Putting History Back Together…One Little Piece At A Time
Posted by Michelle Moquin on October 8th, 2012
Good morning!
You know how much of a fan I am of NPR. I am listening to it every minute I am in my car. This came across my radar.
Piecing Together ‘The World’s Largest Jigsaw Puzzle’
When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, East Germany’s secret police, the Stasi, frantically tore up millions of files gathered during decades of spying on its own citizens.
More than two decades later, the vast array of secret papers collected by the Stasi is still in huge demand. So far this year, 70,000 people have applied for access to the Stasi archives.
Many are young Germans — some searching for information about relatives, others just eager to know more about their country’s past.
To help meet this demand, archivists are now using groundbreaking computer technology to reconstruct those shredded files.
A Painstaking Mission
In a room as spotless as a doctor’s clinic, Karina Juengert is working at her desk. Beside her, there’s a big brown sack filled with small scraps of paper. She picks out one of these scraps, examines it closely and drops it into a tray.
Juengert was barely a toddler when Soviet-controlled East Germany collapsed. At 24, her working life is devoted to piecing together some of the nastier remnants of her nation’s past.
She has no doubts about the merits of what she’s doing.
“Nobody is going to spend time and energy tearing up documents that have no importance. So the work we are doing is, yes, of absolute importance,” Juengert says.
The sack Juengert is dipping into is full of documents ripped up by the Stasi in the dying days of its rule.
She’s one of a team employed by the government of the now unified Germany to put these papers back together again for the vast archive they’re creating of Stasi files.
At times, Juengert finds this work painful.
“My job consists of really just sorting out the first level, but of course I get an idea sometimes of what some of the files are about, and absolutely it does anger me. But I don’t experience as much of that in my task, in my job, as some of the others do,” Juengert says.
Jungert works in the giant complex that was the Stasi’s headquarters in Berlin. Her room is at the end of several long corridors. Walk those corridors, ride from floor to floor on the old wooden, jump-on, jump-off, paternoster elevator, and you’ll have no trouble imagining when this place was full of spies, prying into every corner of the lives of their fellow citizens.
The Stasi existed for only 40 years. Yet its multitude of agents and informers amassed enough secret files to fill more than 60 miles of shelving. When the Berlin Wall was torn down in 1989 and it was obvious East Germany was collapsing, the Stasi began destroying its most incriminating records.
“They had special shredding machines that were able to shred hundreds of meters of files,” says archivist Andreas Petter. “These machines were very powerful, but for this huge amounts of documents, kilometers of documents, even these big machines were too small.”
Petter says the shredding machines were under such strain they eventually burned out.
“They were used too much. They were used by night and day and it was too much for the machines,” Petter says.
Panic-stricken, the Stasi’s agents resorted to ripping up files with their bare hands.
For some three months, with their country in chaos, they worked round the clock, tearing up papers and stuffing them into sacks.
When they finally abandoned their posts and their headquarters were taken over by angry protesters, they left behind 16,000 of those sacks, containing hundreds of millions of pieces of paper.
Machine Assistance
Assembling this giant paper jigsaw by hand would take many decades, if not centuries. Some documents — those torn only into a few pieces — can be reconstructed manually.
Back in that spotless office, an archivist is doing exactly that, using tape and tweezers.
The Stasi’s panicky agents ripped many of their secret papers into tiny fragments. Piecing those together by hand is extremely difficult.
There’s another option: pattern recognition computer technology developed by German scientists, called the E-puzzler.
The E-puzzler is basically a shredding machine in reverse. You scan torn-up documents into it. It matches up the pieces using color, paper texture, fonts, tear lines and other details.
“The E-puzzler works in the way that a person doing a 1,000-piece puzzle would work. You start at the edge. You look for the forest, you look for the lake and the sky, and that is exactly how the E-puzzler works,” says Joachim Haeussler, the archivist in charge of digital reconstruction.
For the past few years, the E-puzzler has been used under a pilot program funded by the German government. But it has processed only a few hundred sacks. There are more than 15,000 to go.
