- Title
- Representing political oppression : The Stasi Prison as an edifice of cultural memory in modern Berlin
- Creator
- Wilson, Jacqueline; Boyle, Ian
- Date
- 2017
- Type
- Text; Book chapter
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/158444
- Identifier
- vital:11782
- Identifier
-
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56135-0_24
- Identifier
- ISBN:978-1-137-56134-3
- Abstract
- In June of 2015 during a stay in Berlin we visited, on successive days, the Stasi Museum and the Stasi Prison, in former East Berlin. The Stasi Prison operated as a remand and interrogation facility continually from immediately after World War II until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dismantling of the communist regime in East Germany. Virtually all of the many thousands of citizens who populated the Prison during those four decades were political prisoners, and as such the representation of their experience in the site provides important insights into the nature of the regime and its impact on daily life. The Stasi Museum is in the former headquarters of the East German Ministry for State Security in the Berlin suburb of Lichtenberg, and provides a highly engaging representation of the Ministry’s history, bureaucratic structure and activities (see Stasi Museum 2016). It also furnished us with valuable social and historical background for visiting the Stasi Prison the following day. The account we give in this chapter, however, focuses entirely on our experience of the Prison. The tour we did there was guided by a German national but was conducted in English.
- Publisher
- Palgrave MacMillan
- Relation
- The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Tourism (Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology series) Chapter 24 p. 497-515
- Rights
- Copyright © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
- Rights
- This metadata is freely available under a CCO license
- Subject
- Political oppression; Stasi prison; Cultural memory; Berlin
- Reviewed
- Hits: 721
- Visitors: 641
- Downloads: 1
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format |
|---|