Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
9
one of the most desolate of the city's boroughs. However, this
is
the city for tens of
thousands of Berliners, and worth a look for this reason alone. Probably the most
pleasant day out in the eastern suburbs is
Köpenick
, in the far southeast, with its
attractive small-town feel and surprisingly unspoiled
lakes
, particularly the Grosser
Müggelsee with its thick belt of surrounding woods
.
Lichtenberg
East of Friedrichshain lies the sprawling working-class district of
Lichtenberg
, part
prefabricated postwar mass dwellings and part traditional tenement blocks, with heavy
concentrations of industry in the north and south. Until the mid-nineteenth century
Lichtenberg was little more than a country town and popular Sunday outing destination
for Berliners. With industrialization, however, the familiar Berlin tenements sprang up
and the area's rustic past was soon forgotten. Unfortunately, Lichtenberg has been hard
hit by the collapse of the old order, and unemployment runs high.
Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen
Genslerstr. 66 • Daily 9am-4pm; tours hourly in German, 2.30pm in English • €5 •
T
030 98 60 82 30,
W
stiftung-hsh.de • Tram #M5 from
Hackescher Markt or, if you're already in Lichtenberg, bus #256 from U-Bahn Lichtenberg - get off either tram or bus at Freienwalder
Strasse; the entrance to the former jail is at the end of the road
A potent antidote to
Ostalgie
- nostalgia for the GDR (see p.66) - is a visit to the
grim former Stasi prison at
Gedenkstätte Hohenschönhausen
(Hohenschönhausen
Memorial), which offers an insight into the fear and oppression upon which the regime
was founded. Hohenschönhausen began life in 1945 as a
Soviet Special Camp
, with
4200 inmates penned in together in horrendous living conditions. By 1946 around
three thousand had died. O
cially most of these were interned because of suspected
Nazi links, but in most cases there was no evidence. Underground torture chambers
became vital for acquiring “confessions” that usually led to decades of forced labour -
though ultimately almost all prisoners were declared innocent by the Russian
authorities in the 1990s. In 1951 the Stasi (see box, p.144) inherited the facility and
turned it into a
remand prison
that was quickly blotted from city maps. he smallest
sign of resistance or opposition to the state, including comments written in personal
letters - which were all routinely steamed open - would earn you a spell here. Typically,
you'd be caught unawares on your way to work, bundled into a van, and then brought
to this site. Tours, led by former prisoners, deliver an absorbing insight into the
psychological rather than physical abuse that followed in the solitary world of padded
cells, tiny exercise yards, endless corridors and interrogation rooms.
Stasi Museum Berlin
Ruschestr. 103 • Mon-Fri 10am-6pm, Sat & Sun noon-6pm • €5 •
W
stasimuseum.de • U-Magdalenenstrasse
One building in the huge former
Stasi headquarters
complex is now the
Stasi Museum
Berlin
, which uncovers the massive surveillance apparatus of the GDR's secret police.
Walking along the bare, red-carpeted corridors and looking at the busts of Lenin and
Felix Dzerzhinsky - founder of the Soviet Cheka, models for both the KGB and Stasi
- it all seems part of a distant past, not an era that ended only in 1990. But then the
obsessively neat o
ce and apartment of
Erich Mielke
, the Stasi head from 1957 to
October 1989, makes it all the more immediate. Everything is just as he left it: white
and black telephones stand on the varnished wooden desk as though awaiting calls, and
Mielke's white dress uniform hangs in a wardrobe. Other rooms have displays of Stasi
surveillance apparatus described in German (the accompanying English-language
booklet costs €3), but which mostly speak for themselves. he many bugging devices
and cameras - some concealed in watering cans and plant pots - reveal the lengths the
GDR went to in order to keep tabs on its citizens. You'll also find a couple of rooms
stuffed with medals, badges, flags and other GDR kitsch. Sections on political terror
