Engineers of the Soul: The Weaponization of the Public Humanities in The Lives of Others

The 2006 German film The Lives of Others tells the story of a couple and the Stasi officer tasked with surveilling them in 1984, six years before the fall of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Georg Dreyman, an author whose plays are lauded in the communist state, lives with his girlfriend and leading lady, actress Christa-Maria Sieland. Gerd Wiesler is a staunch Stasi officer and adherent to the Socialist Unity Party, the ruling government of the GDR. He is ordered by his friend and commander Lt. Col. Anton Grubitz to monitor the couple. At first, Wiesler is suspicious of Dreyman’s apparent untarnished loyalty to the state and accurately reports Dreyman’s activities. Once Wiesler discovers that Bruno Hempf, the Minister of Culture, ordered the surveillance for personal reasons, Wiesler’s belief in the Party begins to fray. Added to this disillusionment, Wiesler is affected by the media he overhears while spying; he eventually sacrifices his secure career for the safety of Dreyman and Sieland, though not before inadvertently contributing to Sieland’s suicide. The film depicts the intense surveillance state created by the Party and how it affects the citizens trapped behind the Iron Curtain.

The philosopher Judith Butler, in her essay “Ordinary, Incredulous,” offers a framework with which to analyze the GDR’s successful weaponization of the public humanities to create a compliant citizenry. For Butler, the public humanities is a necessity to create civically minded thinkers that can reason critically about the world they live in. Butler posits that an education in the public humanities enables people to reason critically about their environment and government, to inspect and understand the means and reasons for the media, and to question if alternatives exist. These skills are necessary for a functioning democracy. Butler cites Louis Althusser, another philosopher, when she further claims that the State plays a role in creating a type of ideology, which becomes our day-to-day existence; it is the obviousness of our lived experiences. As Butler frames this concept, “we live ‘in’ ideology as we might live in a certain climate” (22). When the State controls what is obvious and actively uses the public humanities to suppress critical thought, citizens lose the ability to name the obvious or rail against a framework imposed upon them. When a “thing” cannot be named for what it actually is, it cannot be reasoned about or evaluated accurately.

Without Butler’s framework, The Lives of Others is merely a historical film about one man’s transformation. With her framework, however, the film shows that unfettered access to media threatens the ruling party, while the successful weaponization of the public humanities turns the very media meant to elicit a better government against its own citizens. A culture of compliance, fear, and surveillance was created in the GDR through varying degrees of control, from soft methods like ideological manipulation and structural suppression of information and dissent to harder methods, involving direct and brutal coercion.

The Party’s weaponization of the public humanities is not hidden. Rather, it is performed openly and with confidence that no one will object. “‘Writers are engineers of the soul,’” Bruno Hempf toasts to a crowded room in an early scene of the film. “So, Georg Dreyman is one of our country’s greatest engineers” (Donnersmarck). Hempf reveals exactly how the public humanities manufactures ideology. It is almost absurd that the Party’s playbook is on full display for everyone, and the incredulous obviousness that Butler points to is so easily embraced. Rather than culture growing organically through creative expression, Dreyman’s play supports the Party. Later, in conversation between the two men and another character, Hempf makes explicit “that the Party needs artists, but … artists need the Party even more” (Donnersmarck). This veiled threat acknowledges that though there is a limited symbiotic relationship between state and artist, real power emanates from the State. This is further apparent when the subject of Albert Jerska, Dreyman’s mentor and former director who has been blacklisted, arises in conversation. Dreyman implores Hempf to reinstate Jerska. Hempf scoffs, stating that words should be chosen carefully. Butler contends that a democracy is dependent on having access to media that isn’t limited so that we may know the world we live in (16), yet here Hempf is actively policing what can and cannot be stated in the presence of the Party’s representatives.

The Party’s control of ideology depends equally on what citizens are permitted to know, and Dreyman’s visit to Jerska illustrates how the deliberate suppression of information is as central to that control as the production of approved culture. Jerska’s apartment is cramped and dilapidated, shared with loud and obnoxious housemates. Jerska laments having no work; Dreyman tells him to hold onto hope. While Dreyman still enjoys the approval of the Party, Jerska is the cautionary tale if Dreyman runs afoul of the Party. When Dreyman learns of Jerska’s suicide a few days later, he investigates the GDR’s suicide statistics, yet finds that the Party stopped keeping records after 1977. Butler’s framework is shown by its opposite here: the active suppression of accurate information means citizens cannot reason about the world they are not fully permitted to see, thereby limiting the possibilities for alternatives. Another scene between Hempf and Grubitz, where Grubitz says the Stasi are “the Party’s ‘shield and sword’” (Donnersmarck), further illustrates that there is a system in place that protects and enforces the entire East German state.

When culture and information suppression fail, the GDR used direct coercion and explicit manipulation to ensure compliance, weaponizing personal relationships and human vulnerability. Butler argues that the public sphere bled into the “unpublic, shadowed, or private” (16) realms and the Stasi capitalized on these private relationships. When Frau Meineke, a tertiary character, is caught spying on the Stasi as they bug Dreyman’s apartment, Wiesler threatens her and her daughter: “One word of this to anyone and Masha loses her spot at the university” (Donnersmarck). One’s ethics and loyalty are compromised when secrecy is a condition for a family member’s well-being. Another scene illustrates this more starkly when Sieland is interrogated after being caught soliciting illegal drugs. Wiesler, during Sieland’s interrogation, asks her to choose between her acting career and informing on Dreyman. The audience watches as Wiesler exploits two human needs, self-preservation and connection, to force Sieland to inform for the Party, which has disastrous consequences for her in later scenes.

If the Party cannot manipulate an individual’s relationships or capitalize on their needs, prison and torture are the final methods. The first scene in the film shows Wiesler instructing Stasi officers in interrogation, describing inhumane methods to gain confessions. Wiesler tells his students, “your subjects are enemies of Socialism. Never forget that!” (Donnersmarck). To drive this concept of enemy combatants, Grubitz shows how jailed artists are treated when sharing the “Prison Conditions for Subversive Artists Based on Character Profile” dissertation he advised on. In the document, ten-month-long isolation and paradoxically good treatment in prison is noted for destroying creative output from a certain type of artist, Dreyman being the example put forth. “Know what the best part is?” Grubitz asks, “[They] never write anything again! Or paint anything, or whatever artists do … kind of like a present” (Donnersmarck). It is psychological destruction without the use of physical force. The willful policing of oneself is the real insidiousness of the GDR.

The film offers a counterpoint to Butler’s claim that the humanities is necessary for democracy. The GDR used the public humanities to manufacture media, suppress discourse and contrasting ideas, and manipulate human connection and frailty. The end result was an ideological environment that didn’t allow citizens to reason critically about the state they were forced to live in. The film not only illustrates history but serves as a harbinger of what may come as governments exploit the public humanities. The suppression of critical thought through disinformation and misinformation is something citizens contend with daily. Surveillance capitalism is used to manipulate citizens through targeted ads and the amplification of derisive content. Lastly, students are targeted by the U.S. administration for papers critical of certain government policies. The playbook the GDR put in place is evident once the methods are understood. American citizens are living in a new climate, where outrage and confusion are engineered, the consequences of which become more apparent day by day.

Works Cited

Butler, Judith. “Ordinary, Incredulous.” The Humanities and Public Life, edited by Peter Brooks and Hilary Jewett, Fordham University Press, 2014, pp. 15-37.

The Lives of Others [Das Leben der Anderen]. Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Wiedemann & Berg, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Arte, 2006.