The day was losing shape. It was bleeding at the edges, hemorrhaging purpose. Subchapter 1.4 of the SDP Manual: “Demoralization and Disintegration Procedures—Goals.” His life’s work: planting rumors of infidelities, rumors of sexual deviance, rumors of unknown origin. Origin unknown—that’s how thankless the job had been. Forged photographs depicting the subject in a questionable embrace with children, a neighbor’s wife, or a pet, strategically propped on a boss’s desk. Same-sex personal ads placed in the papers under the subject’s name. Unsolicited bulk deliveries of ornamental fish tanks to their homes. Pants stolen from closets and replaced with pants whose waistbands were two sizes too small. An artificially induced loss of love. All more efficient than getting boxed in the head. The self is a vessel that when turned upside down will empty itself of meaning. It will grasp, cling to itself, turn in on itself, witness itself, go insane in that way. (34)

I completely missed this book when it was released in 2020 but I’m very happy to have just stumbled across it. The Standardization of Demoralization Procedures focuses on Bernd Zeiger, an aging Stasi officer, as he goes about his routine on November 9, 1989, the day the Berlin Wall falls. Zeiger made his name in the East German intelligence agency early in his career by writing a manual on how to undermine and destroy anyone who strays from the party line. Just a few of the techniques are mentioned in the above quote. In addition, having everyone spy on each other achieves the same effect on many of the residents as we find out here.

At the time of this narration Zeiger’s assignments are minor, such as surveillance of gatherings and watching interrogations. He is sixty years old, certain he is dying of some nameless disease. There are plenty of flashbacks to two of his infatuations: one on the physicist Johannes Held who was interrogated and tortured after his fellowship in the U.S. and the other on the vanishing of Lara, a waitress at his favorite cafe.

The book becomes a study of how people react to a repressive environment imposed on them, one without any sense of relief and one in which victims also become participants in the system. The responses from and choices of several strata of society are shown, many falling in line to support the system while those that oppose it are labeled crazy, some legitimately so while it is harder to judge others. It turns out there is a lot of humor here, in large part because the people understand what is imposed on them and what they are expected to do. Any deviation from the party line, intentional or not, creates a friction that can be tragic or humorous.

Zeiger, painfully alone in such a setting, becomes infatuated with Lara and where she might have disappeared. At first you think it is because she simply touched him on the shoulder one day, an act of intimacy Zeiger has never experienced, but there is more to the story. Disappearances in this totalitarian society happen often, with details known on some of them. It is the unknown, the ones that “can’t occur” in such a perfect society, that can cause disorientation. Something not explainable under the party line is usually relegated to propaganda from foreign enemies.

“[U]ncertainity would suffice in producing and maintaining an ailing psyche, and that insanity was a rather reserved state of mind, pedestrian and often banal, that could be classified as delusional only by those whose reality continued as agreed upon by all.” (117)

One of the running jokes for me is Zeiger’s constant listing the remaining tasks for his day. On normal days, things rarely go according to plan. On momentous days, like the Berlin Wall falling, everything gets derailed. Even in his flashbacks, without him realizing it completely, there are plenty of coincidences and accidents that throw what happens out of kilter as well as how those things are interpreted. When everything is suspect you begin to think that nothing is coincidence, becoming a pervasive worldview even when focusing on something intensely personal. The individual’s paranoia also empties their life of meaning, without having to be turned upside down.

In a society filled with cruelty and demoralization, conscious acts of charity are seen as acts of rebellion and madness. Imagination becomes an important and defining trait in the book, without which a type of madness sets in. Officials unable to imagine their system failing break down, their psyches crumbling just as the wall falls.

The staff at St. Hedwig’s hospital, he knew, had been relocating a dozen mental patients from the psych ward to make space for an unusual number of high-ranking Ministry and Management officials curiously suffering from acute psychotic breaks. Comrades known for pragmatism and levelheadedness had been spotted wandering the streets in nothing but nightgowns, screaming for Socrates at the top of their lungs. Colleagues with no discernible symptoms had admitted themselves voluntarily. Voices in their heads, they said. … The men who built this nation reduced to scuffles and impotent blows. (62)

One of the things Hoffman mentions in her interviews is having lived in Berlin she had access to personal stories from people that had lived through this era. The personal anecdotes she accumulated shows in the detail of events, no matter how ridiculous they sound, that still ring true in her narration. Their recall of these stories are important in a society that constantly tried to erase or modify history. The ending, while fantastical, doesn’t seem out of place after immersion in this absurd world.

There are some similarities at times with the movie The Lives of Others, which also focused on a Stasi officer. Hohenschönhausen prison, the setting of the first scene of the movie, makes an appearance in the book as well. This debut book by Hoffman stands on its own just fine, and I look forward to more from her.

[I]t occurred to me the only thing deadlier than denial is hope in the goodness of men. …
Infants know only what their parents want them to know. They would remain infants for eternity if they couldn’t self-determine. True existence begins when we can make choices. Feel what we must and think what we may. Men stripped of that are nothing but children, as you say. (179-80)

Links:

• An excerpt from the first chapter at BookBrowse.com
• Interviews with Jennifer Hofmann, one with Sally Whitehill and one with Mark Judge (with the great line that the main character “confuses conformity with intimacy”)
• A nice review from the Joplin, Missouri public library