STASILAND

Frau Paul is the most damaged character in the text. Discuss

1.) Key Words/Synonyms
2.) Turn topic into a question
3.) Your answer becomes your contention
4.) 3 supporting arguments/ideas to support your contention
5.) Find evidence and quotes to support your ideas

Introduction:

Author
Title
Place into context
Narrative structure (p.12-13)
Contention and 3 supporting
reasons/arguments
Consider including quotes that
capture the essence of the text



As the Wall cut a strange wound through the city on a
physical and psychological level, Funder unravels the
painful memories of a land gone wrong. Stasiland
offers a careful but powerful analysis of what went wrong
in East Germany after 1945, and how it affected the
people Funder interviews. Although the author offers no
simple solutions, her underlying message reminds us both
the dangers of forgetting and the horrors of remembering
and as Funder reflects, To remember or forget; which is
healthier? To demolish or fence it off? To dig it up or
leave it in the ground?
Creative non-fiction text; literary journalism; where
factual material is shaped into engaging narrative;
journalistic narrative non-fictional style; The world Funder
enters as an investigative journalist is post 1989; Funders
narrative is held together by personal stories she
recounts, either of the former Stasi men she interview, or
those gradually revealed by the women she befriends.

First Body Paragraph:

FOCUS: FRAU PAUL there is no
peace for this woman who cries
silently; fragile and broken..

TOPIC SENTENCE:
As Funder discovers, many of those
living in the new united Germany bear
terrible scars from life under
Communist dictatorship; Frau Paul is
one of them.













Her clothes and hair are neat and she has the
tapered plump fingers of a mournful Magdalene.
She seems wobbly, a woman holding onto notes on
her own life.
The Wall Went Straight through My Heart.
She starts to cry, so silently it is more like leaking.
I look around for family photographs, but there are
none on the walls, and none that I can see in the
cabinet.
She is weeping again, as if she is overflowing.
Everything is silent here, theres not even traffic
noise. The only sound is her breath.
Memory, like so much else, is unreliable. Not only for
what it hides and what it alters but also what it reveals
I had decided against my son.
At that time it was the right decision.
There was no right answer here, no good outcome
A lonely, teary guilt wracked wreck

I know there are places that I dont visit, some even
that I prefer not to drive past, where bad things have
happened.
But here she is in the place that broke her, and she is
telling me about it.
Topic Sentence:

Key Character:

Key Ideas:

Evidence/Quotes:

Other ideas: (Hamburger)

Settings:

Funder: MUST be mentioned x3

Link sentence:





*Bridge words to acknowledge author
intent. ZOOM AWAY
*Link words Help connect ideas you
might choose to examine the character
before and after the Wall
Some smells are hard to unravel.the smell of
misery.
This seems to me the sorriest thing; that the picture
she has of herself is one that the Stasi made for her.
She behaved with such great humanity.
He does not seem surprised to see his mother has been
crying.
I have never looked at my parents and thought they
made the wrong decision. I admire them for what they
did.
I ask Torsten whether he thinks of his life as having
been shaped by the Wall.
I find it hard to tell exactly, in what sense my life has
been shaped by the Wall how it might have been
different otherwise.
He has learned not to play the if only game.
There are no people that who are whole. Everyone has
issues of their own to deal with. Mine might be a little
harder, but the main thing is how one deals with
them.
People here talk of the Mauer im Kopf or the Wall in
the head. But I see now a more literal meaning: the
Wall and what it stood for do still exist. The Wall
persists in Stasi mens minds as something they hope
might one day come again, and in their victims minds
too, as a terrifying possibility.
Second Body Paragraph:

FOCUS: MIRIAM her story is one
of bravery and sadness. This
country created enemies of its own
children

TOPIC SENTENCE:
Funders guide through this grim
Wonderland is Miriam Weber, who in
1968, at the age of 16 became an
Enemy of the State.

Topic Sentence:

Key Character:

Key Ideas:

Evidence/Quotes:

Other ideas: (Hamburger)

Settings:

Funder: MUST be mentioned x3

Link sentence:
*Bridge words to acknowledge author
intent. ZOOM AWAY
*Link words Help connect ideas - you
might choose to examine the character
before and after the Wall
The Wall controlled travel; the Stasi controlled people and
for Miriam Weber, her ordeal
As Funder discovers, many of those living in the new
united Germany bear terrible scars from life under
Communist dictatorship, and whilst there is freedom,
many of the Stasi survivors suffered; Miriam Weber was
one of them.
At the age of sixteen, Miriam Weber became an Enemy
of the State.
As the puzzlers try to piece back the lives of the wounded
and scarred victims of the former GDR, it becomes
apparent o Funder that Miriams .
Miriams story is one of compassion and courage, and as
Funder acknowledges perhaps they beat something out
of her she didnt get back.
Funder chooses to bookend Stasiland with Miriams story
and is able to do so by contrasting the fragile and
vulnerable woman she first met, to a woman who has
begun to make peace with her past.
Miriam is brave and strong and broken all at once








Third Body Paragraph:

FOCUS: STASI though the damage
may be less obvious, each of these
men are irrevocably destroyed.

TOPIC SENTENCE:
Many of the Stasi became imprisoned
by the identities they created for
themselves.

Topic Sentence:

Key Character:

Key Ideas:

Evidence/Quotes:

Other ideas: (Hamburger)

Settings:

Funder: MUST be mentioned x3

Link sentence:

*Bridge words to acknowledge author
intent. ZOOM AWAY
*Link words Help connect ideas - you
might choose to examine the character
before and after the Wall.


Hagen Koch unable to move forward; lives his life in the
shadow of the vanished Wall; devoted and fixated on the
Wall; will not, cannot let go; he is consumed and defined
by his past; a past created by the Stasi.
Herr Winz is a man still playing spy games seven years
after the fall of the Wall; he uses disguises and insists
that Funder show him her identity card; out of touch with
the world.
Herr Bock interrogates Funder, as though she is being
interviewed by the Stasi; continues to wield his power;
out of touch with the world.
Herr Bohnsack socially isolated and friendless.

Fourth Body Paragraph:
*Optional*
FOCUS: The former GDR consider
the land as a character; Funder
acutely observes the monstrous
grey of expanse concrete designed
to make people feel small.


Revisit Chapter One
The former GDR is described by Funder as the
dream of a better world the German Communists
wanted to build out of the ashes of their Nazi past.
It is a land of pure nightmare; a place of surveillance,
suppression and brutality.
The oxymoronic title for a country with little
freedom.

Fourth Body Paragraph:
*Optional*
FOCUS: Consider Julia Behrend
Anna Funders landlady. A woman
only part attached to the world.




Chapters 9 11, 14
Conclusion:




*Refer to pages 54-60 of Booklet for other ideas on language, structure, symbolism and
author intent.
Bridge words incorporate these words when using author intent
Highlights, symbolises, signifies, illustrates, reflects, emphasizes, epitomises, reveals, exposes,
evokes, implies, represents, proves, exaggerates, reinforces, acknowledges, conjures, unveils
illuminates, embodies, demonstrates, exemplifies, parallels, suggests, engenders, encapsulates


Linking words help make connections between ideas within your paragraphs. They can
also be useful in introductions to connect your supporting arguments.
Furthermore, however, similarly, in a similar vein, contrary to, in contrast, on the other hand,
moreover, paralleling this.. , equally, compounding this/ compounded, while