The Stasi wrote down how to break a person without making an arrest. In 2019 Germany offered its victims €1,500.

Forms of Zersetzung (7)

1. Ruin reputation: systematically discrediting a person’s public reputation, standing and prestige, by mixing true, checkable and discrediting facts with untrue but believable claims that cannot be disproved.
2. Organise failure: systematically organising failures at work and in public life, to undermine self-confidence.
3. Undermine beliefs: undermining convictions tied to ideals and role models, and creating doubt about one’s own future.
4. Sow mistrust: creating mistrust and mutual suspicion within groups.
5. Stoke rivalries: creating and stoking rivalries within groups by exploiting members’ personal weaknesses.
6. Tie them up: keeping groups busy with their own internal problems, to curb their activity.
7. Keep them apart: cutting members of a group off from one another in place and time, for instance by job postings far away.

Proven means and methods (5)

1. Plant informers: bringing in and deploying informers (IM), under cover stories.
2. Letters & photos: anonymous or pseudonymous letters, telegrams and phone calls; compromising photographs, for instance of real or staged meetings.
3. Spread rumours: deliberately spreading rumours about particular people.
4. Let it be seen: targeted indiscretions, or faking the exposure of Stasi surveillance.
5. Summon them: summoning people to state offices or organisations on believable or unbelievable pretexts.

Section 2.6.2 of the directive, translated and condensed. The German wording is quoted in the steps below.