Memorial and Education Centre Andreasstraße

Courthouse, Erfurt, completed 1879, facing the Cathedral square

Shortly after German unification in 1871, a new courthouse and prison ensemble were planned, as the city had grown rapidly from a population of 16,000 in 1802 to 100,000. During the 19th century, prison had become the most important form of criminal punishment in Prussia, in preference to corporal punishment which had previously been favoured.[8]

The new buildings were constructed on a park neighbouring Erfurt's Cathedral Square and below the town fortress, Petersberg Citadel.[9] Building began in 1874; the three-storey, red-brick, neo-gothic prison came into use in October 1878. The stone-clad courthouse around the corner from it opened nine months later in 1879.[10]

The new prison initially accommodated 110 male and female inmates. It was further reconfigured and by 1911 the average occupancy was 198: 162 men in 34 cells and 36 women in 8 cells.[3] It served as a remand prison for people awaiting trial and for holding those convicted of property offences, fraud and violent crime.[11] People were also incarcerated on political charges such as Lèse-majesté and going on strike. Newspapers editors who published articles in favour of social democracy could also be imprisoned.[10]

After World War I, during the Weimar Republic era, considerable renovation and modernisation work was carried out using prisoners' labour. By 1932 the average number of inmates was 253.[12]

Andreasstraße 37, Erfurt. The former prison opened in 1878.

During the Nazi era there was widespread abuse of police powers. People could be arrested without reason and held in prison indefinitely; they were persecuted for their faith, sexual orientation and political beliefs. The Andreasstraße prison was used primarily to hold "Andersdenkende" (literally: "differently-thinkers") i.e. anyone who dissented from the views of the Nazi party. In 1939, at the start of World War II, the basement of the prison was altered so that it could be used as an air raid shelter. The prison became so overcrowded that political detainees were also held in a police detention centre at Petersberg Citadel, which is on a hill immediately behind Andreasstraße. That prison also became over-crowded.[13] By 1943 the number of inmates in the Andreasstraße prison had grown to 350 and at the end of the war, in 1945, it held 400 prisoners.[12]

Erfurt was liberated by the US 80th Infantry Division on 12 April 1945.[14] The American administration closed the Andreasstraße prison. Political prisoners were released and other inmates were transferred to other prisons in Thuringia.[15] As had been agreed at the Yalta Conference, Thuringia was handed over to the Soviet military administration in the first week of July.[16] It confiscated the prison building and used it for storage. Later it was used for the "preventative detention" of people with "unstable lifestyles", such as the homeless and alcoholics. Nazis and those suspected of anti-communist activities were interned in Special camp number 2 at the former Buchenwald concentration camp site.[17] Under the Soviet administration many people who were convicted of political crimes were given the death penalty.[18]

From 1948 the Andreasstraße prison was again used for holding for convicts and remand prisoners. It had 42 single and 36 shared cells; the number of people held fluctuated on a daily basis from 212 to 310.[19]

Charges included accusations of spying, sabotage, "political diversion", "underground activities" or "anti-democratic agitation". After the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, offences relating to trying to escape to the West became the main political crimes, especially in Thuringia which had the Inner German border on its western and southern perimeters.[35] Examples of detention in Andreasstraße prison include:

• Johannes Hütcher, 20, who in 1960 shouted abuse and threw a plum jam sandwich at a photograph of Walter Ulbricht, the General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party, which was hanging in his workplace staffroom. He was sentenced to 10 months imprisonment for "State-endangering propaganda and agitation".[36]
• Rosel Schatz, 30, who in 1981 wrote love letters to her fiancé in West Germany which were intercepted by the Stasi. In one of these she told him she had applied for an "Ausreiseantrag" (a permit to leave East Germany). She was accused of "treasonous sharing of information" and sentenced to two years and three months imprisonment in Hoheneck women's prison. After a year she was ransomed to West Germany.[37]
• The Höfelmayr family from Eisenach in Thuringia, tried to escape over the Czech border to Austria in 1983. The father received one year and 10 months, the mother one year and six months, the daughter, 17, one year and the son, 18, eight months.[38]
• Marilene Bornemann, who during the East German uprising of 1953, with her husband Winfried distributed leaflets calling for free elections and a united Germany. In October 1953, Winfried Bornemann was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, and Marilene to four years. While on remand in Andreasstraße she realised she was pregnant. She gave birth in a prison hospital at Meusdorf near Leipzig in June 1954 and was separated from her child for two years. She was held in the "Roter Ochse" prison in Halle until she was released in May 1956. Her husband was released in December 1960.[39]
• In November 1976, the sing-songwriter Wolf Biermann was "ausgebürgert", i.e. stripped of his East German citizenship and banned from returning to the country, while he was in Cologne on an officially authorized tour of West Germany.[40] Biermann was a critic of the government, but wanted to remain in the country to instigate change. After his exile, in 1976 and 1977 there were numerous arrests of people who supported him. In Erfurt, about 30 people who had signed a petition supporting Biermann were interrogated in Andreasstraße and sentenced from 1 year to 14 months imprisonment.[30]
• Josef Blösche, a member of the SS and SD who is shown pointing a gun in the direction of a small boy in the iconic 1943 photograph Warsaw Ghetto boy, was arrested by the Stasi in 1967 and held in Andreasstraße prison in 1969 while he was on trial in Erfurt for Nazi war crimes. He was sentenced to death for crimes against humanity and executed in Leipzig.[41][Note 1]

