Dictatorships have deeply affected the lives of many people and continue to shape the histories of numerous countries. The Ettersberg Foundation is dedicated to the reappraisal of European dictatorships. We present the results of our work to the general public, including through exhibitions at the Andreasstrasse Memorial and Education Centre in Erfurt.
The reappraisal of the SED dictatorship is particularly important to our foundation due to its location in Thuringia. It is also the subject of our permanent exhibition “IMPRISONMENT | DICTATORSHIP | REVOLUTION.”
All the necessary information to plan your visit can be found here.
INPRISONMENT | DICTATORSHIP | REVOLUTION: Thuringia 1949 – 1989
In the GDR, Andreasstrasse in Erfurt was a feared place. The area surrounding Andreasstrasse housed the district administration of the Ministry of State Security (Stasi) and a prison, which the Stasi used as a pre-trial detention facility. There, political dissidents were interrogated and deprived of their freedom. Today, when people in Erfurt mention “Andreasstrasse,” they usually mean our Memorial and Educational Centre, which is both a place of remembrance and a place of knowledge transfer.
Our permanent exhibition “IMPRISONMENT | DICTATORSHIP | REVOLUTION: Thuringia 1949 – 1989” traces the history of the historic “Andreasstrasse” and the path from repression to revolution in the GDR.
Imprisoned under Hitler: Political Prisoners in the Erfurt Prison, 1933–1945
Andreasstrasse has long been a place of oppression — it was already a functioning prison under National Socialism. Hundreds of women and men who did not correspond to the worldview of the Nazis — because they shared a different political opinion or were homosexual or belonged to “foreign races (fremdvölkisch)” — were imprisoned here. We memorialize some of their stories in our compact exhibition “Prisoners under Hitler: Political Prisoners in the Erfurt Prison, 1933–1945”.
“I regularly come to the Andreasstrasse Memorial and Educational Centre with school classes and exchange students from abroad. What makes Andreasstrasse special is that it is not just a random museum built on a random spot. It is a historic relic in a historic place. A place where people were interrogated, tortured and locked away. When young people gain a visual understanding of what they’ve heard and read about – for example in one of the former detention cells of the Stasi, it sparks empathy and encourages reflection. In that moment, many students are able to internalize a new perspective, in a way that would never have been possible in the classroom.”
“I’m interested in the cracks in people’s life stories. That is one of the reasons why I was always drawn to the Memorial in Andreasstrasse. Prison radically changed the lives of many GDR citizens, from one day to the next. The heavy and oppressive atmosphere of this place can still be felt in the preserved detention cells. Since I have moved to the East, I see many things from a different perspective – for many people in the East, reunification was and remains the most radical break they experienced in their lives.”
