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The public launch of two new books on the infamous East German Stasi secret police sparked angry outbursts here on Wednesday, showing that tensions still run high 17 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
One book, "Der Botschafts-Fluechtling" (which translates as "The Refugee from the Embassy"), by Gotthold Schramm, contains accounts from former Stasi spies operating across the border in the then West Germany.
The other, "Besuchszeit" ("Visiting Hours"), is written by a former Stasi officer, Peter Pfuetze, who insists that Stasi prisoners were treated well.
"They normally confessed to what we accused them of within four to six weeks in prison," he told the press conference.
In response to that comment, a man in his 60s in the crowd, jumped to his feet and shouted: "I spent nine years and eight months in prison and I never confessed."
And a man claiming to be a psychologist in the former East Germany interrupted comments from Schramm and claimed the Stasi used "psychological methods of torture".
Schramm rejected the man's accusations that the Stasi were "fascists", saying: "We were not Nazis."
Markus Wolf, the East Germans' chief spy, contributed a foreword to Schramm's book.
Wolf, known to the Cold War-era Western security services as "The Man Without a Face", failed to appear at the book launch despite being advertised as one of the speakers by the publishers.
The Stasi compiled surveillance files on almost every one of the 16 million citizens in communist East Germany.
gj/sj
Germany-history-East-spies
AFP 121804 GMT 04 06
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