Stasi Records Agency

The Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic, also known as the Stasi Records Agency or BStU, is an upper-level federal agency of Germany that preserves and protects the archives and investigates the past actions of the former Stasi, which served as the secret police and foreign intelligence organization of the communist German Democratic Republic . Since March 2011, Roland Jahn has been head of the agency.The agency is subordinate to the Representative of the Federal Government for Culture . As of 2012, it had 1,708 employees.The agency is a founding member organisation of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience.NameThe agency is formally known by the title of its lead official as the "Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic". Due to its unwieldy title, the Commissioner is more usually referred to as the "Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records" or abbreviated as the BStU.In German, the office is informally often referred to using the incumbent federal commissioner's own name, as the Gauck office, Birthler office or Jahn office.The agency also refers to itself as the "Stasi Records Agency" (Stasi-Unterlagen-Behörde).