Computers uncover shreds of history

 

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By Simon Aughton

Posted on 11 Feb 2012 at 05:17

German scientists are turning to technology to reassemble documents destroyed by the East German secret police.

They have developed a new computer-based technique for piecing together shredded paper documents. It is part of an effort to recover the contents of 16,250 sacks of files that were shredded by the Stasi, East Germany's secret police, as the Berlin Wall came down in 1989.

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute have turned to 15-year-old algorithms originally developed to help decipher lists of Nazi concentration camp victims.

Each document shred is individually scanned on both sides before the software employs colour recognition, texture analysis, shape and pattern recognition, machine and handwriting analysis and the recognition of forged official stamps to stitch the files back together.

Marianne Birthler, head of the Stasi archives, said that since work began reassembling files by hand 12 years ago just 323 sacks have been completed. The German government has agreed to provide sufficient funds for processing 400 sacks over the next two years.

'Many important documents are slumbering in these sacks,' Birthler told a German radio station. Her colleague, Günter Bormann, said that from the small amount of information that has already been gathered it is clear that 'files deal with important matters'.

Quite what they contain is not yet known, but some left-wing MPs, who were formerly members of the East German Communist Party, have tried to block funding. Some files may also contain information pertaining to outstanding murder cases.

Bertram Nickolay, who is leading the Fraunhofer research, thinks that it will be possible to complete 80 to 90 per cent of the documents within five years using a grid of between 100 and 120 computers. Some fragments are expected to be missing and the software is incapable of processing shreds that are narrower than 2mm.

But the project would never have happened had the Stasi burnt the shredded documents as they intended. But in the confusion surrounding the fall of the Wall, transport to the incinerators could not be organised and the sacks were dumped in a cellar.