History of East Berlin newspaper

The article below appears in today's Irish Times.

It is a puzzle. Everyone who knows anything about newspapers in the former GDR knows that those working on the newspapers were in the SED and worked hand-in-glove with the SED government. Both Berliner Zeitung and Neues Deutschland were straightforward organs of the Communist Party. So, why this story and why the 'outrage'?

Surely it would be the exception for staff at the newspaper not to work for the Stasi.



Berlin paper's staff agree to be vetted after editors exposed as Stasi agents
DEREK SCALLY in Berlin

GERMANY: STAFF AT Germany's Berliner Zeitung newspaper are to undergo background checks after two senior editors were exposed as informers for the East German secret police, the Stasi.
The left-leaning daily, now owned by Bangor-born David Montgomery, was founded in 1945 and, though editorially controlled, was the leading daily in the East German capital.
Like no other former East German paper, the Berliner Zeitung has flourished in a united Germany with a winning formula of critical but sympathetic reportage on East German history.
"Our greatest achievement in the last years is that we have managed to get a foothold in the West," said one journalist yesterday. "Our success and our credibility could be ruined by this."
The identity of the first informer emerged at the weekend: Thomas Leinkauf, editor of the weekend supplement, informed for the Stasi under the codename "Gregor" from 1975 to 1977 until Stasi officials dropped him because of his Trotskyist views. Then, on Monday, a deputy political editor admitted he had worked for the Stasi for 10 years until 1989.
Both journalists have left their positions after coming under pressure from colleagues who voted yesterday in favour of allowing researchers to vet the Stasi archive for information on the newspaper's 120 journalists and editors. "We have to make sure we don't lose our journalistic integrity," said editor-in-chief Josef Depenbrock.
The newspaper's critical but sympathetic position on East Germany's past was reflected in readers' letters on the revelations.
Some suggested the leak was no coincidence, coming weeks after a supplement edited by Mr Leinkauf published an article attacking a leading Stasi critic. "It's one thing having worked for the Stasi 30 years ago," remarked one reader. "It's something else, as Leinkauf has done, to print articles playing down the crimes of the Stasi."
Others were more circumspect. "In Russia, a former secret service employee became president," noted one reader.