THE UNPRECEDENTED DECISION to open the archives of the GDR's Ministry for State Security (MfS or Stasi) in 1992 added a unique layer of documentary evidence to the memories of East Germans who had suffered at the hands of the Stasi. As Alison Lewis has written, the main objective for granting former GDR citizens access was to provide them “with evidence of the wrongs that had been committed against them.” Certainly, the Stasi had never intended for these files to become public. By allowing victims to read their files, the Stasi Records Law empowered them to take control of their biographies. In the course of reclaiming their biographies, victims weigh the information contained in the files against their memories. This process, as Jeffrey Wallen suggests, pits the “voice of the victim against the hand of the bureaucrat.” This clash between the spied-upon and the government-sanctioned spies figures prominently in the life and work of dissident East German writer Jurgen Fuchs (1950–99) in both the GDR and post-unification Germany. Fuchs's literary works as well as his civil rights activism were recognized internationally: Internationaler Pressepreis (1977), Kritikerpreis fur Literatur (1988), Stipendium der Deutschen Nationalstiftung (1998) and Hans-Sahl-Preis (posthumously).

Memory and archive are integral elements in Fuchs's writing, and a quest for truth and transparency resonates throughout this controversial dissident author's life and literary texts, which play with archival forms. In his earliest book-length works, which were only published in the West, Fuchs draws on his memories of conversations and interrogations. Gedächtnisprotokolle (Memory Protocols, 1977) thematizes his expulsion from the University of Jena, shortly before he was to have completed his degree. Vernehmungsprotokolle (Interrogation Protocols, 1978) recreates entirely from memory the interrogations conducted during his imprisonment at the Stasi remand prison at Hohenschonhausen. In both, Fuchs plays with the authority of the protocol as a form of official documentation. Since the only source for these literary protocols is his own recollections, this forces readers to ponder the genre's legitimacy as accurate recordings of official accounts.

Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, Fuchs published regularly about the methods of the Stasi, using excerpts from archival documents to support his arguments.