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Policing the Berlin Wall: the ghostly photos taken by the Stasi’s hidden cameras
When the Berlin Wall divided Germany from 1961 to 1989, East Germany’s Ministry for State Security – commonly known as the Stasi – undertook mass surveillance of German Democratic Republic citizens.
Operatives were trained at the Stasi Observational school in photography, trailing suspects, and dressing in disguise.
- Donna West Brett
- The Conversation
Surveillance occurred through the collection of documents, audio, video, human odours – and around two million photographs now held in the Stasi archive.
In order to take covert photographs, cameras were designed specifically to be hidden in …