Haeussler now wants to greatly step up the use of E-puzzler technology, though that will require more government money.
“It will help us enormously. We couldn’t even employ the amount of people that would be needed to put together the tiny, tiny pieces of files, because some files are only half a fingernail’s worth in size,” Haeussler says.
Reopening Old Wounds
Some Germans oppose spending so much money and effort piecing together the Stasi papers.
This is a sensitive issue in Germany. Those files contain many unpleasant secrets, including the names of so-far-undiscovered Stasi informers.
Down in the vaults of the archive, when you look at the vast array of documents, plus covertly recorded videos and audiotapes, it’s hard to imagine anyone ever archiving all of this.
Archivist Nils Sebastian says the job will be completed, though, because it has to be done. “Sure, standing here looking at the amount of files you think, ‘Does this particular file here really matter, when you think about the bigger picture?’ But of course it does, because each file is a person and the secret police really worked against the citizens of East Germany and that’s why every single file is important,” Sebastian says.
No one understands that better than the man in overall charge of this place.
Roland Jahn, federal commissioner of the Stasi archives, is a former dissident, jailed in the 1980s for supporting Poland’s Solidarity movement. After the Berlin Wall fell, Jahn was the first East German to read his own Stasi file. He found out some of his friends had informed on him.
“Of course it did hurt, but it enabled me to forgive concrete people and I think that is exactly what looking at your Stasi file can do, because it enables you to then go and question the perpetrators,” Jahn says. “And we must learn from these records, what it was like to live with the secret police and to live under a dictatorship. That is what is important.”
******
Readers: Interesting huh? I wanted to switch it up this Monday morning – Let the political animal take a breather. But hey, as always you can talk about whatever is on your mind. So…Blog me.
Zen Lill: :( So sorry to hear of Elke. I knew her passing would be soon. From what you told me, no doubt she is resting in peace. Believe me, I and anyone else who has lost their four-legged baby, knows how you feel. I’m glad to hear you are doing a little better.
Peace & Love…
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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October 8th, 2012 at 9:54 am
Great article, Michelle. If anyone thinks that this kind of thing doesn’t happen in our country they don’t get it.
Lil, I am sorry to hear of the Elkster. She was a great being! I know very well how that feels and my heart is sending juju your way.
October 8th, 2012 at 10:02 am
No, I don’t mind you using his venue or any other that would be convenient to you to reach me. I would have responded immediately but I wanted to wait to absorb what you had written.
First, you did not disappoint me. I love you for the things that make you who you are as a person. That includes those idiosyncratic acts that resulted in the person you were that evening. It is I who should have handled the situation better.
I am the one spoiled; by your presence, your acceptance of me as your companion, your regard for me as your friend and lover, your ability to show selfless compassion towards all around you, your quickness to tears, your firm resolve in the face of relentless adversity, your quickness to laughter, your love of life.
My feelings for you cannot change because in you I see the being I would like to be. You are my idol. I aspire, hopelessly to the individuality that makes you you.
You need not “panic.” You need only resolve to never change. Let your feelings take the moment we are together where ever it does. I will adjust. I am the spoiled one. It is the least I can do.
I chuckle when I read you think I make you a better person. I only wish, I could say the same, but I know that I am hopelessly stuck with me. I am so very happy to hear that you think there is something here to admire. As usual you know how to make a guy feel special.
As for “judging” you, I think you have misunderstood me. I never judge you. I accept you for who you are. When I am saying the dreaded “P” word, it is said in amazement that you are so unassuming as to be practically oblivious of the power you have over others.Forgive me if my way of conveying that feeling was clumsy and caused you consternation.
As for expecting something of you, that could never be. You are all that I would like to be. If I expect anything is that one day you will tire of this non remarkable person who worships you.
I know in this medium there is often talk of aliens and exceptional heroic humans like Anonz, but I as you are well aware of I am but the ordinary human. However if I were alien or the gallant Anonz, I could not feel more confident that you would always be there for me.
