In 1989 and 1990, staff of the Stasi, the East German secret police, tore up files by hand. The Stasi Records Archive holds about 16,000 sacks of these torn papers. Its staff have since pieced together about 1.7 million sheets by hand, from just over 600 sacks. A computer-assisted trial was stopped because it could not be continued in its form. Since the end of 1990, the archive has received more than 7.5 million requests and applications.
The care that went into the files once served the secret police. Today it serves the people they were kept on.