"If you're on the right side, then everything is justified" says the eponymous main character in the documentary monodrama "Monika Haeger - inside stasi" and sees this as legitimizing even immoral actions. Betrayal, deceit and lies ensure her success as an unofficial employee of the State Security. What fills her with pride in her zealous service for what she sees as a good cause plunges others into misfortune.

The mono-documentary play by Nicole Heinrich tells GDR history through the memories of Monika Haeger (1945-2006) and shows SED injustice. As a child in a home, Haeger was put on a socialist course; as a loyal GDR citizen and Stasi employee, she spied on a women's group led by civil rights activist Bärbel Bohley. Haeger's work leads to arrests, interrogations, prison sentences and even expatriation from the GDR.

Haeger's monologue is interspersed with interviews with victims of the SED dictatorship. They report on slander initiated by the Stasi in their professional and private lives, house searches, raid-like arrests, mock executions, brutal experiences in the Hoheneck women's prison, in the Torgau youth work camp or in "special camps". Relatives of those who died at the Wall are also heard and the 1953 uprising is also discussed.

A few short audio sequences relating to the present are intended to illustrate that one's own convictions, even if they pursue good goals, can lead to the defamation of others. The end does not justify the means after all - on the contrary: the core of inhumanity remains if one's attitude is relentlessly enforced.

Director, author: Nicole Heinrich
Actress: Anja Kimmelmann