I cannot say that you can always depend on me to succeed in accomplishing that which you wish of me, but I can say that it will not be for me not trying. I feel exactly the same about you. So you need never to feel that you have to make extraordinary efforts to support me in some way.
Just continue to be yourself. It is that self which has spoiled me for others. I need nothing else from you but the woman I fell in love with.
We may argue from time to time. We may differ from time to time. But my feelings for you will never change. You are me that I wish to be. Every day I have some thought about you that makes me acknowledge how lucky that I am to have you wanting to continue to allow me to be a major part of your life.
Every day I discover something that I know I could never do or be which you do as if it is but you being you. It is flamboyant in it simplicity. Yet, you accomplish it as if it were the ordinary.
I don’t think you lack Confidence as much as you have no need to brandish what you bring to the table. That kind of self-consciousness is often mistaken for a lack of confidence. You have often shown that you have the will to accomplish what you put your mind towards. One needs no more confidence than that.
I do so much for you? What would that be my love? I am unaware of any parity in this relationship. I am what I am because of what you inspire me to do. Before you I was a rudderless ship afloat in a sea of greed and narcissism.
No madam, the scales are so tilted in your direction as to be beyond discussion. I am the one spoiled. I would be lying though if I did not say it is especially splendid to hear you say such flattering words. My head swells.
To hear you say you “may need me more than you love me,” is a bit alarming, perhaps because of my ego and my need to have your love, but I can accept that one of your person would need more from the likes of a me than just love.
You could command love from most who get to know you. So one like me should come bearing more than just an offer of his love. Your honesty in admitting it, is a rare thing, most would never say it and lie to themselves by saying they were doing it to spare the feelings of the partner. I would, but you wouldn’t. Again a characteristic I can only aspire towards.
Your honesty in this changes nothing, my feelings for you will never change. I only hope that as you balance the scales, you will find the favorable towards me and continue our relationship.
Yes, I suffer from a fatal illness, but my “time” may be extended or even saved by science. I never give it a thought because you are the last one I will see as I leave this earth. Besides as the aliens on this blog are fond of saying, “Every day is a good day to die.” However, if they were enamored as I am with you that would not flow so easily from their lips.
Your paragraph that begins with “For all those things…… cannot be comment on in a static atmosphere I would need to be present to answer all but one of them. The ” am sorry,” is not necessary. You have nothing to be sorry for, I am the spoilt one.
I love you, too.
Ym
October 8th, 2012 at 10:11 am
GOOD MORNING TO EVERYONE!
Another pivotal week for Mitt Romney is underway. On the heels of last week’s debate performance, he begins his preparation for the next debate with a foreign policy speech today at Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Va. Hope’s primer is here and make sure to visit Human Events after the speech for her recap and analysis.
Also, it seems Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan strongman, has won another 6-year term as that country’s president. John Gizzi’s story looks at the future of Venezuela after Chavez, if and when he relinquishes the presidency.
A plethora of poll numbers are below that are showing some positives for Romney and several GOP Senate candidates, as well.
Talk to you all tomorrow,
– Adam Tragone, Managing Editor
October 8th, 2012 at 10:13 am
Zen Lill;
I am sorry to hear your that you lost your pet. I, too wish you the best.
Larry
October 8th, 2012 at 11:21 am
Thanks for your words – Misch, Djb (you’re right, I’m sure this goes on here in the US also and appreciate the juju, because I’m definitely in need of juju today : ) and Larry. – ZL
October 8th, 2012 at 3:06 pm
Interesting article, Michelle.
No Briton has ever been prosecuted in the UK for spying for East Germany, according to Anthony Glees, professor of politics at the University of Buckingham and director of its Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies.
In 1999, the then home secretary, Jack Straw, told MPs that MI5 was investigating more than 100 Britons suspected of having been Stasi agents.
