In June 2021, the Stasi Records Agency (BStU) was dissolved. Responsibility for the records of the Ministry for State Security — the MfS, East Germany’s secret police — passed to the Federal Archives. The Stasi Records Archive now operates from a Berlin central office and twelve regional offices, and it is responsible for the safekeeping, utilization and accessibility of all MfS records from 1950 to 1990. That is the institutional fact. What it means is less settled.
The phrase “becoming ordinary” suggests a single moment when a special archive is absorbed into a general one and its distinctiveness fades. The sources do not describe that. They describe a transfer of responsibility, a continuing legal mandate, and a reconstruction programme that is still being negotiated. The useful question is not whether the archive has become ordinary, but which parts of its special mandate are portable into a general archival institution — and which depend on institutional culture, funding, and public demand that a general archive may not inherit.
What the transfer actually changed
The Stasi Records Act (Stasi-Unterlagen-Gesetz, StUG) was republished in a new version on 6 September 2021, taking into account a series of earlier amending acts. The 2021 amendment came through the Act of 9 April 2021 on amending the Federal Archives Act, the Stasi Records Act, and establishing an SED victims’ commissioner. The Act regulates the registration, safekeeping, administration and use of MfS records in order to facilitate individual access to personal data, protect individuals from privacy impairment, ensure and promote historical, political and juridical reappraisal, and provide public and private bodies with access to required information.
That mandate did not disappear with the transfer. Under the Act, the Federal Archives is tasked with reconstructing and indexing the torn documents of the State Security Service. The legislature established document reconstruction as a legal task of the Federal Archives for the first time when responsibility passed to it. The duty travelled; the capability is another matter.
The right of access and its scale
The Stasi Records Archive was the first institution established worldwide to make secret police files publicly accessible. That experiment rested on a simple principle: every individual has the right to view the records that the Ministry for State Security collected about him or her. Since 1992, more than 1.5 million people have gained access to their files, according to one official page. A separate access page gives the figure as more than 2 million.
These two numbers are not a scandal. They are a reminder that even an archive built on documentation does not present a single self-consistent figure across its own pages. Institutional self-description is dated and distributed. The figures should be treated as claims made at particular times, not as timeless facts. The discrepancy is itself evidence of how archives describe themselves — in fragments, across pages, under different editorial moments.
The scale of use is also regional. More than half of all recovered Stasi records are stored at the archive’s 13 regional locations, where around two-thirds of all applications for access to files are made. Since the archive began work at the end of 1990, it has received 7,561,665 requests and applications, including 3,499,663 applications from citizens. These are not abstract numbers. They represent people asking what the state knew about them.
The torn documents as a stress test
The sharpest test of what the transfer means is the reconstruction of torn documents. During the Peaceful Revolution in 1989 and 1990, MfS staff destroyed documents under orders designed to erase traces of unlawful actions and information about people’s identities. Many documents were torn by hand and stuffed into bags awaiting final destruction. The occupation of Stasi offices by citizens, beginning in December 1989, gradually stopped the destruction.
The Stasi left behind hand-torn material in approximately 16,000 bags. Each bag contains between 2,500 and 3,500 fragments of torn-up pages. There are still roughly 400 to 600 million fragments, representing around 40 to 55 million pages. The exact volume of material destroyed in 1989 and 1990 could not be accurately calculated up to now; a Stasi Records Office research product is examining existing sources to make a more accurate assessment.
Some material was shredded into very small pieces in 1990 and destroyed in 1991 after inspection. That paper no longer exists in the archive. What remains is the hand-torn material — a mass of fragments that is both an archival problem and a public symbol.
The computer-assisted reconstruction: a documented failure
In 2007, the archive began a pilot project with the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology (IPK) to develop computer-assisted reconstruction. The goal was to assemble the approximately 15,500 bags of snippets in an assessable amount of time and at economically feasible costs. The project never achieved the envisaged automated reconstruction rate of at least 80 per cent. Scanning was discontinued in 2014 and reassembling stopped in 2016. Since the project began in 2007, around 6.5 million euros had been paid to Fraunhofer IPK or the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft from budget funds made available by the German Bundestag.
In the fall of 2013, Fraunhofer IPK demonstrated that its software, the e-Puzzler, worked in principle. But the process proved unsuited for mass production. The Federal Archives later determined that the project could not be continued in the same manner. The Procurement Office was instructed to terminate the old contract. A catalogue of requirements is being drawn up, and a market survey will determine whether suitable providers exist. Manual reconstruction continues.
