Team of German puzzlers manually reconstruct East German secret police Stasi files destroyed after the fall of the Berlin Wall thirty years ago
Torn or shredded Stasi documents earmarked for destruction after the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 are seen in the former headquarters of the Stasi , in Berlin on October 30, 2019.
But "citizen committees" stormed the Stasi's offices — including its East Berlin headquarters — on January 15, 1990, seizing millions of files along with 16,000 bags of torn-up documents to preserve them for the future. Three decades on, its secrets are still being revealed as Poenisch and her colleagues at the BStU federal office for Stasi records reconstruct the ripped up papers.
Many East Germans learned that their friends and even family members had been keeping tabs on them as "unofficial collaborators" of the Stasi. Many more may lay hidden for years, as on average, it takes each puzzler 18 months to completely reconstruct each sack of shreds, said Andreas Loder, who leads the manual reconstruction team.
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