October 8th, 2012 at 3:17 pm
Michelle, thank you for this article. The former GDR is perhaps still too close to be history, and there doesn’t seem to be many books out there on the subject. Stasi controlled – and in many cases ruined – the lives of just about everyone in the GDR
October 8th, 2012 at 3:25 pm
I was 3 when the wall came down. I never got to learn how my parents, relatives and their friends reacted and acted under that dictorship.
I heard some terribly chilling stories as I was growing up about what happened back then. They left me wondering. Why would people inform on their lovers, parents or neighbours? How could others think they would succeed in escaping?
The horrors they tell leave you thinking, and most of all, I’m left pondering how I would have behaved in a system such as the one in GDR. Hopefully, I’ll never know.
Margit
October 8th, 2012 at 3:34 pm
Michelle, I lived there for twenty years under those evil people. As in every other situation where men have total control over others, the women suffer the most.
I was used whenever someone of power saw me and found me attractive. Unfortunately, my story is not unusual for other females who lived there at the time.
The pedophiles had a field day. I was raped repeatedly from the age of 4 until just before the wall fell.
Unless you have been to East Berlin, I imagine it’s hard to take in the grimness of the brownness and depressing spirit in ordinary everyday domestic details….I personally always shudder when I think of what happened to me.
October 8th, 2012 at 3:36 pm
The horrible truth is that many of those torturers still live in our communities. I still cannot grasp how the ex-Stasi members can remain unmolested (in the main) in their own communities.
October 8th, 2012 at 3:38 pm
Thank you Michelle for this article. I hope we discover more names. The former East Germany was a country where the Stasi, the secret police, spied on every inhabitant, kept files on everybody, and seemed all-powerful.
It is time they were rooted out before they get to pass on without retribution.
Eugenia
October 8th, 2012 at 3:40 pm
Tm, how lucky she is to have you. I cried reading your answer. I have been married for 23 years and NEVER has my husband express a tiny fraction of your thoughts.
October 8th, 2012 at 3:45 pm
Thank you for bringing attention to a terrible time in our history Michelle. The Stasi does not exist as a curious and irrelevant moment in history. The torture devices in the Stasi museum and the thousands of bags of shredded documents that recall the abuses of power are evidence of a government that still haunts the lives of millions of former Ossis.
It had seemed so powerful, but when the end came for the Stasi, it was without violence in a peaceful revolution of people who were just fed up. Now if only you can publish an account of how that LSOS republican party of your country continues to give any credit to that actor turned criminal president for the falling of the Berlin Wall.
Guido
October 8th, 2012 at 3:53 pm
I am a proud russian who did his part for his country in the GDR. I do not think that the files will tell the true historical account.
So what might a more rounded historical account of the GDR and the Stasi look like?
It would begin by pointing out that neither can be understood in isolation from the history of the Soviet Union. The GDR came about as a consequence of the Soviet Union’s being invaded by Nazi Germany, and losing around 20 million of its citizens.
Eventually the Red Army succeeded in defeating Nazism and consolidated its victory by occupying Berlin and the eastern regions of Germany.
It would point out that the Soviets’ overriding priority at that point was to prevent any repetition of that catastrophic Nazi invasion.
Consequently, rebuilding the German capitalist state and the capitalist economy which had enabled the rise of Nazism and Hitler’s eastwards territorial expansion was emphatically not an option.
It would therefore dismiss as lunacy any idea that in 1945 Stalin should have called free elections in the Russian zone of Germany, withdrawn the Red Army, and handed eastern Germany over to unreconstructed Nazis and the capitalist West.
In which connection this account would also recall that the infant Soviet Union was invaded in 1918 by armies sent by 14 nations, including Britain and France, intent on ousting the Bolsheviks and restoring capitalism.
It would point out that by 1945 the Soviets, exhausted by the huge effort of defeating Nazism, had every reason to expect opportunistic attacks by the West.
It would recall that the Bolshevik revolution had taken place in a poverty-stricken, undeveloped, largely peasant country but in the expectation that advanced countries like Germany would follow their lead and provide material assistance to fellow socialist revolutionaries in Russia.
