During the revolution in the GDR in 1989 and 1990, employees of the Ministry for State Security tore up secret service files on a large scale. Around 15,500 sacks of snippets were secured in the hope of reassembling the historically important documents. It is assumed that it contains important information on Stasi surveillance from 40 years of GDR history.
Members of the German Bundestag also hoped in this way to catch those Stasi collaborators in the public service who wanted to protect the officers of the former East German State Security Minister Erich Mielke from discovery.
Hope in the e-puzzle dried up
A renowned research institute, the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer-Controlled Production Systems and Robotics (IPK) in Berlin, had developed a computer program that could be used to recognize and piece together the scraps of paper: an e-puzzler, popularly known as the “Stasi puzzle”. In a test, snippets from 400 sacks were to be made virtually readable again. Although the e-puzzle worked in principle, there were so many technical hurdles that initially only 23 bags with 91,000 pages were processed.
After all, since 2013/14 not a single page of the Stasi file has been electronically puzzled, as the MDR reported in January this year. The German Bundestag provided a further two million euros with the firm will to continue the project. But the funds have not been called up by the federal government to this day. Finally, the instruction was issued to reconstruct the files more often by hand.
847 more years at the same pace
In their report, the German auditors have now criticized the state ministers for culture and the media over the past ten years. Despite repeated warnings, they remained inactive. It is incomprehensible why the cooperation with the research institute should be maintained. “At this rate of work, the documents would only have been restored in around 847 years,” the examiners stated. Those affected could no longer gain access to the data collected about them.
Responsibility transferred to the German Federal Archives
The German Federal Archives have been responsible for the millions of Stasi files and thousands of photos and audio recordings of the GDR state security for around two years. The Stasi Records Authority, which previously managed the documents, was closed after almost 30 years. The authority with the huge archive of saved documents from the Ministry for State Security (MfS) was considered an achievement of the peaceful revolution in the GDR in 1989/90. It became an institution in coming to terms with the past.
By the time it was closed, almost 3.5 million applications had been made by people who wanted to personally take a look at the papers that the Stasi was secretly keeping about them. Since its inception, the authority has received 7.3 million requests and applications, including from authorities and scientists.
