German-German History

The year before German unification in 1990, the communist state security service of the decaying "German Democratic Republic" (GDR) attempted to erase all traces of its history by destroying its files. It left thousands of sacks full of shredded records. Now they are being reconstructed by computer.

Autumn and winter 1989: The GDR's "Ministry for State Security" – more commonly known as the Stasi – is systematically destroying its files. Some are burned; others are ploughed through paper shredders, either at Stasi HQ or at its many branches across the country. When the shredders overheat, anxious Stasi officers take to ripping up these painstakingly compiled files by hand.

"Each page was generally torn into several pieces, anything between four and twenty at a time, and we reckon that there were around 200 million pages in all", says Günter Bormann, a senior official working for the Federal Commissioner for the Files of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic. "These were active files that the Stasi officers had on their desks at the end; they contained details of informers and ongoing operations. It's not material from dusty archives." Technically speaking, however, the shredded records were only "pre-destroyed"; the plan was to grind the fragments down into paper flour, which would then be dissolved in water to form a paste. But in an act of great courage, civil rights campaigners occupied Stasi headquarters and brought the file-shredding to a halt. "We still have around 16,000 sacks of this pre-destroyed material", says Bormann.

A puzzle for six hundred years

For more than ten years, officials working for the Federal Commissioner have been trying to reassemble the fragments by hand, pasting them onto thin Japan paper in order to reconstruct the "pre-destroyed" documents which everyone assumed were lost for ever. And in many cases, their efforts have been successful, largely because scraps of the same document are usually found in the same sack. But the process is painstaking and laborious: it would take a team of thirty experts at least 600 years to finish the job by hand.

But modern computer technology is speeding up the process. In May 2007, the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology (IPK) in Berlin launched a pilot project which aims to reassemble the original files from 400 sacks of shredded fragments in just two years. The German Government is providing more than six million euros in funding for the project.

Tax investigation: a model

The IPK has years of valuable experience in digital image processing and document recognition which is vital for this unique and historic task. Some of this experience was gained through its cooperation with the tax investigation authorities, which are always keen to gain insights into "pre-destroyed" records. Project leader Jan Schneider explains the process: the scraps are laid out on a conveyor belt and are scanned from both sides and digitally stored on a computer. The software then automatically sorts the fragments and attempts to arrange them according to shape, handwriting style, official stamps, paper margins and other characteristics. When the software recognises matches, it fits the pieces together. Fragments which have been cross-shredded and are therefore all the same shape pose a particular challenge, so the software can also recognise the pattern of the script – even parts of individual letters of the alphabet. It then compares them and matches them up.

Helping to protect the victims

The 16,000 sacks are thought to contain about six km of files which could be added to the 173 km of Stasi files already archived. The sheer volume of material is mind-boggling, and can only really be explained by Erich Mielke's mania for information: the long-time head of the Stasi, Mielke believed that "you have to know everything in order to be completely safe". And yet he and his Stasi informers ultimately failed to protect the system: instead, they destroyed people's lives and relationships – as the Oscar-winning film The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen) by German film maker Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck makes very clear.

"I believe that the digitised reconstruction of the files makes a major contribution to improving our knowledge and investigation of Stasi crimes and contributes to the protection of victims as well", said Klaus Peter Willsch, a Member of the German Bundestag, at the official launch of the project. "Only by honouring the truth can we honour those whom the communists killed, tortured, innocently incarcerated and denied their chances in life".

Further reading: Johannes Weberling / Giselher Spitzer (eds): Virtuelle Rekonstruktion "vorvernichteter" Stasi-Unterlagen. Technologische Machbarkeit und Finanzierbarkeit [i.e. Virtual Reconstruction of "pre-destroyed" Stasi files: technical feasibility and funding], series published by the Commissioner of Land Berlin for the Files of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic, vol. 21, Berlin 2006, 104 pages, ISBN-13: 978-3-934085-23-7