Paul Gratzik

Paul Gratzik (30 November 1935 – 18 June 2018) was a German dramatist and novelist. He came to wider public attention in 2011 as the subject of the documentary film Vaterlandsverräter (English translation: Enemy of the State) by Annekatrin Hendel about his past as a Stasi informer.

Life and career Gratzik was born in Lindenhof, near Lötzen in East Prussia (modern Poland), the third of six children of a farm worker. His father fell in the first days of the Second World War. Early in 1945 he, his mother, and siblings fled westwards in an ox cart, ending up in Schönberg in Mecklenburg, in what would become East Germany. In 1968 he enrolled at the "Johannes R. Brecher" Institute for Literature at Leipzig University, a creative writing school, but after a short time, by almost unanimous vote of faculty and students, he was expelled. From 1984, he became an object of observation by the Stasi and experienced harassment by them.

Neither the British Library nor the German National Library list any English translations of his work.

Works (This list is taken from It premiered at the Berlinale in 2011. In 2012 it was broadcast by Arte, and in 2013 awarded a Grimme-Preis in the Information category:

Die Zeit, amongst others, also praised the film:

The DVD of Vaterlandsverräter has English subtitles.

Annekatrin Hendel

James Cleverley. Memories of the GDR (Ph.D. Thesis)