airplay. There was a good turnout, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. I adopted the once trendy but now defunct Bang Bang Club as the fictional headquarters of Karin Müller’s murder squad in Stasi Child, under the arches of what was then Marx-Engels-Platz S-bahn station (now Hackescher Markt).
In between gigs, I read Anna Funder’s excellent non-fiction account of the victims of the Stasi, and that – together with my feeling that the ghost of the GDR still, in some way, lived on in the east – was what inspired the idea for the Karin Müller series when, a few years later, I began a creative writing MA at City University London.
I wanted a feisty female lead, and that wasn’t so very far off the truth as women had a much greater role in the workplace in 1970s East Germany than they did in the West. But I didn’t want a clichéd East equals bad, West equals good approach. So Karin – to some extent – still believes in the socialist system, even though during the course of the series those beliefs get challenged at virtually every turn.
A DARKER STATE – like the previous two novels – was inspired by real-life events, although it’s a fictional story. Fans of The Same Sky on Netflix will be well aware of the Stasi’s use of heterosexual Romeo agents to gain information from female secretaries in West Germany. But there were also reports of homosexual Romeos, and I thought that was an interesting counterpoint to real-life research that was carried out at Humboldt University into the possibility altering sexuality. So, although my stories are fictional, I do try to be honest and ensure that my East German world has at least some flavour of authenticity.
Book 4 – working title, The Burning East – will follow the real-life story of a World War Two massacre even more closely, although my extrapolation of events into East German times is fictional. In it, Karin’s faith in the system she works for is challenged to breaking point, as she discovers dark truths about those working within the Stasi and the People’s Police. It is – I think – an exciting novel, but it’s also perhaps my darkest yet. Watch out for it in 2019!
I hope there will be many more Karin Müller adventures to come. If there are, it will be thanks to you, my readers, and I want you to know that I’m incredibly grateful that you’re allowing me to fulfil another of my lifelong dreams. Remember, you can join the DAVID YOUNG READERS’ CLUB by visiting www.bit.ly/DavidYoungClub and you can order STASI CHILD and STASI WOLF, the first two books in the Karin Müller series, now!
All the best,
David Young
Read the very first gripping cold war thriller featuring Karin Müller . . .
Winner of the CWA Endeavour Historical Dagger Award
Longlisted for Theakston Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year Award
The Times Crime Book of the Month
Telegraph Pick of the Week
East Berlin, 1975
A teenage girl’s body at the foot of the wall. The Stasi say she was shot while escaping – but from the West.
Oberleutnant Karin Müller in the People’s Police suspects otherwise.
But in East Germany, there is nothing more dangerous than asking questions.
Especially when the answers lead
very close to home . . .
AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK AND EBOOK NOW
1
February 1975. Day One.
Prenzlauer Berg, East Berlin.
The harsh jangle of a telephone jolted Oberleutnant Karin Müller awake. She reached to her side of the bed to answer it, but grasped empty space. Pain hammered in her head. The ringing continued and she lifted her head off the pillow. The room spun, she swallowed bile and the shape under the blankets next to her reached for the handset on the opposite side of the bed.
‘Tilsner!’ The voice of her deputy, Unterleutnant Werner Tilsner, barked into the handset and rang in her ears.
Scheisse! What’s he doing here? She began to take in her surroundings as Tilsner continued to talk into the phone, his words not really registering. The objects in the apartment were wrong. The double bed she was lying in was different. The bed linen certainly didn’t belong to her and her husband, Gottfried. Everything was more . . . luxurious, expensive. On the dresser, she saw photographs of Tilsner . . . his wife Koletta . . . their two kids – a teenage boy and a younger girl – at some campsite, smiling for the camera on their happy-family summer holidays. Oh my God! Where was his wife? She could be coming back at any moment. Then she started to remember: Tilsner had said Koletta had taken the children to their grandmother’s for the weekend. The same Tilsner who was constructing some tall tale at this very moment to whoever was on the other end of the phone.