Files of Stasi
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the East-German ministry for the internal security (Stasi) had decided to make disappear in a systematic way all its files.
When with the autumn 1989, one learned the destruction from documents in the offices of the ministry for the national secutity, of the demonstrators occupied the places where trouvaines the files, first of all with Erfurt, then with Dresden and Berlin in the district of Lichterfelde. The destruction of the files could not be completely avoided. People working for Stasi tried to make disappear as quickly as possible the documents and the evidence of their collaboration. When they had a presentiment of that the end of GDR was close and that it did not remain to them much any more of time to eliminate from the compromising evidence, they tore only the files which seemed most dangerous to them. Thousands of bags were thus found, filled of these torn documents and they were entrusted to the service files of Stasi.
The result of this destruction: 600 million almost unusable bits of paper. The bottom of files is immense: in addition to the torn documents, BStU must deal with all the well preserved files which represent a 180 kilometers length. Since 1990, about fifteen civils servant had started to reconstitute them with the hand: with the current rhythm, the whole of the files would be reassembled within 400 years. Also, in 2003 the Bundestag required a study concerning a reconstitution computer-assisted. An expert in pattern recognition within the Fraunhofer Institute, presented to Berlin in the month of November 2003 the computing system suggested by the two partners. II acts of a system made up of a scanner high efficiency of the Lufthansa associated with a software developed by the Fraunhofer Institute. Initially, the scanner amongst other things analyzes the general form of the fragment of files, its colors, the characteristics of the writing, etc Ensuite, the software reassembles the parts of the puzzle breaks into leaf by sheet. The system should make it possible to reconstitute 80% of the files automatically.
The files of the Stasi contain the Fichage several million people, initially the citizens of the German Democratic republic but also of the the Federal Republic of Germany foreign and other States. Following the collapse of GDR, they were entrusted at a specific organization the Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen of Staatssicherheitsdienstes DER ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (literally “federal agent for the documentation of the security service of the State of the German democratic ex-Republic”) or BStU.
Part of these files (the Rosenholz-Akten ) had been recovered by the CIA at the time of the reunification then finally gone back to Germany and entrusted to BStU in 2003. Another part of these files consists of several hundreds of bags of documents torn with the autumn 1989 whereas Stasi had given the order to destroy the files “being able to accuse the semi-official employees”. A project of reconstitution computerized of these documents was launched in 2007.
Works treating of this subject
- Life of the others film of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
- the Romance Meter of mowing of JY Kerouredan - http://www.lecompteurdefauche.fr
Bond external
- Presentation of the book a company under monitoring, intellectuals and Stasi of Sonia Combe and extract of another article of the same author.
- past of GDR and files of Stasi today by Marianne Birthler, director of BStU since 2000.
- List of bonds
- Museum of Stasi