There are several stories like this at the Stasi Museum[0]. Highly recommend checking it out if you are ever in Berlin. The Jugend Widerstands (Youth Resistance) Museum[1] has some interesting stories about life in the DDR too.

[0] https://stasimuseum.de/

[1] https://widerstandsmuseum.de/

The East German Police after WWII had a policy of Zersetzung, their type of petty, persistant psychological harassment that disrupted people's lives.

I'm curious, did they stop teaching in school that Zersetzung happened in East Germany in the context of WWII? I was taught in High School about that.

I was educated in the US and took AP US History in high school. I don't recall a specific reference to Zersetzung within that curriculum, but the idea that life in East Germany was difficult due to Stasi oppression was covered. I don't recall specific examples like the story I asked about though (besides my own extracurricular references from movies/books).

Thanks for the complete answer! It doesn't actually answer what I wanted to know, but it does answer exactly what I asked.

Did a quick search and didn't find it. All I remember is it was written up in a rather major publication some years ago talking about the fall of Stasi.

While trying to find my source, I did find out Putin was in East Germany when the wall fell, and was working for KGB. Along with Stasi, Putin burned so much evidence of their wrongdoing, it broke the furnace.

So I guess Putin was a questionable fellow even back in the 1980's and 1990's!