German archivists continue to manually piece together the pieces of the former Stasi’s destroyed printed archives more than 35 years after Germany’s reunification.
The state’s Federal Archives announced that secret police records, which were torn apart as the communist East German state collapsed, need to be pieced together manually in a labor-intensive process.
What has happened to the files?
During the peaceful revolution of 1989-90, Stasi officials tore up millions of pages of files, which have since been reassembled by staff.
According to the Federal Archives, 23,000 sheets were successfully assembled within two years. A total of 1.73 million sheets from 600 containers have been assembled in this way over time. A total of 15,400 containers of clippings had been stored.
About 10 archivists are said to be currently working on this project.
An IT-assisted virtual reconstruction effort, which began in 2007, was abandoned in 2023. The Federal Archives report emphasized that the system was not suitable “for a massive process of processing the remaining destroyed documents.”
From mid-2023, discussions were held with companies and universities as part of a new expression of interest process. However, money for virtual reconstruction is not included in the Federal Archives budget.
Significant interest
According to the report, there is still interest in Stasi files, which often contain information about surveillance procedures and the names of informants.
In 2022, about 29,000 citizen requests for access to records were registered, in 2023 the requests amounted to about 30,700 and in 2024 it was less than 28,600.
According to the report, a total of about 3.5 million requests have been made since the Stasi Records Act came into effect in late 1991.
