The Bundestag's representative for victims, Evelyn Zupke, has sharply criticized the participation of a Left Party politician and former informal employee (IM) of the Ministry for State Security (Stasi) of the GDR in the new red-red coalition in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

That was a mockery for the victims, said Zupke with a view to the left state chairman Torsten Koplin on Wednesday on Deutschlandfunk.

Matthias Wyssuwa

Political correspondent for Northern Germany and Scandinavia based in Hamburg.

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It was of course the decision of Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig (SPD), said Zupke, to form a coalition with a party that had such a chairman.

But it makes you and all the victims of the Stasi regime more than thoughtful that a prime minister who cannot pronounce the word “unjust state” is now working with a former Stasi informant.

For many it was difficult to endure, she said.

The Left Party has received two out of eight ministries in the new red-red cabinet in Schwerin; it provides both the education and justice ministers.

Koplin was elected parliamentary director of the Left Group on Tuesday.

Member of the state parliament since 1998

Torsten Koplin has been chairman of the Left Party in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania since 2017.

It has long been known that the now 59-year-old politician worked as an IM for the Stasi in the 1980s.

He had confirmed this, distanced himself from it and expressed his regret about this activity.

After his service in the Stasi guard regiment, Koplin was recruited as IM "Martin" in his apartment in Neubrandenburg in January 1987, according to his Stasi files.

Koplin has been a member of the state parliament in the north-east since 1998, he had already chaired the social and later also the finance committee.

As state chairman, he has also taken part in the negotiations between the SPD and the Left Party over the past few weeks.

Eckhardt Rehberg, who provisionally heads the CDU regional association, had already criticized that.

Koplin was guilty of guilt in the GDR, he said.

His Stasi files are "full of disgusting details".

To date, Koplin has shown no credible remorse.

Zupke said on Deutschlandfunk that it was known that Koplin had repeatedly met with associations of former Stasi employees.

He does not stand for reappraisal, but for trivialization.

Koplin told the FAZ that it was about meetings of registered associations with statutes that did not contradict the Basic Law.

In addition, he is not a member of these clubs.

Such meetings are not about “glorifying the GDR”, but about the situation “here and today”.

"At no point did I conceal my activity"

The newspaper Nordkurier quoted Koplin last week with the statement that the unofficial Stasi work "in 1987 and 1988 I never concealed". He also expressed his regret about this activity several times in public and "I am doing this again". Koplin pleaded for "a differentiated view" and referred to his "commitment to our democratic community in over 30 years", which should be put into the balance when it comes to forming an opinion about himself.

In 1998, the first red-red coalition in Germany was formed in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, and it lasted until 2006. After the election victory at the end of September, Schwesig and her SPD decided not to resume coalition negotiations with their previous partner, the CDU, but with the Left Party.

At the weekend, both parties' congresses almost unanimously approved the coalition agreement, and Schwesig was re-elected on Monday.

On page 51 of the 77-page coalition agreement, it says: "The coalition partners remember the injustice that happened in the Soviet occupation zone and in the GDR." the GDR is not designated, the role of the Left Party as a successor to the SED is not explicitly classified.