30 Years Since Revolution Germany Seeks To Reconstruct Torn Secret Police Documents

BERLIN, GERMANY - OCTOBER 30: The former headquarters of the East German secret police, the Stasi, stands on October 30, 2019 in Berlin, Germany. Workers of the archive of the Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic (BStU), the government agency that is managing the Stasi's legacy, is seeking to reconstruct document torn to bits by Stasi workers. In the aftermath of the revolution that toppled the communist East German government in 1989 workers of the Stasi stepped up frantic efforts to destroy documents, especially those that might expose the Stasi's vast network of informants that helped to silence and intimidate people critical in any way of the communist government. Protesters stormed the former Stasi headquarters in January of 1990, two months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and citizens' groups quickly took command of the center and sought to preserve the documents' remains. Today the torn bits fill approximately 15,500 sacks and BStU workers are manually reconstructing them. The Fraunhofer Institute, one of Germany's premier scientific research institutes, is developing software to scan and reconstruct those documents torn into bits smaller than what the BStU workers can manually reconstruct. November 9 will mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. (Footage by Sean Gallup/Getty Images) (Footage by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)