What was the name of the East German secret police?

The East German secret police were called the Stasi. The name is the familiar abbreviation of Staatssicherheit, meaning “state security”; the organization’s official title was the Ministry for State Security, or MfS.

Founded in 1950, the Stasi protected the rule of East Germany’s Socialist Unity Party by monitoring citizens, suppressing dissent, controlling political investigations, and conducting espionage abroad. It operated both as a secret police force inside the German Democratic Republic and as an intelligence service targeting West Germany.

The organization relied on a huge network of unofficial collaborators, including ordinary citizens who secretly reported on colleagues, friends, neighbors, and sometimes family members. At its height, the Stasi employed roughly 91,000 full-time staff and had more than 170,000 informal informants.

The Stasi became a major target during the Peaceful Revolution of 1989. Protesters occupied its offices and tried to prevent the destruction of surveillance files. The organization was dissolved in January 1990, but its surviving archives remain central to understanding daily life and repression in East Germany.