In February 1987, restaurant operator Detlef Armstark, then 26, had run up so much debt that the East German state-owned wholesale company no longer wanted to deliver to him. He was also listed by the East German secret police, the Stasi, in their “Vorverdichtungs-, Such- und Hinweiskartei” (literally “pre-compilation, search, and reference file”), which contained information on certain individuals. Armstark was convinced that he no longer had a future ahead of him in the German Democratic Republic, so he decided to flee.