Genossen, wir müssen alles wissen! “Comrades, we must know everything!” That, according to the German Federal Archives, is what Erich Mielke, East Germany’s minister for state security, once ordered his staff. The Archives used the sentence as the title of a reader on everyday life in the GDR, published in 2014. The Stasi records it holds today run to more than 111 kilometers of files, plus more than 1.7 million photos, and cover all areas of public and private life.