30-07-2025
'I learned freedom at 34, and it was a revelation': Katja Lange-Müller, an eastern wind blows through West Berlin
She is not a woman who can be fooled. Katja Lange-Müller knows both sides of Berlin: the East, where she was born in 1951, and the West, where she sought refuge in 1984. She lives in Wedding, a neighborhood in the German capital that is still working class but is undergoing gentrification. There, you come across elderly women smoking as they walk down the street, plastic bags in hand. Lange-Müller also smokes, in the living room of her unpretentious apartment. Her voice is gravelly, her laughter loud, and she radiates the warmth typical of people from the former East Germany.
She showed us her Stasi file – compiled by the political police of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) – which she obtained after the fall of the Wall in 1989. " Quatsch" ("nonsense"), " idiotisch" ("stupid"), she muttered as she leafed through the pages. On one sheet, photos of about 15 teenagers appeared. So young, they looked like children. "We had met up at an ice cream shop to trade Beatles records, and the Stasi agent wrote that we were plotting to cross over to the West."
Lange-Müller recalled out that one in three residents worked for the Stasi, in some capacity. Her mother approved. Her name was Inge Lange (1927-2013). A staunch communist, she was among the very few women to have held top positions in the GDR. As soon as she could, Katja broke ties with her. Mother and daughter could never get along: one obsessed with her career, the other insolent. She was still in school when she received her first disciplinary warning, for making her classmates laugh by mimicking the high-pitched voice of Erich Honecker, the leader of the GDR from 1971 to 1989.
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