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Paper short abstract

Drawing on the politics of extended cross-border German kinship during the Cold War (Thelen 2023), this paper explores how East Germans negotiated categories of belonging at work to sustain their relations to “West kinship” through concealing and revealing such ties under state surveillance.

Paper long abstract

How did East Germans maintain their ties to West German kin when the East German state aimed to restrict or prohibit cross-border kin relations? Whereas West Germany promoted a “natural” kinship with East Germans, East Germany aimed to limit such kinship with West Germans on the grounds of its legitimacy as a nation-state and security concerns. Drawing on the politics of extended cross-border German kinship during the Cold War (Thelen 2023), this paper explores how East Germans negotiated categories of belonging to sustain their relations to Westverwandtschaft (“West kinship”) through concealing and revealing such ties under state surveillance. Zooming in on the East German workplace in state-owned enterprises in the 1980s, West German relations were perceived to increase risks to the domestic economy – such as economic espionage, sabotage, and the exit of valuable labour to the West German foe – and thus required prospective job candidates to declare and often to cease cross-border kin relations. Tasked with the protection of the domestic economy, the State Security – East Germany’s infamous secret police – employed three information channels in enterprises to this end: its human surveillance network, security commissioners, and its strategy of political-operative cooperation (“POZW”) with other state institutions, mass organisations, and enterprise management. Refining Chelcea’s (2021) concept of “boundary kin” and focusing on the power and limits of the POZW strategy, this paper analyses two cases in which East Germans strategically declared or omitted Westverwandtschaft to the state to secure employment while maintaining extended cross-border kin relations.