May 12, 2002

12:34 PM

Katarina Witt's Stasi connection.SECRET police files on Katarina Witt have revealed that the most glamorous and popular sporting figure in the former East Germany was so close to the Stasi that she considered them a "partner".
posted by skallas (9 comments total)

Um, it's the Stasi. Those guys make the FBI and the KGB look like wannabe's. What was shocking about the Stasi was not that they held sway over prominent citizens like Witt, but how far down the totem pole they managed to get - they had legions of Joe Six-Pack types informing on their relatively harmless neighbors. Seems to me Ms Witt would be better off just shrugging her shouders and pointing out that everybody else did it too, rather than drawing attention to it with a lawsuit.
posted by swell at 2:09 PM on May 12, 2002

You mean an olympic athelete had government ties? I'm shocked! Of course in the U.S. the kneecapping is privatized to allow the free market to introduce efficiency.
posted by srboisvert at 2:16 PM on May 12, 2002

The disclosures suggest that Ms Witt, 36, who posed naked for Playboy in 1998, was one of the East German regime's most willing accomplices."

I love how they stuck that little tidbit in.
posted by homunculus at 2:32 PM on May 12, 2002

Lordy lord--I wish I was with the Stasi and she cooperated with me. What's a state appratus for if not to help out. She noted that her support of them helped her career. Gosh, sort of like Enron helping political figures.
Well we have her on our side now and so all ends well.
posted by Postroad at 4:12 PM on May 12, 2002

I have to agree with swell; this is no big deal. Ms. Witt is making it into a big deal with a lawsuit - one wonders if she's sincere, or if it's just a publicity stunt.
posted by RylandDotNet at 5:46 PM on May 12, 2002

I am shocked, shocked, that only the most expressively loyal East German citizens were permitted abroad to pursue their sport.

Naturally, her inclinations were only proven further when in the 1990s she began the Double Axel Tendency, a mass movement of figure skaters which briefly held sway in many of the Ostland's legislative seats, and threatened the democratic order of post-unification Germany. No, wait, she avoided politics, continued to skate, and posed nude for Playboy. My mistake.
posted by dhartung at 9:47 PM on May 12, 2002

I would be more distressed at her collaboration with the disgusting Stasi if it were not clear that she was raised to it from the age of nine. I don't think you can hold her to the same moral standard that you someone who was first approached as an adult.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 11:48 PM on May 12, 2002

This explains how she managed to smuggle balloons so easily across the Iron Curtain all those years.
posted by pracowity at 2:21 AM on May 13, 2002

As an East-German I have to agree with swell and RylandDotNet: this is no big deal. Apparently, there is not a big difference between working for the Stasi to have an easier life and mobbing your co-workers for the sake your carreer. Unfortunately.
posted by arf at 5:20 AM on May 13, 2002