Secret police are police, intelligence, or security agencies that engage in covert operations against a government's political, ideological, or social opponents and dissidents. Secret police organizations are characteristic of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. They protect the political power of a dictator or regime and often operate outside the law to repress dissidents and weaken political opposition, frequently using violence. They may enjoy legal sanction to hold and charge suspects without ever identifying their organization.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 2003.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (French pronunciation:[ʒɑ̃ɑ̃tɛlmbʁijasavaʁɛ̃], was a French lawyer and politician, who, as the author of Physiologie du goût, became celebrated for his culinary reminiscences and reflections on the craft and science of cookery and the art of eating.
Christa Wolf was a German novelist and essayist. She is considered one of the most important writers to emerge from the former East Germany.
Eva Maria Charlotte Michelle Ibbotson was an Austrian-born British novelist, known for her children's literature. Some of her novels for adults have been reissued for the young adult market. The historical novel Journey to the River Sea won her the Smarties Prize in category 9–11 years, garnered an unusual commendation as runner-up for the Guardian Prize, and made the Carnegie, Whitbread, and Blue Peter shortlists. She was a finalist for the 2010 Guardian Prize at the time of her death. Her last book, The Abominables, was among four finalists for the same award in 2012.
Giles Robin Patrick Coren is a British columnist, food writer, and television and radio presenter. He has been a restaurant critic for The Times newspaper since 2002, and was named Food and Drink Writer of the Year at the British Press Awards in 2005.
Avatar Press is an independent American comic book publisher founded in 1996 by William A. Christensen, and based in Rantoul, Illinois. It was originally known for publishing bad girl comics, such as Pandora, Hellina, Lookers, The Ravening, and Brian Pulido's Lady Death. Later the company became better known for publishing particularly violent titles by popular and critically acclaimed writers such as Alan Moore, Garth Ennis, Warren Ellis, Jonathan Hickman, and Kieron Gillen.
Anna Funder is an Australian author. She is the author of Stasiland, All That I Am , Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life and the novella The Girl With the Dogs. Stasiland tells the true stories of ordinary people who heroically resisted the communist dictatorship of East Germany, and of others who worked for the Stasi. In 2004 Stasiland won the UK’s premier award for non-fiction, the Samuel Johnson Prize, and was a finalist for many other awards.
Friedrich Hans Ulrich Mühe was a German film, television and theatre actor. He played the role of Hauptmann (Captain) Gerd Wiesler in the Oscar-winning film Das Leben der Anderen, for which he received the gold award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role, at the Deutscher Filmpreis ; and the Best Actor Award at the 2006 European Film Awards.
The Klaus Renft Combo is a veteran German rock band, formed in Leipzig in what was then East Germany, in 1958. Founded by Klaus Renft, the band enjoyed significant success in East Germany until banned by the authorities in 1975. The band was reunited in 1990.
Lutz Heilmann is a German politician of the left-wing party Die Linke. He was elected to the Bundestag in the 2005 federal election as a member of the party list in Schleswig-Holstein. Shortly thereafter it was revealed that he had worked for the Stasi from 1985 to 1990. Heilmann drew national and international media attention when he caused the website www.wikipedia.de to be blocked by a preliminary injunction on 13 November 2008. His Bundestag term ended in 2009, and he failed to be nominated for a second term.
Edda Carin Wilhelmine Göring was the only child of German politician, military leader, and leading member of the Nazi Party Hermann Göring, by his second marriage to the German actress Emmy Sonnemann.
Although Internet censorship in Germany is traditionally been rated as low, it is practised directly and indirectly through various laws and court decisions. German law provides for freedom of speech and press with several exceptions, including what The Guardian has called "some of the world's toughest laws around hate speech". An example of content censored by law is the removal of web sites from Google search results that deny the holocaust, which is a felony under German law. According to the Google Transparency Report, the German government is frequently one of the most active in requesting user data after the United States. However, in Freedom House's Freedom On the Net 2022 Report, Germany was rated the eighth most free of the 70 countries rated.
Giles MacDonogh is a British writer, historian and translator.
All That I Am is Australian writer Anna Funder's first fictional work, published in 2011 by Penguin Books. It follows characters affected by the Nazi regime in pre-war Germany and Britain.
The Ministry of Truth, the Ministry of Peace, the Ministry of Love, and the Ministry of Plenty are the four ministries of the government of Oceania in the 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell.
The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink.
The history of Stuttgart traces its origins in the mid 10th century. However, the history of the land upon which Stuttgart stands has a far longer history dating back several thousands years to prehistoric peoples who sought the fertile soil of the Neckar river valley.
David John Young is an English novelist whose crime thriller series featuring a fictional Volkspolizei detective, Karin Müller, is set in 1970s East Germany. Young's debut novel Stasi Child won the 2016 CWA Endeavour Historical Dagger for the best historical crime novel of the year. Both it and the follow-up, Stasi Wolf, were longlisted for the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award in 2016 and 2017 respectively. In 2017, Bonnier Zaffre, the UK adult fiction division of the Bonnier Group, announced Young had signed a six-figure deal for three further novels in the series, making five in all, with the third, A Darker State, being published in February 2018. Young says the inspiration for the series came after his indie pop band The Candy Twins toured Germany in 2007 and he read Anna Funder's non-fiction book Stasiland between gigs. He secured the tour thanks to favourable comments made by Edwyn Collins about a tribute song Young wrote about him. Before becoming a full-time novelist, Young was a news producer and editor for more than 25 years with BBC World Service radio and BBC World TV.
Jenny Gröllmann was a German actress, best known for her work on films I Was Nineteen (1968), Peas at 5:30 (2004) and her recurring role on the show Polizeiruf 110. She won an Ernst Zinna Prize of the city of Berlin in 1974.
Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949–1990 is a 2023 history book about East Germany written by German historian Katja Hoyer. Hoyer was born in what was then East Germany in 1985, but had lived in the UK for several years prior to the book's release.
