The Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) governed the GDR for 40 years without ever being legitimized in a democratic election. The SED maintained its position of power by means of a huge security apparatus. One cornerstone of this system was the feared Ministry for State Security (MfS), or 'Stasi," which was founded in 1950. Over time, the Stasi compiled 1111 km of written documents which include 39 million file cards, 1.4 million photographs, and 34,000 film and sound documents. This bag is from "Stasi: The exhibition on the GDR's State Security." When the wall fell in '89 members of the Stasi tried to shred documents, and thousands of such bags were found.
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