Torture and total surveillance – Inside the Stasi headquarters | DW Documentary

Torture and total surveillance – Inside the Stasi headquarters | DW Documentary

In September 1961, two 17-year-olds met on the Blue Wonder Bridge in Dresden. We just wanted to do something against the GDR. The elections were rigged. Then they built the Wall. They wanted to send a signal. We climbed up the middle. I stayed up top and Haaser went down backwards, risking his life, and painted the letters. The next morning, the words “Down with Ulbricht” were on the bridge. The boys were sent to prison. My cell was number 14. We no longer had names. 14-1 slept on the left and 14-2 slept on the right. Sleep deprivation. Late-night interrogations. No visitors. Confined to a dark cell for a night and a day. The Dresden Ministry for State Security was located in a sober building on Bautzner Strasse at the time. The complex is now home to mainly young people. The prison in the courtyard has become a memorial and museum. In late 1989, over 2,300 full-time Stasi employees worked here. Uljana Sieber, the memorial’s director, first entered the building through the former staff entrance in 2007. I walked into this prison for the first time and it really affected me. I’d never seen the inside of a prison before, thank God. And I knew this was authentic, that there had been people here. So I found it very moving and it prompted me to really wrestle with what happened here. Every December 5th, former prisoners meet in the memorial’s ballroom, where the Stasi held celebrations and ceremonies until the fall of communism. Survivors recall their fates, historians report new findings and artists present their work. Some who served time here are meeting again for the first time, others come regularly. Like Lutz Kandler, who, with his two friends, carried out the stunt on Dresden’s famous “Blue Wonder” bridge over the Elbe River. In September 1961, a few weeks after the Wall was built, the then 17-year-olds planned their daring feat. There used to be a milk bar down there where we hatched our plan. A few days later, they were ready. Kandler and Haaser met at the bridge just before midnight. A third man, Klaus Schumann, had mixed the paint in his father’s shop. We climbed up the middle. I stayed up top and Haaser went down backwards, risking his life, and painted the letters. “Down with Ulbricht – out with the State Council”. We agreed that if I didn’t say anything it was okay, if I went “Psst!”, he had to duck. He was dressed in black and had his FDJ shirt underneath. If we’d been caught, he would have said we wanted to write “Long live the German Democratic Republic.” The weather got worse and worse. Eberhard Haaser managed to write the first slogan on the bridge arch, before it started pouring rain. They stopped, threw the paint and brushes into the Elbe and set off in different directions. The next morning, “Down with Ulbricht” was written on the bridge arch – blurred but still legible. The Stasi took photos. The three boys told no one about their stunt. You never knew who would rat you out. Some people who were friendly and cheerful turned out to be informants. We just wanted to do something against the GDR. The matter only came to light three months later. Eberhard Haaser had drawn police attention for experimenting with fireworks and was arrested. Did the Stasi know what he had done back in September, or was it just a bluff? Haaser, under enormous pressure, confessed to the deed on the bridge. The police then picked up his two friends. They took me from my home at lunchtime and brought me here and put me in a cell. I had no idea what was going on. They’d said at the house that I’d be back home by evening. My parents said I had to go to work, and the Stasi said I’d be right back. The term they used was “clarify a matter”. Always the same. I was all alone here in the cell and didn’t even know why. Between 1953 and 1989, 10,000 people, mostly political prisoners, awaited sentencing here in the Dresden remand center of the Ministry for State Security. But who was this great unpredictable power, the Stasi? The Ministry for State Security was established under the direct guidance of the Soviet secret service when the GDR was founded. It was a domestic secret police, investigative agency and foreign intelligence service with 17 remand prisons of its own. The Stasi was controlled solely by the SED leadership. “Shield and sword of the party” was the motto. But behind it were people. Full-time employees of the GDR State Security were not only interrogators, prison wardens and monitors. They were also nurses, drivers and kindergarten teachers. In the 1970s, several new apartment blocks were built, which were occupied exclusively by Dresden Stasi employees and their families. Around 2,300 people worked in the Bautzner Strasse building and its surroundings. Their children went to the Stasi’s own kindergarten. There were summer camps where young people were schooled in the spirit of state security. Children’s curiosity and thirst for action and adventure were exploited for the socialist cause. Comrades of merit were honored, Women’s Day was celebrated and card tournaments were played in the large hall at the headquarters. Vladimir Putin was a welcome guest. As an officer of the Soviet secret service, the KGB, he was stationed in Dresden from 1985 to 1990, directly opposite the headquarters, in a villa at 4 Angelika Strasse. Putin also had a State Security ID card and played an important role in 1989 when the Stasi headquarters was stormed by angry citizens. Historian Heiko Neumann leads tours of the 8.5-acre district administration grounds. Using old photos and aerial views, he explains where each building was located. One part of the complex, two old villas, now stand unused on prime real estate on the banks of the Elbe. This was the State Security Medical Service, which was run by a doctor and nurses. They were here to provide medical care for the staff. And in exceptional cases, prisoners also received medical treatment here. A commemorative chronicle from 1980 proudly mentions that the comrades from the administration no longer had to wait in other medical facilities in Dresden and could make better use of their working hours. Next door, the former Sadofsky villa. This was originally a manufacturer’s villa from the 19th century. In 1928-29 they simplified it structurally, in an English country house style. And in the Stasi era, it was the clubhouse, with offices on the upper floors and a place for socializing and after-work drinks. People drank and ate on the balcony facing the Elbe. That’s how the building was used right up to the end. There used to be greenhouses on the grounds below. And a dog kennel. Many Dresden