Paper trail

The chicks are almost 10 weeks old now and well into the gawky adolescent stage. (To my regret there is only one hen.)
I'm still keeping them penned up most of the time because I don't trust the young cats with them.

Today I changed their bedding, a mixture of our own hay and waste paper. Seeing the chicks investigating the paper shreds set me thinking about a recent radio talk I heard on the legacy of the East German Stasi (secret police). As the Berlin Wall crumbled the staff hastened to destroy the evidence of their internal espionage - a vast collection of archives that documented the suspicions and accusations of secret informers who reported on friends, neighbours and colleagues - with disastrous consequences for the individuals who were fingered.

At first the Stasi officers used shredders to destroy their files but as protesters attacked their headquarters they resorted to tearing them up by hand, leaving in the end between 4 and 6 million fragments or shreds of torn paper. When found, these were collected and bagged up and for the past 20years teams of achivists have been piecing them together by hand using only tweezers and glue. Now, computer technology has been introduced to scan and match the fragments electronically. The aim of the exercise is to enable former East German citizens to access their files and to learn who spied and reported on them, thus condemning them to imprisoment, deportation or the removal of their children.

The term Hackordnung 'pecking order' was introduced by a Norwegian zoologist in his 1921 dissertation on the behaviour of chickens (which he had been observing at his own home since the age of 10). As a way of describing social heirarchy and dominance it has since been observed in other animals (including of course human beings) where attacking others may be the only way of maintaining a position of relative security. This can be exploited in authoritarian states.

For anyone interested in learning more about life in the communist regime of East Germany there is an excellent film The Lives of Others and a powerful book Stasiland by Anna Funder, both highly recommended.