Topography of Terror

The Topography of Terror (German: Topographie des Terrors) is a history museum in Berlin, Germany. It is both indoors and outdoors. More than one million people visit the museum each year. It is the most visited museum in Berlin.
History
1945-1990
The buildings that were the headquarters of the SS and Gestapo were destroyed in 1945. For several decades, these buildings were somewhat forgotten. The location was a dump site. East Germany built the Berlin Wall in 1961 that went along the Niederkirchnerstrasse. The site was in East Germany and next to the wall.
Dieter Hoffmann-Axthelm wrote about the importance of the site in 1978. However, the first exhibit on the destroyed buildings would only be in 1987. Excavators and researchers found a Gestapo prison cell, where prisoners had been tortured and killed. They decided to make a museum out of the site. They formed an exhibition in East Germany in 1989. After reunification, the city kept the part of the wall next to the site.
After Reunification
In 1992, further plans were to improve the site and create a building. There was an architectural competition, and Peter Zumthor won it. There was not enough money, so construction stopped. The city destroyed the structure and started a new building in 2004. The building design was by Ursula Wilms and the landscape by Heinz W. Hallmann. The building cost EUR20 million and took 2 years to build. The new museum opened in May of 2010.
Exhibitions
The museum shows the history of the Gestapo, SS, and Third Reich and their crimes. It includes the grounds of the former Main Office and headquarters of the Gestapo, SS and Reich Security. It is the central location where the Nazis planned most of their crimes including the Holocaust. The Berlin Wall is also part of the museum.
Permanent exhibitions
Indoor
The permanent indoor exhibition is "Topography of Terror: Gestapo, SS and Reich Security Main Office on Wilhelm- and Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse". It contains photos, documents, videos, and audio about the institutions and their crimes. There are five parts to the exhibition. They include The National Socialist Takeover of Power (I); Institutions of Terror (SS and Police) (II); Terror, Persecution and Extermination on Reich Territory (III); SS and Reich Security Main Office in the Occupied Countries (IV); and The End of the War and the Postwar Era (V). There are maps of the layout of SS stations (Leitstellen) and the structure of the Concentration Camps.
Outdoor
The permanent exhibition outdoors is "Berlin 1933-1945: Between Propaganda and Terror". It tells how the National Socialists rose to power in Berlin and they changed the city. The main sections are Weimar Republic (I), Establishing the Fuhrer's Dictatorship (II), Berlin and the "People's Community" (III), Wartime in Berlin 1939-1945 (IV); and Berlin and the Consequences of the Nazi Regime (V). There are documents, photos, and newspaper articles. Behind the glass, one can see ruins of buildings.
Visitors can take live tours or audio tours of the museum's historic site. It includes 15 stations with photos, documents, and 3-D graphics and provides an overview of the grounds.
Special exhibitions
Special temporary exhibits have been on different topics. They are including German occupation and resistance, Kristallnacht, Nazi ghettos and concentration camps, trials of the Nazis, the press and propaganda, labor policy and laws, the people's court, different stages of the war, and the Nazi's rise to power.
People
There have been exhibitions on people including Albert Speer, Adolf Eichmann, Fritz Bauer, Martin Luther, and Hans Bayer.
People groups
There are several past exhibits for various people groups who suffered and died under the Nazis. Exhibitions included historians' research projects, historical documents, and archival photos.
Since 2010
Below is a partial list of special exhibitions since 2010:
The Cold Eye. Final Pictures of Jewish Families from the Tarnow Ghetto. November 27, 2021, to April 18, 2022. The exhibition showed the work of two scholars who did a research project about East European Jews in 1941. They portrayed the family's stories and their deaths under the Nazis.
Between Shade and Darkness. The Fate of the Jews of Luxembourg between 1940 and 194515th July to October 13, 2020
Germany 1945 - The Last Months of the War May 19, 2020 to September 27, 2020
The Persecution of the Jews in Photographs. The Netherlands 1940-1945 October 30 2019 to March 12 2020
Warsaw Rising 1944 July 30 to October 26, 2014, July 26 to October 15 2019 Exhibition about Polish resisting German occupation.