Ines Geipel

It was a bold, ambitious and wildly arrogant idea: extending the reach of communism into space. Spurred on by the defeat of Hitler and the competitive rivalry with the United States, the Soviet space programme saw a frenetic surge of scientific activity focused on the objective of demonstrating Communist mastery beyond the confines of the Earth. In order to create the optimally standardized bodies that cosmonauts would require, top secret military laboratories were set up in 1970s East Germany. The New Man – the modern colonist of space – was intensively trained for the purpose of surviving years of weightlessness in outer space. Experiments were carried out in prisons, hospitals and army barracks with the aim of creating the perfect body: self-sufficient and able to endure extreme conditions for as long as possible. In order to exert dominance over space, it was first necessary to exert total control over those who were being trained to conquer it. Ines Geipel unravels this largely unknown and extraordinary history by delving into East German military records and talking to those who bear the scars of this state-inflicted trauma. Some of the older scientists conducting experiments had already served under the Nazi regime; others threw themselves into collaborating with the Stasi via the military research programme in order to avoid dealing with the war’s emotional legacy. Written like a thriller and infused with empathy from someone who had herself experienced the debilitating effects of state-administered doping programmes in the former GDR, this book exposes some of the most disturbing episodes in Germany’s recent past.

Germany, like many countries, has witnessed the rise of extremist far-right groups and parties in recent years, and no more so than in the eastern regions. Why have those parts of Germany that used to be part of the old GDR turned out to be so supportive of extremist groups and parties and such fertile ground for violence and hatred? To try to find answers to this question, Ines Geipel, the former East German Olympic athlete, returns to her past in order explore the matrix of fear and anxiety that shaped the lives of people in the GDR. Spurred on by conversations at the bedside of her brother as he lay dying of a brain tumour, she probes into her own family background and discovers a web of secrets and denial that reflected larger processes of East German society. She finds that her father had worked as a special agent for the Stasi until the service had no further use for him, and her grandfather had joined the Nazi party in 1933 and was stationed in Riga at a time when tens of thousands of Jews were murdered in the nearby forests. Silence and denial within her family was mirrored in the collective loss of history outside her home, and the repression of ideological non-conformity made it difficult for a traumatized population to grapple with and come to terms with a brutal past. Instead, a politics of forgetting emerged which served the ends of an authoritarian state and seeped into private lives of individuals with deep and lasting consequences. This powerful memoir, grippingly told, will appeal to anyone interested in the history of modern Germany, in the rise of far-right extremism and xenophobia and in the historical forces that shape the present.

Østblokken drømte om at vinde herredømmet i rummet. Et af midlerne var et nyt, forædlet menneske, og gennem medicinske forsøg på mennesker og dyr søgte man at skabe dette overlegne menneske, som skulle sikre Østblokken sejren. Som ung var Ines Geipel østtysk topatlet og satte i 1984 verdensrekord i 4 x 100 meter løb. Uden sit vidende blev hun dopet som led i det berygtede østtyske dopingprogram, der var en udløber af netop rumprogrammet. Man ville vinde kapløbet i rummet – og på sportsarenaerne. Mange forsøg blev hemmeligholdt og fik fatale følger for forsøgspersonerne, ikke mindst sportsfolk, der ligesom Geipel mod deres vidende blev udsat for doping. Denne bog fortæller historien om de uhyrlige forsøg og bestræbelser med afsæt i hidtil hemmeligholdte arkiver foruden øjenvidneberetninger og forfatterens personlige historie. Ines Geipel (f. 1960) er tysk forfatter, professor i litteratur og tidligere topatlet i Østtyskland, hoppede i 1989 af til Vesttyskland, hvor hun har taget sin uddannelse og lever i dag. Forfatter til række bøger, hvoraf Kampzonen tidligere er udkommet på dansk.

"Tjugo år senare är Tyskland inte längre en delad nation, allt är fortfarande samma men ändå nytt. Och författarna rör sig kritiskt och nostalgiskt över alla slags gränser: nationella och internationella, historiska och politiska. Det finns inte längre några vattentäta skott mellan form och innehåll där den så kallade engagerade litteraturen lyfts fram på bekostnad av den formmässigt inriktade litteraturen. Skillnaden mellan liv och text suddas ut. Livet sker i texten. Litteraturen ger livet liv." - Ur Lotta Lundbergs förord