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WNNER: British Association for Eastern European and Slavonic Studies' George Blazyca Prize for 2025
An in-depth investigation of the Romanian secret police's file on Müller, winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature, re-creating a "file story" of her surveillance.
"Herta Müller should share her Nobel with the Securitate." This comment by a former officer in the Romanian secret police, or Securitate, was in reaction to hearing that Müller, a German writer originally from Romania, had won the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature. Communist Romania's infamous secret police was indeed a protagonist in Müller's work, though an undesired and dreaded one: most of her writings are deeply and explicitly anchored in Ceaușescu's Romania and her own traumatic experiences with the Securitate. Müller's file traces her surveillance from 1983 until after she emigrated to West Germany in 1987. She has written extensively in reaction to reading her file, but primarily addresses its gaps, begging the question what information the file does in fact contain.
This book is an in-depth investigation of Müller's file, and engages with other related files, including that of her then-husband, the writer Richard Wagner. Valentina Glajar treats the files as primary sources in order to re-create the story of Müller's surveillance by the Securitate. In such an intrusive culture of surveillance, surviving the system often meant a certain degree of entanglement: for victims, collaborators, and implicated subjects alike. Veiled in secrecy for decades, these compelling and complex documents shed light on a boundary between victims and perpetrators as porous as the Iron Curtain itself.
An in-depth investigation of the Romanian secret police's file on Müller, winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature, re-creating a "file story" of her surveillance.
"Herta Müller should share her Nobel with the Securitate." This comment by a former officer in the Romanian secret police, or Securitate, was in reaction to hearing that Müller, a German writer originally from Romania, had won the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature. Communist Romania's infamous secret police was indeed a protagonist in Müller's work, though an undesired and dreaded one: most of her writings are deeply and explicitly anchored in Ceaușescu's Romania and her own traumatic experiences with the Securitate. Müller's file traces her surveillance from 1983 until after she emigrated to West Germany in 1987. She has written extensively in reaction to reading her file, but primarily addresses its gaps, begging the question what information the file does in fact contain.
This book is an in-depth investigation of Müller's file, and engages with other related files, including that of her then-husband, the writer Richard Wagner. Valentina Glajar treats the files as primary sources in order to re-create the story of Müller's surveillance by the Securitate. In such an intrusive culture of surveillance, surviving the system often meant a certain degree of entanglement: for victims, collaborators, and implicated subjects alike. Veiled in secrecy for decades, these compelling and complex documents shed light on a boundary between victims and perpetrators as porous as the Iron Curtain itself.
Price: $130.00
Pages: 294
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Inc.
Imprint: Camden House
Series: Culture and Power in German-Speaking Europe, 1918-1989
Publication Date:
21 February 2023
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9781640141537
Format: Hardcover
BISACs:
LITERARY CRITICISM / European / German, Literature: history and criticism, HISTORY / Europe / Germany, HISTORY / Europe / Eastern, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Literary Figures, European history
The richness and interdisciplinary character of Glajar's work make it equally appealing to surveillance studies scholars, Cold War historians, and Romanian and German studies specialists.
Scholars of Müller's work, students at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and general audiences interested in memory studies, reading and un-coding archived Cold War surveillance files, and Cold War surveillance tactics in the communist Romanian context will find a treasure trove in this monograph.
In this excellent volume, Valentina Glajar painstakingly reconstructs Müller's "file story." It is a complicated picture and a fascinating one. . . . The volume is of interest not only to Müller specialists but also to all who are interested in the history of Romania and indeed of the Cold War period in eastern Europe.
Reading this book, with its detailed analysis and description of various kinds of surveillance, one is sometimes put into a position that bears an uncomfortable relationship to that of a secret police operative. After all, until recently no one but a member of the secret police would have had access to this information, which was based on significant long-term invasions of Herta Müller's-and many other people's-privacy.
Overall, this is both a gripping account of surveillance and a model for how to build accessible and insightful analysis out of secret police archives. Glajar makes a sprawling and obscure written record graspable and interesting to her reader without accepting it at face value, and has therefore produced a study that will have an appeal far beyond the academic community interested in Müller.
This fascinating book is an excellent example of what its author calls a "file story," which she defines as "a form of 'remedial' life writing, one that unravels skewed life segments coded and recorded in secret police files and recovers them through a multilayered biographical act.". . . The material in a Securitate file, sensitively interpreted as it is here, thus gives us a unique understanding of surveillance, that basic instrument of oppression in communist societies.
Scholars of Müller's work, students at the undergraduate and graduate levels, and general audiences interested in memory studies, reading and un-coding archived Cold War surveillance files, and Cold War surveillance tactics in the communist Romanian context will find a treasure trove in this monograph.
In this excellent volume, Valentina Glajar painstakingly reconstructs Müller's "file story." It is a complicated picture and a fascinating one. . . . The volume is of interest not only to Müller specialists but also to all who are interested in the history of Romania and indeed of the Cold War period in eastern Europe.
Reading this book, with its detailed analysis and description of various kinds of surveillance, one is sometimes put into a position that bears an uncomfortable relationship to that of a secret police operative. After all, until recently no one but a member of the secret police would have had access to this information, which was based on significant long-term invasions of Herta Müller's-and many other people's-privacy.
Overall, this is both a gripping account of surveillance and a model for how to build accessible and insightful analysis out of secret police archives. Glajar makes a sprawling and obscure written record graspable and interesting to her reader without accepting it at face value, and has therefore produced a study that will have an appeal far beyond the academic community interested in Müller.
This fascinating book is an excellent example of what its author calls a "file story," which she defines as "a form of 'remedial' life writing, one that unravels skewed life segments coded and recorded in secret police files and recovers them through a multilayered biographical act.". . . The material in a Securitate file, sensitively interpreted as it is here, thus gives us a unique understanding of surveillance, that basic instrument of oppression in communist societies.
Preface
List of Terms and Abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Filed Story of Niederungen
Chapter 2: Contact Stories: The Author and the Officer
Chapter 3: Conspiratorial Stories: The Securitate Sources MAYER, SORIN, and EVA
Chapter 4: Captured Stories: Remote Audio Surveillance
Chapter 5: Migrating Stories
Epilogue
Bibliography
Appendix I: Müller's Surveillance Timeline (1974-1993)
Appendix II: Author's Accreditation by CNSAS
Index
List of Terms and Abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Filed Story of Niederungen
Chapter 2: Contact Stories: The Author and the Officer
Chapter 3: Conspiratorial Stories: The Securitate Sources MAYER, SORIN, and EVA
Chapter 4: Captured Stories: Remote Audio Surveillance
Chapter 5: Migrating Stories
Epilogue
Bibliography
Appendix I: Müller's Surveillance Timeline (1974-1993)
Appendix II: Author's Accreditation by CNSAS
Index