This is not a story of simple failure. It is a story of a legal duty that outlasted a technical project. The duty to reconstruct torn documents is written into the Stasi Records Act. The Federal Archives inherited that duty. It did not inherit a working method for fulfilling it at scale.
Why the comparison cases do not transfer
The archive itself cites other reconstruction projects, and they are useful precisely because they fail as analogies. The Deutsche Bundesbank has pieced together damaged banknotes, but banknotes share an identical pattern and have a clear orientation to a uniform template. Stasi documents exist in many different paper forms. The reconstruction of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s estate involves a considerably smaller volume of material. In February 2022, representatives of the Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media and the Federal Archives visited the Historical Archive of the City of Cologne to learn about its reconstruction system. The Cologne staff shared their experience with scanning technology and reconstruction processes, but there was little basis for comparison: the Stasi documents involve a mass operation conducted in a stable institution.
The Stasi problem is not “reconstruction” in general. It is reconstruction at a specific scale, in a specific paper ecology, inside a specific institution. The analogies clarify the problem by showing what it is not.
What manual reconstruction has recovered
Manual reconstruction continues. Torn fragments are spread out like a large puzzle, matched, and glued together. The reconstructed pages are recorded and indexed. For manual reconstruction, the degree of destruction is the main criterion: pages torn into half or quarters can be restored by hand. Bags are also selected by the importance of the service unit, the principle of filling gaps where few intact records survive, and regional history.
The content of reconstructed documents spans all four decades of the GDR. Documents have been restored about the spying on and persecution of opposition leaders like Jürgen Fuchs, Robert Havemann, and the dissident writer Stefan Heym. The cooperation of unofficial collaborators with the MfS was confirmed in reconstructed files. The documents have provided insight into doping practice in GDR sport and border security in 1961. Some findings concerned the RAF terrorist Silke Maier-Witt, who went into hiding. A large volume of content from the late 1980s has been compiled in virtually reconstructed pages, including documents on the MfS plan of defence, investigations into a Nazi war criminal, and spying on peace movements in East and West.
These are not administrative records in the ordinary sense. They are the residue of a surveillance state, reconstructed fragment by fragment, and they continue to serve the purposes the Act sets out: individual clarification, historical reappraisal, and juridical accountability.
The unresolved question
The exact volume of material destroyed by the Stasi in 1989 and 1990 could not be accurately calculated up to now. A research product is examining all existing sources to make a more accurate assessment. Until that work is published, the archive’s own account of what was lost remains provisional.
That provisionality is the point. The Stasi Records Archive did not become ordinary in June 2021. It became part of a larger institution while retaining a mandate that is anything but ordinary: individual access to secret police files, victim-centred reappraisal, and the reconstruction of documents that were meant to disappear. Whether a general archive can sustain that mandate over time is not a question the sources answer. It is a question they leave open — and that openness is not a failure of the archive. It is the condition under which the archive now works.
Frequently asked questions
What happened to the Stasi Records Agency?
The Stasi Records Agency was dissolved in June 2021. Responsibility for the MfS records was transferred to the Federal Archives, which now runs the Stasi Records Archive from a Berlin central office and twelve regional offices.
Can I still access my Stasi file?
Yes. Every individual has the right to view the records that the Ministry for State Security collected about him or her. Since 1992, more than 1.5 million people have gained access to their files, according to one official page; a separate page gives the figure as more than 2 million. Applications can be made through the Stasi Records Archive.
What is happening with the torn Stasi documents?
Manual reconstruction continues. The computer-assisted reconstruction project, which began in 2007, was discontinued after it failed to achieve the envisaged automated reconstruction rate of at least 80 per cent. Scanning stopped in 2014 and reassembling stopped in 2016. The Federal Archives is drawing up a catalogue of requirements and conducting a market survey to determine whether suitable providers exist for a new technical approach.
How many torn documents are there?
The Stasi left behind hand-torn material in approximately 16,000 bags, each containing between 2,500 and 3,500 fragments. That represents roughly 400 to 600 million fragments, or around 40 to 55 million pages. The exact volume of material destroyed in 1989 and 1990 could not be accurately calculated up to now.
Why not use the same methods as other reconstruction projects?
Other projects involve uniform patterns or far smaller volumes. Banknote reconstruction deals with identical patterns and a clear orientation to a uniform template. The Leibniz estate is considerably smaller. Stasi documents exist in many different paper forms and involve a mass operation conducted in a stable institution. The archive itself states that there was little basis for comparison with the Cologne city archive’s reconstruction system.