Martin Jankowski: We joked with the Stasi; we tried to turn it into an advantage.
KK: Let’s start with your career as a performer. How did you first become politically active?
MJ: I started writing poetry and songs as a teenager. From an early age, I was involved in the Christian Peace Movement in the GDR, an alternative Christian movement that largely operated under the protection of the church. My parents were Catholics, so I grew up with a Christian education. But very early on, my activities attracted attention. The Stasi began observing me when I was sixteen. When I was seventeen, they initiated what was called Zersetzungsmaßnahmen, translated as “decomposition” or “destabilization measures.” These were systematic efforts to prevent me from succeeding in life.
KK: Did you know at the time that this was happening?
MJ: No. At the time, I only felt that something was constantly interfering with my life. Strange things happened - rumors, obstacles, failed opportunities - but I didn’t know there was a concrete plan behind it. I only learned the full extent years later, in the mid-1990s, when I was allowed to read my Stasi files. Suddenly, everything made sense: why I had no success, why doors were closed to me, why false information about me and my family circulated among friends. They even produced fake photo collages. At the time, I simply wondered how it was possible that I was intelligent and motivated, yet completely unsuccessful.
KK: How did this affect your education?
MJ: I successfully finished my secondary education and wanted to study, but I wasn’t given any opportunity to enter a university. I didn’t understand it then. Now I know who organized it. I had to think about what to do with my life because I wasn’t allowed to go to university. Instead, I had to go into the army, like everybody. After that, I considered whether to leave the country or stay. When I was twenty, I decided I would not leave. What should I do in West Germany? Nobody was waiting for me there. This was my country, and I wanted to fight to change it. I tried to get a profession and trained as a librarian. It suited me, but even during this education, I got into trouble. After a while, I saw there were conflicts between me and the state. So, I decided to become a dissident.
KK: So, you chose to stay and resist. It must have been a difficult choice for you personally. What were your next steps?
MJ: There was the Nikolai Church in Leipzig, where peace prayers had been taking place since the early 1980s. I went there and said, “Here I am. I want to join.” At first, people were cautious; they wondered if I might be a Stasi informant. But over time, I became a trusted member.
KK: What was your role in the movement?
MJ: I became responsible for cultural work. I organized events, sang, and coordinated ceremonies. Later, we formed a coordinating body of different opposition groups, and I became one of the spokespeople. From 1988 onwards, peace prayer events grew larger and larger. This movement eventually became what we now call the Peaceful Revolution of 1989. On October 9, 1989, the decisive day in Leipzig, I helped organize the peace prayers that preceded the mass demonstration. After that day, the GDR system collapsed very quickly.
KK: You’ve spoken elsewhere about tensions within the movement, especially between those who wanted to leave the country and those who wanted to change it. How do you perceive these revolutionary years in comparison to Czechoslovakia, for example?
MJ: Yes, many people came to Leipzig because they wanted to leave the GDR. They attended peace prayers intentionally, knowing the Stasi was watching. After some time, they realized that if they were visible enough, the state would expel them. So, Leipzig became a gathering point for the Ausreisebewegung, the movement of those seeking to leave.
We welcomed them, of course. It was their right. But their goals differed from ours. We wanted to reform society; they had lost all hope and only wanted to leave. At times, this caused real conflict. There were moments when people outside the church shouted to the police, “We want out!” and we shouted back, “We stay here!” Eventually, we created separate structures, legal help, and counseling, for those who wanted to leave, so that our political discussions could continue. By autumn 1989, the movement had grown so large that these distinctions no longer mattered. At that point, it became a revolution.
Something similar was happening in Czechoslovakia, though in a different way. There were connections to Charter 77. I was one of those who wanted to stay and change the country like them. Later, there was the political movement Neues Forum, which, in a way, initiated the Peaceful Revolution by daring to publicly call for reforms. These were my people.
KK: Now, let’s go back to the decision to be a dissident, as this must have been a tough choice. What did it mean for you personally?
MJ: At that time, for me, it meant, and this had consequences for the rest of my life, that I would never get a conventional career in the academic world or elsewhere. I was never allowed to study properly. That meant choosing a very difficult but also honorable life situation.
After 1989, that suddenly mattered. Suddenly, I was somebody without formal education. I wasn’t allowed to go to university; I didn’t have what everybody else had. All the people around me who didn’t fight the GDR system went to university and did what was expected; they now had certificates and could start careers. I, the dissident, was not able to do that. Before 1989, I wasn’t even allowed to perform legally as a singer-songwriter (which had been my occupation since 1987). You needed a state license, which I never received. Therefore, I performed underground, in churches and private homes, also across Eastern Europe: in Poland and Hungary, as well as in Bratislava and Prague in Czechoslovakia. It was perhaps the best time of my life.
