With the end of the GDR's totalitarian state system in 1989/1990, its parties and mass organizations also lost their function. Archives and libraries of the SED, the FDGB, the FDJ or the DFD were no longer under sponsorship. After discussions about the preservation and securing of politically relevant documents, the Foundation Archive of Parties and Mass Organizations of the GDR in the Federal Archives (SAPMO) began its work in 1993. Since 1998 the Deutsches Historisches Museum has several thousand three-dimensional SAPMO objects in its collections.