residents still remember the loud barking of the dogs that ran on long ropes across the terraced property. The dogs were no doubt also there to prevent escape attempts. But along with this internal security, you have to bear in mind that it was a military facility with perimeter security. This was the Cold War and the enemy was the Western services, who were not allowed onto this property. There were Stasi units in all 14 districts of the GDR and Berlin. The Dresden office had special significance. The district of Dresden had 1.8 million inhabitants at the time. People worked in agriculture, business and research, as well as coal mining. These were the three main economic activities. It’s on the transit route to south-eastern Europe. There were several border crossing points in the district, which were guarded by State Security Division 6. And there was fairly strong opposition from a large emigration movement, resulting in many investigations. In the 1980s in particular, this district had the most State Security investigations, so it was politically very turbulent from the SED’s point of view. And that made this district, and its administration here, somewhat special. The office of the Stasi head, Major General Horst Böhm, has been kept exactly as it was. Because the Stasi tapped and recorded all internal telephone conversations – even that of their own boss – visitors can hear Böhm’s voice there today: Call me in the morning at quarter past seven if there’s been any more trouble today, ‘cause I’ll be talking to the brass at half past seven. Now you talk to your comrades in the BDVP again. Ask them again if they think there was anything wrong at training tonight. 3:31 pm. Soccer games against Western teams were especially thorny. In front of Bellevue, where the Stuttgart team is staying, there are 40 to 50 soccer fans who want interviews or signatures etc. from the Stuttgart team. That’s normal in principle, but there is not a single Dynamo Dresden official there. Surveillance footage from 1973: The Stasi filmed fans in central Dresden before the European Cup game between Dynamo Dresden and Bayern Munich. They filmed tourists in the Zwinger and at the ruins of the Frauenkirche. And in October ‘89, cameras were rolling at Dresden Central Station when trains carrying embassy refugees from Prague passed through. Thousands of audio and video tapes were carefully archived. Countless private citizens were also monitored, observed and wiretapped. Like Michael Schlosser, who had assembled an airplane in his shed in order to flee to the West. Colleagues who worked as informants for the Stasi betrayed him. Today there is a replica of his plane in the memorial. The original airplane no longer exists. Five months in jail just because I built the plane and was declared a criminal. The Stasi called it Operation Icarus. Interviewing those responsible at the time is difficult. Most do not want to talk about that time or their involvement. But a former lieutenant colonel agreed to an anonymous interview about operation Icarus. We met at night to secure the entire property. It was a covert search, not official. Division 8 entered the property, opened the garage and carried out the searches. Then they told us they had found the plane. If he came, we could take him into custody right away. But we waited overnight instead and arrested him at work the next morning. Michael Schlosser went to prison for 4 and a half years. The West German government bought his release for 96,000 marks. I did nothing wrong in that situation. I have no blood on my hands. Apart from the Schlosser case, I never caused permanent harm to anyone. But that was the law of the land at the time. And I have to live with that. Michael Schlosser now leads tour groups through the memorial. These young people from Siegerland in North Rhine-Westphalia visit the oldest part, the cellar. We are virtually in the middle of the building, and this is where the Soviet military administration came in. In 1947, the Soviet KGB set up a remand prison in the basement of what was then an old cardboard box factory. A sprawling labyrinth of cellars, dubbed the foxhole, was built beneath the current apartment buildings along Bautzner Strasse. Thousands of real or alleged Nazis, war criminals and opponents of the regime were held in the basement prison, sentenced to death or to work in Soviet labor camps. They converted all the cellars that had been here into cells and from then on arrested everyone who looked suspicious, including 14 and 15-year-olds who they thought had been flak helpers or in the militia, and they were all immediately shipped off to Workuta. That was the gulag that Stalin had built above the Arctic Circle. They were all sentenced to 25 years in the labor camp as punishment and were transferred directly from here. There was nowhere in here to wash, no toilet, and there was hardly any light. It was almost empty. The only things in here were tin buckets in the cells to use when nature called. There were no wooden cots, nothing at all. The prisoners slept on the floor, on mattresses or whatever else they could find. In 1953, the German State Security came and they continued to use it as a detention center. They built wooden cots and built the first toilet in this room. Later it was completely rebuilt. At the time, they brought in tradesmen who were convicts from GDR prisons and set up a work squad. They rebuilt and expanded everything in here. Barbara Michael was taken into Stasi custody in 1982. She was 28 years old at the time and had two young daughters. She spent 19 months here and was housed in a common cell with other women. This cell was for the women prisoners. Six women were crowded in here. It was always full. She and her husband had applied in 1982 to emigrate to West Germany. The first application was rejected, but we didn’t give up. In 1982, we went to the West German diplomatic mission, and from then on we were under surveillance. And on September 14, 1982, we were arrested. Barbara Michael was sentenced to two years in prison for slander and treason. Her children were allowed to stay with her sister-in-law. I didn’t go into the main cell house right away. I had to be in a standing cell first. Only after that was I sent into the cell house. Once a week we could go to the laundry area for fresh air. Once a week. She spent her entire sentence here on Bautzner Strasse as cheap labor for the Stasi. We worked in the wash house, and we also had to clean here, upstairs in the interrogation rooms and down here on the second floor. Now, she feels lucky to have stayed in the Dresden Stasi prison and not a women’s prison. I was so mentally shattered that I just cried. I dreamed about my mother, and about my children, and that