In a warehouse in Magdeburg, 16,000 paper bags stuffed with hand-torn Stasi documents line three stories of shelves. That’s over 600 million scraps of paper that await digital reconstruction. Photo: Daniel Stier
A vast warehouse in Magdeburg stores the archive of files ripped apart by the East German secret police.Photo: Daniel Stier
A technician painstakingly reconstructs torn files by hand. New digital methods will make this process easier and faster. Photo: Daniel Stier
The Ministry of State Security in Berlin used to be the headquarters of the spy state. Now it’s a museum — and a memorial. Photo: Daniel Stier
Citizen groups threw away the bags of Stasi files shredded by machine, but the hand-torn files can be reconstructed. Photo: Daniel Stier
The Stasi tore through 45 million pages by hand. Now the ripped files are being digitally taped back together. Photo: Daniel Stier
A conveyor belt moves scraps at 9.8 inches a second past a scanner custom-fitted with two cameras, producing a high-resolution, double-sided scan. Future versions promise to triple the belt speed and photograph multiple snippets at once. Photo: Daniel Stier
Specialized software plays 20 questions with each fragment. What kind of paper is it? What color? Lined or unlined? The computer categorizes each piece to pare down the possible matches. Technicians review the digital reproductions to make sure they’re complete. The original fragments go back into the bag. Photo: Daniel Stier
