In the GDR, the red brick building in Andreasstrasse was a dreaded place. Here, the Ministry of State Security (Stasi, for short) imprisoned people who did not want to bow to the SED dictatorship. The usual accusations were: espionage, sabotage, underground activity, anti-democratic incitement. Later, after the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the majority of the people in Stasi custody were people who had unsuccessfully tried to escape the GDR to emigrate to the West.
According to current calculations, 5.523 GDR citizens were held in pre-trial detention at Erfurt’s Andreasstrasse for political reasons – isolated from the outside world and excluded from regular criminal proceedings. Interrogations and isolation, disorientation and uncertainty determined their daily lives in prison. Most prisoners were sentenced to imprisonment after their pre-trial detention. Prisoners were also held on the ground floor and in the basement of the building – in the custody of the People’s Police (Volkspolizei). Political prisoners, such as men who had refused military service, were also among these detainees.
Andreasstrasse as a place of discipline and punishment did not begin during the GDR. Since 1878 people have been imprisoned in Andreasstrasse. However, the prison only became a place of systematic repression of political dissenters during the Nazi period. Because they did not fit into the worldview of the Nazis, hundreds of women and men were imprisoned there.