was a huge emotional burden. I was given sedatives, Medazpam to get me back on my feet. My sister and brother-in-law came to see me every six weeks. And your daughters? Not the girls. How long were you away from them? The whole 19 months that I was here. I tried not to think about it. I tried to find some sense of balance. Her sister-in-law brought her some wool and she began to crochet dolls in prison. I crocheted a green and black one and a blue and black one. I wanted to make my children happy. Every weekend, she wrote letters to her daughters, who were only one and three years old at the time. The letters she received in prison from her family have been preserved. Barbara Michael’s sister-in-law made sure that her daughters did not forget her while she was in prison. She always talked about me as mama, to prepare the girls. Barbara Michael divorced her husband in prison and withdrew her application to emigrate. After his release, he went to the West and she returned to her children. The blue doll is still on display today in the museum. Lutz Kandler and Klaus Schumann, the men from the Blue Wonder bridge, turned 18 in Stasi prison. The four months before their trial are etched deeply in their memories. I turned 18 on January 15th. I thought maybe they would open the door and tell me it had all been a mistake and that I could go home. But the night of the 14th, they dragged me out of bed eight times for interrogation. You couldn’t sleep soundly, and when you did sleep, it was only for an hour or so. I lost all sense of time. The next night they did it three more times. Do you remember which cell you were in? Yes, very well. We’re standing in front of it. My cell was number 14. We no longer had names. 14-1 slept on the left and 14-2 slept on the right. Some sounds torment him to this day. That crash of metal on metal. I won’t do it now or the thing will break. Should I? OK, it’ll be loud. But the worst memories are of this room. Being confined to a dark cell for a night and a day. Nobody told me why I was there. There wasn’t even a toilet in the cell. You always had to knock, and they would laugh and mock you from outside and refuse to let you go. That was the worst period for me. After four months in custody, the trial began. They all received prison sentences. On the day of the verdict, they saw each other and their parents for the first time since their arrest. That was the first time we saw each other, and our parents were there. There was more crying, of course. But that was the first contact with our parents. At the end, my mother was allowed to hug me, and she told me she was proud that I was being held as a political prisoner and not a criminal. Günther Werner was also a political prisoner. He is still traumatized. He was imprisoned for distributing leaflets and writing slogans on buildings. One night in 1962, the Stasi arrested him. It was getting light, people were looking. They thought a burglar was being arrested! And my young life was over for the time being. That’s when I ended up here. 7 months – alone of course. It was pretty hard because you had absolutely nothing. All they let you keep was a handkerchief. Nothing personal? Nothing. How old were you? 20. Great care was taken to ensure that the prisoners could not see each other, let alone speak. A traffic light system showed when someone was returning from interrogation – then all the other cells stayed closed. The only communication between the prisoners was via the toilet pipes and knocking signals. Even that was stopped. The Stasi invented an interference transmitter. The early interrogations were brutal, but over time became more subtle. Historian Heiko Neumann has researched the Stasi’s methods extensively. We have it from quite reliable sources that physical violence played a greater role in the 1950s than in the 60s, 70s and 80s. That’s because the interrogation process had become more professional. There was more and more academic training for a new generation of interrogators. The torture you are referring to is called white torture, which includes sleep deprivation. Applying psychological pressure so that the scars didn’t show on the skin, but remained in the mind. In the psyche. This went on until the 1980s and of course always depended on how cooperative the accused was during interrogation. The aim was always to get a confession. Lutz Kandler went through countless interrogations. During his guided tours of the museum, he tries to give young people a sense of it. This was an interrogation room. There were two or three of these rooms. The interrogator sat here. There was an emergency switch down here that he could press if the prisoner over here jumped across the table at him, which as far as we know never happened. And there was a jar. Take the cloth out of the jar and spread it on the chair. Then you’d drop your pants and sit down on the cloth. You had to rub your bum back and forth and side to side on the cloth, then stand up and fold the cloth up and put it back in the jar. It was important to preserve body scents so sniffer dogs could find people later. Records of the interrogations have been kept. That’s a very strong allegation. We are not alleging anything. We already told you at noon that we have the evidence, I told you that today at the start of the whole thing. You now have the opportunity to briefly respond to this accusation. Do you admit it, or do you not admit it? I do not admit it. In the fall of 1989, the people brought an end to the GDR. The Stasi began destroying thousands of files on GDR citizens in its offices. When word of this spread, people set off for Bautzener Strasse to stop the destruction. On December 5th, 1989, Fritz Lieberwirth from West Germany was visiting his family in Dresden. He heard on the radio that people had gathered at the Stasi headquarters. In Dresden, several thousand citizens have occupied the office for State Security. A New Forum spokesperson has appealed to those present not to use violence. He quickly packed his video camera and drove to the scene. Suddenly a young man climbed onto the container I was standing on. He put masking tape over the blinking red light on my camera and told me I was a perfect target for snipers. I looked up and saw people on the rooftops. I don’t know if they were snipers, but my heart nearly stopped! I suddenly realized that what I was doing wasn’t exactly safe. The call for a peaceful rally in front of the Stasi headquarters came from the New Forum and the Group of 20. Herbert Wagner, who later became Dresden’s first democratically-elected mayor, played a leading role at the time. Arnold Vaatz asked me if I was prepared to register a demonstration with him in front of the State Security building complex. That was