Secret Police Dossier of Herta Müller
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1980s
A01=Valentina N. Glajar
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Author_Valentina N. Glajar
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=DSK
Category=HBLW3
Category=HBTW
Category=JPVR
Category=NHTW
Ceausescu
Ceaușescu
Communism
COP=United States
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eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
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eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
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eq_society-politics
Iron Curtain
Language_English
Nobel Prize for Literature
PA=Available
Price_€50 to €100
PS=Active
Richard Wagner
Romania
Securitate
softlaunch
West Germany
Product details
- ISBN 9781640141537
- Weight: 542g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 21 Feb 2023
- Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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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.
VALENTINA GLAJAR is Professor of German at Texas State University.