KK: Were you aware of how dangerous your situation was?
MJ: Only partially. We turned it into a kind of game. Our saying was, “We don’t have a chance, so we use it.” We joked with the Stasi. I knew they were opening my mailbox, and I started leaving it open. When there was a car with Stasi officers waiting outside, we brought them coffee. They did not know how to react. We trained for interrogations; we practiced how to behave if the police knocked on the door. We even staged invisible theater performances in public spaces, a theatre method developed by Augusto Boal, where the people did not know that these politically problematic situations were being played by actors, even though we knew we might get arrested.
During my singer-songwriter career, they even created a “smell probe” of my body - glass and textiles were used to preserve my scent. It was an archive. After the Wall fell, a friend found it in one of the archives and gave it to me as a gift. The documentation showed what they accused me of: creating a terrorist organization and contacting Western journalists - among other charges. I gave it to a lawyer to explain the paragraphs. They were really after me. At one point, they even suspected me of being a spy in the Soviet atomic program in Saxony. A complete misunderstanding. But it could have brought me many years in jail. After 1989, I learned from my files that they were preparing a case against me that could have led to twenty-six years in prison, for alleged terrorism and espionage. I only understood this years later. If the Berlin Wall had fallen one year later, I could have been convicted and imprisoned.
KK: How did you view reunification at the time?
MJ: Reunification was not our goal. This is something many people forget today. The topic only entered the movement on December 19, 1989, when Helmut Kohl came to Dresden and publicly proposed reunification. Many of us opposed it; we wanted to change our country, not dissolve it. We imagined perhaps a confederation in ten or twenty years, but first we wanted to build a new society ourselves. At that time, I envied my Czech, Polish, and Hungarian friends. They didn’t have a “big brother” in the West. They were forced to build something new independently.
KK: That is true, but we also made many mistakes. How do you perceive these efforts from today’s perspective?
MJ: Looking back, I think reunification was probably the best possible outcome under the circumstances. Also, we lacked leaders. Czechoslovakia and Poland had strong dissident intellectuals who could rule. We didn’t; most had left the country earlier. East Germany was bleeding out intellectually. After 1989, we were naked. You can see it in the last GDR government in 1990: inexperienced people, including friends of mine, became ministers without experience.
Many intellectuals had already left the country. After 1989, we simply didn’t have enough people capable of governing a state. The West had money, experience, and international networks; we had none of that. The negotiations leading to reunification were deeply unequal. Weak negotiators in the East, strong ones in the West. Today, I see that there was no realistic alternative.
KK: Yet you’re critical of the current political climate in East Germany, right?
MJ: Very much so. Today, East Germans live under the best conditions they’ve ever had, yet many behave as if they were living in the Gaza Strip. There’s a massive cognitive dissonance. Complaints don’t match reality. Right-wing movements are especially strong in the East, and I find this deeply disturbing. Sometimes I feel alienated from people in rural East Germany. In Berlin, life is international and open. But in many small towns, there is a mentality I no longer understand. In a way, I didn’t leave the country, but culturally and mentally, I did.
KK: How do you look back on the revolutionary time now?
MJ: For years, I didn’t want to look back; I was just happy it was over and had no desire to read files or dig into the past. Only gradually did I understand what had happened and how close the danger really was. It was a crazy time, but we were not alone. Many brave people resisted. We were fed up. And when you have no chance, you act. We were very fortunate because we were successful. We really got what we were fighting for – freedom and democracy. Peacefully, without any bloodshed. A rare moment in history.
Martin Jankowski belonged to the oppositional arts scene in the GDR during the 1980s. The poet and writer was denied permission to perform as a singer by the authorities, prompting him to perform illegally, not only in East Germany, but in Hungary, the CSSR and Poland as well. Following reunification, the artist studied theology and ancient languages as well as German and American studies at Berlin’s Humboldt University while simultaneously publishing poems, short stories, essays and a novel. His texts have been translated into various languages and appeared in numerous German and international anthologies and journals, earning him a number of awards. Today, Jankowski lives in Berlin and works as a freelance writer and publisher, involved in organising international literature festivals and projects, and serving as the host of two monthly literature salons. (Source: https://www.zeitzeugenbuero.de/zeitzeugensuche/zeitzeuge/jankowski-martin/en)