my greatest moment of fear. Up until then, we had always done everything at the Monday protests to ensure that no one led the demonstration to the Stasi. So the two of us went to the Dresden radio station. Shortly before twelve, we asked the editors to pass on a message to the people of Dresden that they should keep their radios on. There would be an important announcement in half an hour. And then we took turns at the typewriter and wrote the call for a demonstration. And it actually went out over the radio at 12:35 after the news. We had never thought of occupation. It just evolved. They had already painted the wall by 5 pm. They climbed the wall, ready to jump to the other side. I was very afraid of what would happen next. And then, like a miracle, the gate opened from the inside. We were pushed from behind. We had to go into the darkness. I was afraid things would get out of hand, that it would turn violent, that people would be lynched, or that the Stasi would shoot. Nothing was certain, and then we were pushed from behind, they moved faster and faster at the front and came into the inner courtyard, and from there into the hall. Of course, those five thousand people couldn’t all fit into the hall. A pay slip! 35 marks clothing allowance, 137 marks food allowance. But the discussion didn’t go the way the Major General wanted. This man, who was used to power, was confronted with questions from ordinary citizens. Now he was being interrogated, asked his name and rank. Everything went wrong for him that evening, and the crowd insulted him, spit at him, kicked him. He went to his knees. I was worried that he might be knocked down and trampled to death. I was partly responsible for the call. I didn’t want the general to die either, so I stood in front to protect him. I walked a few feet so he could walk upright again. Then he placed his pistol on the table. That was the surrender of the Dresden Stasi administration for all to see. The greatest danger seemed to have passed, but at about half past eleven a group split away and told me they were going to break up the KGB. Herbert Wagner did not go to the KGB on Angelika Strasse. He only learned what happened there the next day. They rang the bell to get in. A guard with a machine gun was standing there, and out came a man in civilian clothes. They assumed it was Putin, which he later confirmed, and he told the demonstrators that the guards had orders to fire on trespassers. He told them to go home, and they did. In the weeks and months that followed, civil rights activists took over the Stasi offices, ensuring that surveillance videos, files, documents and audio recordings were saved from destruction. It is well known from friends and relatives that the State Security made serious intrusions into people’s private lives in very many cases. I believed that we should take the opportunity to put an end to it. People kept coming to the Stasi headquarters hoping for a chance to see their files. I was imprisoned here for 15 months. On what charge? Attempted defection. When was that? From ‘69 to ‘71. How were you treated? Properly, I would say, but coldly. Four and a half months of solitary confinement without justification. And it was very, very hard. Ten days in the hole, without a window, without a blanket, soup only every third day. But the point is not how it was, but why I was there. Just because I wanted to move away. The building was opened to the public for the first time in 1994. Establishing a museum and memorial here was an obvious step. In 1997, the Bautzner Strasse Dresden Memorial Association was founded. Henry Krause is its director. When the association was founded, it was a mix of former prisoners and people who were simply interested in the topic. Ministers were involved too. Many just found it important to process the GDR era and to remember what happened here. And to create a memorial. Since then, visitor numbers have increased yearly. School classes, tour groups, and more and more from West Germany. I regularly lead tours myself and have always had very positive experiences, especially with young people the same age as we were when we were imprisoned. It’s always a pleasure, let’s say, to share it, because you see it resonate. When you talk about it, it’s not just about prison experiences and bad things, but also about how young people orient themselves. When you first think about your life, you want to stand on your own two feet and then try rather clumsily to assert your independence. That’s something that very much concerns young people today – thinking about where they are, where they want to go, what they want to do with their lives, what they are supposed to do in this world. A building with two faces – one sad and cruel, the other hopeful. The people working here now recognize this more than anyone. When I started here, there was only this Stasi prison, not the big building that now covers 48,000 square feet. We developed it all together. And that’s the other side of the place. It is a really lively meeting place. The people who lived through it all feel that, as do their families. But the young people who come here, the visitor groups and the tourists also feel it. That is a very special characteristic of this space, this friendly openness combined with memories of what happened here, of the survivors, the people who risked and lost their own liberties fighting for freedom. Those are the two faces, and that makes the work very exciting. Of course, sometimes it’s also very sad. But above all, good feedback encourages us to continue. For the people who were held here, life outside changed – sometimes dramatically, sometimes more subtly. Michael Schlosser left the GDR and returned after reunification. I saw it from afar and was a bit upset when the Wall came down. It meant that my imprisonment back then had been for nothing. But now I’m over it. Eberhard Haaser and Klaus Schumann resumed their studies and remained in Dresden. Lutz Kandler became a teacher, but left for the West in 1987. He too returned after reunification. That experience made me more mature and a much better person. I had to conform to the GDR, which we had to endure until we left in ‘86. Barbara Michael too has left the fear and despair of that time behind. In a sense, I have forgiven them. It doesn’t affect me any more, and I’m glad of that. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to live the way I do now. Today, the former Stasi offices are apartments. Those who move in here do not fear the state. They only know the Ministry for State Security from stories. Children play next to the barred windows of the former prison. The Stasi is no more than a reminder of a time when just the desire for freedom could land you in prison.

