The Reconstruction of Torn Documents

During the 1989-90 collapse of East Germany, Ministry for State Security staff tore up documents to conceal evidence of unlawful activity and people’s identities; citizen occupations of Stasi offices halted some destruction. The archive inherited about 16,000 bags of hand-torn paper, containing an estimated 400-600 million fragments, equivalent to 40-55 million pages. Since the 1990s, archivists have manually reconstructed, indexed and preserved about 1.7 million pages from 600 bags. A separate computer-assisted pilot recovered roughly 91,000 pages from 23 bags. About 7,700 bags have been inspected and sorted, with priority for material that can be restored by hand, records from significant Stasi units, gaps in surviving files, and regional history. Paper shredded into tiny pieces cannot be reconstructed and was destroyed in 1991.

The virtual reconstruction project, begun in 2007, could not be scaled to process the remaining material within reasonable time and cost. Although Fraunhofer’s e-Puzzler software worked in principle, it never reached the intended 80 percent automated reconstruction rate; Stasi papers’ varied formats and enormous volume made the work unlike smaller or more standardized reconstruction projects. About €6.5 million was spent before scanning stopped in 2014 and assembly in 2016. Since the Stasi Records Archive became part of the Federal Archives in 2021, reconstruction has been established as a legal task. The earlier contract is being terminated, and the Archives plans to define requirements and survey potential providers before deciding on a new approach. Manual reconstruction continues in the meantime.