After becoming aware of the Stasi contacts of their new publisher Holger Friedrich, the newspapers of Berliner Verlags receive prominent support in the journalistic treatment of the case. The former head of the Stasi Documentation Authority, Marianne Birthler, and the historian Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk will help the "Berliner Zeitung" and the "Berliner Kurier" in the sighting of the Stasi files of Frederick. This is what Birthler and Kowalczuk told the editors, as both hands said on Monday evening "on their own" on their online pages. The historian Kowalczuk is an expert in the fields of SED dictatorship and Stasi.
Holger Friedrich was in the headlines last Friday when it became known through a research of the "Welt am Sonntag" that he was temporarily in the GDR unofficial employee of the State Security (Stasi). Friedrich explained his handwritten letter of commitment with an emergency situation in order to escape arrest of a feared prison sentence. The publisher had then announced that they wanted to prepare the case journalistically.
As the newspapers of the Berlin publishing house further announced, a five-member reporter team was named for the processing of the case of Friedrich. The journalists are to jointly examine the corresponding perpetrator and victim files of the Stasi before publication. They would be supported by Birthler and Kowalczuk.
The Berlin businessman Friedrich and his wife Silke had recently taken over the Berlin publishing house with the "Berliner Zeitung" and the "Berliner Kurier" from the DuMont media group. The publications about Friedrich's Stasi contacts came as a surprise to the editors.
"We are far from giving insights"
Meanwhile, the city of Berlin rejected considerations of the entrepreneur couple over the future orientation of the capital portal "berlin.de" a refusal. "We are far from giving a private enterprise deeper insights into the sensitive data of the citizens of Berlin," said Sabine Smentek, State Secretary for Information and Communication Technology in the Senate Department, on Monday.
Smentek responded to a statement of the new publisher in the "Neue Züricher Zeitung" (NZZ). The business couple had expressed the desire to modernize the portal together with the city. "In principle, we can play any service," said Silke Friedrich.
Her husband outlined the possibility of an official registration via "berlin.de". "You download the app from the city, scan your passport, then verify in a few seconds whether the document is valid or something legal." Next, the tax identification number is reconciled, and the response takes place within seconds.
The portal is operated by a subsidiary of the publishing house with Investitionsbank Berlin in a public-private partnership. As Secretary of State Smentek further announced, the Berlin Senate, the contract, however, already terminated in 2018 - even before the new owners had taken over the publisher. "The cooperation ends in December 2021."