Studying the communist regime of East Germany

Based on the Stasi Records Act (StUG), the Federal Commissioner for the Files of the State Security Service of the Former German Democratic Republic guarantees access to these files in order to ensure that the activities of the former East Germany’s Ministry of State Security are the focus of comprehensive historical and political study. 

The Foundation for the Study of the SED Dictatorship promotes a wide variety of efforts to examine the causes, history and impact of the communist regime in the German Democratic Republic: The foundation provides support for social research, advising and counselling for victims of the regime, for gathering and preserving relevant materials and for scholarly study of the East German state. The foundation’s activities also help to remember the division of Germany, opposition and resistance to the East German regime, and the regime’s victims. 

Analyses, documents and first-hand accounts are published in the series Am Ende des realen Sozialismus (At the end of real socialism), which provides further information about the GDR’s political, economic and social situation in the 1980s.