Shared men's cell, former Andreasstraße prison

People could be held on pre-trial detention for months. A three-month maximum limit for preliminary investigations was set in the criminal procedures code, but the unit that investigated political cases could extend investigations anytime it wished. The average detention period in the Andresstraße prison was 100 days; 64 days on average for the investigation, and if convicted, a further 36 days waiting to be transferred to one of several of prisons that held political convicts.[45]

Physical and psychological abuse were common, particularly in the first half of the 1950s.[46] Interrogations were carried out day and night, with sleep deprivation leading to false confessions being signed. Later, more subtle forms of mental pressure were used. Prisoners were impersonalised by being addressed only by their prison numbers, not by name. They were checked on frequently via spy holes in the cell doors, with lights turned on and off every 20 minutes during the night. The cells had glass brick windows, so that prisoners had no view of the outside.[47]

The prisoners were only allowed out of their cells to go to interrogations and for a 30-minute per day visit to the exercise yard, which was divided up into separate, walled spaces. There was a system of "traffic lights" in the corridors, so that prisoners couldn't see or pass each other when they were being taken outside of their cells. Prisoners who were held in isolation cells developed an alphabetical code for knocking on the walls in order to communicate with each other. Prisoners could write four letters per month, which were checked by prison staff; they were not allowed to contain any comments about the criminal proceedings or prison conditions. One visitor per one month was allowed.[48]

In 1989 and 1990, there were widespread anti-government protests and strikes in towns and cities throughout East Germany, demanding the opening of the borders with the west, human rights protections and genuine democracy. This period, which led to the opening of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 and German reunification on 3 October 1990, is known as the Peaceful Revolution.[49] In Erfurt, from early October 1989 the protests usually took place every Thursday in Domplatz, the Cathedral square neighbouring the Andreasstraße prison. Amongst other slogans, protesters shouted "Stasi raus!" (Stasi Out!).[50][51] Between 20,000 and 40,000 people attended the demonstrations in Domplatz. The largest demonstration in Erfurt, which had a population of 220,000, was on 3 November 1989 and had up to an estimated 100,000 participants.[52]

Erich Honecker was removed as leader on 18 October 1989 and less than a month after the opening of the Berlin Wall, the entire SED party, which had ruled East Germany since it was founded, stepped down on 3 December.[44][53] The Stasi's days seemed numbered and it was feared that they would destroy incriminating documents about their activities.[6][50]

The political group New Forum, a nationwide collective of activist organizations, created a leaflet warning about Stasi attempts to destroy files. In Erfurt 4000 copies of the flyer were made and posted into letterboxes on the evening of 3 December.[6] Early in the morning of 4 December, smoke was seen coming from the Stasi district headquarters at Andreasstraße 38, indicating that documents were being burned. Members of the women's group "Frauen für Veränderung" (Women for Change) went to the building and demanded to be let in.[54][55][Note 2]

Ten people were let in at about 10 am.[Note 3] A crowd gathered outside and many others then got into the building, walking past armed guards and pushing the Stasi staff out the way, who then locked themselves in their offices. The protesters set up a watch and checked any Stasi staff leaving the building to make sure they weren't trying to smuggle out any documents. More than 500 people gathered outside and vehicles were used to block the exits.[50][57] Police who were present refused to help the Stasi employees.[5]

The protesters went through the building looking for documents. They came across areas which were completely empty, but later found rooms full of shredded paper. In the basement they found a large incinerator, with sackfuls of files and letters ready to be burned, and the ashes of those that had already been destroyed.[55]

The occupiers stored some of the material in detention cells in the basement of the building, and also occupied the empty second floor of Andreasstraße prison. Over the next few days files from the Erfurt district headquarters and other Stasi offices around the region were stored in cells in the empty men's section. The doors were sealed with large wax seals; some are now on display in the museum.[58][59]

Late in the afternoon a "citizens' guard" and "citizens' committee" were established. The volunteer citizens' guard kept watch over the Stasi district headquarters building and the prison for months afterwards, making sure no documents were removed. Many former inmates of Andreasstraße prison arrived to guard the documents that were stored there. "They wanted to be eyewitnesses that the power of the Stasi was really over".[55]

The action quickly inspired further occupations of Stasi offices throughout East Germany, starting that same evening in other towns in Thuringia as well as in Leipzig and Rostock.[60][Note 4]

The occupations led to the protection of Stasi files and ended the fear East German citizens had of the Stasi, the last bastion of the SED dictatorship.[50][9] The Stasi was dissolved on 13 January 1990.[31]

In 2013, five of the "Women for Change" were awarded the City of Erfurt's medal of honour for their courage in leading the occupation.[55]