After such hopes were thwarted Russia set out on the tragic Stalinist road of attempting, at vast human cost, to build socialism by authoritarian methods. These destroyed the political superstructure of socialism (popular democracy and genuine self-government) in the attempt to build up the economic base.
The ultimately doomed project of building socialism in one extremely backward country was undertaken in the teeth of the hostility of the vastly wealthier capitalist powers.
These expected Hitler to begin his territorial expansion by attacking and overthrowing the Soviet Union, but had to settle for its being greatly weakened by the Second World War.
Eventually the West achieved its ambition by ratcheting up a ruinous arms race. Devoting a cripplingly large slice of available resources to armaments was a large factor, along with the arthritic economy which Stalinist policies produced, in the collapse of the bloc of countries of “actually existing socialism” in 1989.
October 8th, 2012 at 3:55 pm
Michelle, while you are garnering sympathies for the east germans. Remember these are the despicable creatures that set out to exterminate any race they deemed inferior.
When the war ended there were 8 million members of the Nazi party in Germany, and that in 1946 a survey conducted in western Germany found 37% of the population believing that “the extermination of the Jews, Poles and non-Aryans was necessary for the survival of the German people”.
October 8th, 2012 at 3:59 pm
I, too, served the USSR in that dung hole called GDR. We russians operated within a background of very considerable continuing support for Nazism by the defeated Germans, and economic subversion by the West.
It was inevitable that the GDR should become a highly authoritarian state, with a highly managed political system.
When the enemy is both at the gates and massively represented within the walls, democracy is not a realistic option.
Recall that even in Britain democracy was put on hold during the Second World War: elections were suspended, inconvenient newspapers banned, and even such dangerous enemy aliens as the members of the Amadeus String Quartet were locked away in internment camps.
October 8th, 2012 at 4:05 pm
I am part german and russian. I was a russian intelligence officer assigned to police the GDR. We were attempting to rebuild a bombed-out economy on a shoestring budget at the very time when the unscathed USA was pouring huge amounts of investment into the much more heavily industrialised western sector of Germany.
This was done to take advantage of the technological advancement of Germany and to tempt scarce skilled personnel to weaken the GDR by quitting it for better living conditions in the west.
Inevitably the GDR was preoccupied with preventing such defections and detecting possible enemies within, and therefore developed elaborate systems of surveillance and control of its population. That included raising a wall to prevent the loss of key personnel.
October 8th, 2012 at 4:17 pm
Michelle, I have been an avid reader of your blog for 4 years. This is my first post. I served in forming and running the Stasi.
It is too easy simply to deplore the human consequences of this system, without adequately explaining why it came into being and took on the characteristics it did.
A functioning post-Nazi society needed to be built in the war-ravaged eastern part of Germany, with scant resources, acute external threats, continuous attempts at economic and political subversion, and a highly compromised population which was also depleted of the many committed communists and socialists who had been murdered by the Nazis.
Sometimes the only options which historical circumstances permit are almost equally bleak ones. We had to use the resources we had to control a race of people who had no moral what so ever.
This was a race that exterminated, tortured, and experimented on the other races without a minuscule of concern. We had to take extraordinary measures to control those animals.
Now they weep as if they were the victims. Hypocrisy flows easiest from the lips of the vile and evil, witness the oration of your race of whites conservatives.
If I had to do it all over again, I would without hesitation.
Alexksandr
October 8th, 2012 at 4:22 pm
Thank you Michelle for recognizing a time that needs to be remembered. The extent to which the lies, deceit and gross corruption of the Stasi regime managed to all but destroy tens of millions of lives while destroying millions.
October 8th, 2012 at 4:26 pm
Michelle, I hope more comes out about the lives of East Germans who lived on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall.
Many of us who have survived can provide a chilling reminder of how the Stasi stalked, persecuted, imprisoned and tortured those suspected of subversion.
I live for the punishment of those guilty of infringing the petty and oppressive restrictions of a state dominated by bigoted control freaks.