Dark Tourism - the guide to dark travel destinations around the world. Turned into a memorial space after the German Peaceful Revolution of and the country's reunification, it is now one of the visually most stunning dark sites in Potsdam. It was built during the reign of King Frederick William the First of Prussia in the Dutch red-brick style that was fashionable at that time.
It was a city palace used by the military. Later, during the French occupation by Napoleon's troops, the site was used as a storage facility and β I'm not making this up! It wasn't until that the building first became a court of justice and remand prison , giving rise to extensive rebuilding of both the main house which became the court and the buildings at the back surrounding the courtyard, which became the prison. The cell blocks were gradually extended and the complex as we see it today was finished in But its real dark days began with the Third Reich.
These laws, based on the twisted theories of 'eugenics', led to plenty of cases of enforced sterilizations see also under Schloss Hartheim. The prison part of the site, meanwhile, became one of the many places where the Nazis incarcerated political prisoners right up until the end of WWII and the collapse of the Third Reich.
But that was not the end of the dark times for this particular place. Quite the contrary. In the summer of the prison building was seized by the Soviet authorities who then used it for their own kind of persecution and atrocities. But soon the KGB shifted their attention to anyone who seemed to be critical of the new communist regime or was alleged to have been a spy for the West. For the next 37 years, the Stasi would use the place as a remand prison , and some political prisoners are estimated to have gone through this ordeal here cf.
What was going on inside was well hidden from the general public you can't see the cell blocks from the road and the entrance was cordoned off. After the Peaceful Revolution in the GDR had led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Stasi was imminent, all remaining prisoners were released. But by then the local Stasi had managed to destroy almost all files, except for the prisoners' register. The prison was preserved as a historical site and declared a memorial in The current permanent exhibition was opened in What there is to see: From the street level outside the prison you'd never think that anything so sinister could be behind these rather pretty walls.
