Here are some photos I took of the museum:
Entrance to the Stasi Museum.
Bust of Karl Marx.
Piece of artwork lionising the Stasi as the protectors of the GDR
Mielke's Secretary's office
Paternoster: a type of elevator that has no doors and doesn't stop. Upside is that it's more convenient, since you don't have to wait long for a platform. Downside is that it is more dangerous than the typical elevator.
Stasi Building 1
Just one of many buildings in the Stasi complex.
Abandoned building that had services exclusive to Stasi employees. Services include a supermarket, cafeteria and a travel office. This is the front entrance.
Another picture I took of the same building.
I find the architecture of this building oppressive, or brutal.
6 comments:
This looks like an interesting place to go see. As this building damaged by war at all?
This looks like an interesting place to go see. As this building damaged by war at all?
I agree with Amanda! This does seem like a very interesting place to go! Were you able to go right into the rooms or was there a barrier only allowing you to go a certain distance?
Did you find any similarities or information that may have related to the Berlin Wall documentation center that we visited today (May 19, 2015)? That does look like an interesting museum though!
The Stasi, or Ministry of State Security, operated during the Cold War so there's no damage from the war. However after the dissolution of the GDR, in January 1990 a crowd gained entry into the complex and vandalized its offices. None of that is present in the museum's building, but the rest of the buildings of the complex look decrepit and abandoned.
I updated my blog entry with more photos I took of another building that shows the abandoned state I mentioned.
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The building where the museum is in uses three of eight storeys so in that regard you don't see all the rooms. In the rooms themselves there were barriers to protect the furniture.
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For me the biggest parallel between the Wall and the Stasi is the absurdity of their situations and how extreme they are. The GDR's need for control was so great that they built a wall through a city. In the documentation centre something struck me was the incomprehension of the magnitude of its implications when the Wall initially was constructed. Similarly, I think the vast scope of the Stasi organization in terms of its integration into society, paranoia, and its extra-legality were not completely understood at the time.
Another similarity between documentation centre and the Stasi Museum is recreation: the Wall death strip and the Stasi offices.
Wow! Interesting that the building was vandalized after reunification in 1990. I think that this shows the reoccurring theme that the people of Berlin were not happy with the division of the city, the Wall, and the GDR in general.
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