From the demonstrations of 1953 until December 1989, the Central Evaluation and Information Group (ZAIG) as well as its predecessors in the Ministry for State Security created secret situational reports for the Party and State leadership of the GDR. These reports detailed the public mood, reactions to individual events and conflicts between presumed or real societal opposition, most often only trivial matters relating to the very real difficulties in establishing Socialism in the country, but also affairs which were regarded by the secret police as relevant. The reports of the ZAIG appear sporadically, and for reasons which continue to remain unknown, are addressed directly to individual ministers. Since 2009, employees of the Federal Commissioner for the Documents of the State Security Service publish an edited digital and physical volume of the reports on a yearly basis under the heading “The GDR in Review”.