Germany: the institution managing the old Stasi files is dissolved
The archives of the Stasi, the former East German secret police, are kept at the Stasi Museum in Berlin.
Tobias SCHWARZ / AFP
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
After reunification, Berlin, unlike other countries of the former Soviet bloc, decided to make accessible the archives of the secret police of communist East Germany, the Stasi.
A special administration had been created.
It is dissolved today.
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From our correspondent in Berlin,
Pascal Thibaut
East Berlin, January 15, 1990:
the wall
fell two months ago, but
Stasi officials
are still in place and working hard to destroy as many files as possible.
East Germans storm the secret police headquarters.
They obtain after reunification that these archives be opened.
3.5 million claims have since been filed by individuals who have sometimes learned that they have been spied on and betrayed by friends, sometimes by their spouses.
23,000 sound documents
111 kilometers of files, two million photos, 23,000 audio documents are available in Berlin as in various cities of the former GDR.
An authority is created to manage this inheritance.
It was quickly named after the former East German pastor Joachim Gauck who would later become President of the Republic.
After 30 years, on this symbolic day of June 17 which marks the workers' uprisings repressed in the GDR in 1953, this authority is dissolved.
The federal archives recover the files.
They will remain available for consultation by historians, but also by individuals.
They were 37,000 to have filed such a request last year.
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To read also on RFI Savoirs: Germany: towards a limitation of the access to the archives of the Stasi?
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Germany
Intelligence
History
Second World War