Episode Details

This episode looks at The Lives of Others, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s haunting exploration of surveillance, complicity, and the brittle architecture of authoritarian legality in the final years of the German Democratic Republic (GDR/East Germany). The critically acclaimed 2006 film examines how law can be co-opted into an instrument of domination, how bureaucratic routines of “security” normalize repression, and how small acts of resistance acquire profound moral weight under systems built on fear and an extensive system of informers. The Lives of Others raises enduring questions about the ethics of observing and informing in Cold War Eastern Europe. To help unpack these themes, I’m joined by Mark Drumbl and Barbara Holá, whose recent book Informers Up Close: Stories from Communist Prague (Oxford Univ. Press) offers a deeply researched, empirically grounded look at informers within repressive regimes and transitional justice processes. 

Timestamps:

0:00      Introduction

4:23       East Germany in 1984

6:32.      The timelessness of informing

7:35.      The surveillance state in the Eastern bloc

13:27      Informers and informing

19:36.    Informing's afterlife

23:26    The book’s methodology and illustrative cases

33:26    The corrosive impact on social relations

35:02    Who becomes an informant and why

38:22    Informers and transitional justice

44:57    The opening of the secret files

50:39    Informers and agents

55:54    Resistance and historical revisionism

1:00:46 How the book came about


Further reading:

Ash, Timothy Garton, The File (1997)

Burkhard, Bilger, “Piecing Together the Secrets of the Stasi,” The New Yorker (May 27, 2024)

Cords, Suzzane, “Stasi: How the GDR kept its citizens under surveillance,” DW (Aug. 1, 2025)

Drumbl, Mark A. & Holá, Barbora, Informers Up Close: Stories from Communist Prague (2024)

Alford, C. Fred, Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organizational Power (2001)

Lindenberger, Thomas, “Stasiploitation: Why Not? The Scriptwriter’s Historical Creativity in ‘The Lives of Others,’” 31 (3) German Studies Review 557 (2008)

Law on Film is created and produced by Jonathan Hafetz. Jonathan is a professor at Seton Hall Law School. He has written many books and articles about the law. He has litigated important cases to protect civil liberties and human rights while working at the ACLU and other organizations. Jonathan is a huge film buff and has been watching, studying, and talking about movies for as long as he can remember. 
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