An inconspicuous block of buildings in Dresden harbors a dark secret. Today, regular people make their homes here. But until 1989, this block of buildings housed the headquarters of the GDR’s State Security.

The long, four-story building in the courtyard is only remarkable for its windows, which are still barred. The district administration in Dresden was one of the most important centers of power of the GDR’s State Security, or “Stasi.”

The original rooms of the Stasi headquarters have been preserved and are still accessible to visitors. No one who walks through the large detention building remains untouched. Footsteps echo loudly in the huge stairwell, full of barred corridors and steel doors with peepholes.

In October 1953, the Soviet secret service handed the building over to the GDR‘s security authorities. Until then, thousands of real and alleged Nazis and war criminals, as well as opponents of the regime, were held here in the basement prison. For many of them, imprisonment ended with the death penalty, or in Soviet labor camps.

After that, between 1953 and 1989, an estimated 10,000 people were held here in the 44 cells. They had been arrested for alleged espionage, attempts to flee the republic, resist the police or engage in ‘subversive activities’, as the Stasi called it. In December 1989, GDR citizens stormed the Stasi headquarters. They prevented files from being destroyed and evidence from being stolen.

Today, the building is a memorial – a place of remembrance, research and encounters. Contemporary witnesses guide interested visitors through the rooms and talk about what they experienced here. For the film, author Katrin Claußner meets people whose lives were fundamentally changed here. Like the three young men who wrote “Down with Ulbricht” in paint on a bridge in Dresden after the Wall was built in 1961 and ended up in Stasi prison. They are moving testimonies that tell of arbitrariness and torture, but also of resistance, courage and strength.

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