Feared for the physical and psychological torture within, Hohenschönhausen (commonly known as the Stasi Prison) was the operational hub for the Ministry State Security, or Stasi, in communist East Germany, or GDR.
The prison helped coordinate the detention and interrogation of the GDR’s political prisoners from 1951 to 1989. When the Berlin Wall came down, it is estimated that more than 91,000 full-time Stasi employees and 189,000 unofficial collaborators were maintaining close, repressive surveillance over the East German populace.
After the fall of the Eastern Bloc, the notorious prison became a memorial and museum. In 2009, the site had a record 314,000 visitors. One of them was German photographer Phillip Lohoefener, who documented its beige patterned walls, wood-paneled interrogation rooms and antiquated medical apparatuses.
“I am happy to live in a democratic and free place,” said Lohoefener via e-mail. “I can’t believe that some people say, ‘Not everything in the GDR was bad.'”
The Hohenschönhausen complex includes the expected cell-blocks and prisoner exercise “tiger cages” but also workshops, administration offices, a hospital and an employee sauna.
Lohoefener’s photographs are part of his larger survey of historical GDR buildings. In addition to the visual documentation, he met with former inmates to get the perspective of those affected by the operational history of the prison.
“I went home with more than the images,” says Lohoefener.
Staff with the Hohenschönhausen Memorial’s “Eyewitness Office” have amassed an oral history of the site with over 900 testimonies to date from former prisoners. Given the total absence of photographs of the prison during its time in operation, these audio and written recordings are all the more vital.
The prison has been the subject for other photographers including Martin Roemers, Daniel & Geo Fuchs and Daniel Etter, but Lohoefener’s work is the most cohesive essay in describing the cold horror of the site.
“When you walk through these cells and rooms, it is not only the visual experience that is scary; it’s the smell, and how your footsteps sound, too,” says Lohoefener. “You get an uncomfortable feeling. I wanted to put over this discomfort in my images.”
Lohoefener’s work – as well as those by tourists – are images of a site with a newly defined purpose and narrative. General records issued by the Stasi within the Hohenschönhausen Memorial’s Documentary Archive provide a window into the terror that the photos hint at. Interested parties can browse old instructions to staff on how to organize the prison regime, prison registers, reports on “specific incidents,” training materials, duty rosters and staffing schedules. Many more records from the prison’s early phase are kept in Moscow.
The educational approach at Hohenschönhausen Memorial puts the prison in the company of Robben Island in South Africa, Tuol Sleng Prison in Cambodia and Auschwitz in Poland as important pillars of memorial-tourism. Since reunification, Germany has purposefully dealt with its conflicted past. Just a few miles down the road from Hohenschönhausen is Berlin’s Stasi Museum.Go Back to Top. Skip To: Start of Article.