Stasi Buildings Become Landmarks of Dictatorship

Red telephone receivers hang from the former frontier watch tower of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) at Potsdamer Platz Square in Berlin, Germany, January 08, 2016. EPA/BGNES

The central station of the Ministry of State Security of East Germany (Stasi) will be transformed into a historical site with museums, exhibitions and archives, DPA news agency has announced.

The goal is to convert the place representing the repression over democratic values in Europe into a center for the study of democracy and education of the population about the era of dictatorship.

In the Cold War period from the Stasi’s headquarters, in the area near Liechtenstein, top officers were directing a network of 90 000 agents and nearly 180 000 collaborators and informers.

The “officers club” in the massive concrete building of the Ministry will be transformed into a library with special halls for meetings and reading areas.

The main museum is Building №1, which once was the office of Erich Mielke, the Minister of state security. The place offers an exposition about the special services and their connections with the Communist Party.

Most of the archives of the secret services are preserved in buildings with numbers 7, 8 and 9. It is expected that in 2017 one of the buildings will contain a multimedia exhibition making it possible for visitors to flip through the pages of the secret files.

The project is expected to be concluded by 2019 when Europe will celebrate 30 years of the fall of the Berlin wall.

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