page_title: Memorial and Education Centre Andreasstraße
section_title: Prison conditions
hierarchical_section_title: Memorial and Education Centre Andreasstraße / GDR era 1949–1990 / Prison conditions
caption_attribution_description: English: A prison cell shared by six men in the former Andreasstrasse Prison, Erfurt, Germany, which is now the Memorial and Education Centre Andreasstrasse, a museum about the Stasi and repression in East Germany.
context_page_description: The Memorial and Education Centre Andreasstraße, is a museum in Erfurt, Germany, which is housed in a former prison used by the East German Ministry for State Security. It is informally known as the Stasi Museum.
  From 1952 until 1989, over 5000 political prisoners were held on remand and interrogated in the Andreasstraße prison, which was one of 17 Stasi remand prisons in the German Democratic Republic. The museum was opened in 2013 as a memorial to repression and resistance in the Thuringia region during the GDR dictatorship. Its permanent exhibitions focus on the experiences of the prison's inmates, the activities of the Stasi, life under the dictatorship, and the Peaceful Revolution which led to German reunification.
  On 4 December 1989, local citizens occupied the prison and the neighbouring Stasi district headquarters to stop the mass destruction of Stasi files. It was the first of many occupations of Stasi premises throughout the country, and it was a milestone in the Peaceful Revolution. It led to the preservation and opening of Stasi files so that citizens could see what information was held on them and so that the crimes of the Stasi could be exposed.
context_section_description: People could be held on pre-trial detention for months. A three-month maximum limit for preliminary investigations was set in the criminal procedures code, but the unit that investigated political cases could extend investigations anytime it wished. The average detention period in the Andresstraße prison was 100 days; 64 days on average for the investigation, and if convicted, a further 36 days waiting to be transferred to one of several of prisons that held political convicts.
  Physical and psychological abuse were common, particularly in the first half of the 1950s. Interrogations were carried out day and night, with sleep deprivation leading to false confessions being signed. Later, more subtle forms of mental pressure were used. Prisoners were impersonalised by being addressed only by their prison numbers, not by name. They were checked on frequently via spy holes in the cell doors, with lights turned on and off every 20 minutes during the night. The cells had glass brick windows, so that prisoners had no view of the outside.
  The prisoners were only allowed out of their cells to go to interrogations and for a 30-minute per day visit to the exercise yard, which was divided up into separate, walled spaces. There was a system of "traffic lights" in the corridors, so that prisoners couldn't see or pass each other when they were being taken outside of their cells. Prisoners who were held in isolation cells developed an alphabetical code for knocking on the walls in order to communicate with each other. Prisoners could write four letters per month, which were checked by prison staff; they were not allowed to contain any comments about the criminal proceedings or prison conditions. One visitor per one month was allowed.
caption: Shared men's cell, former Andreasstraße prison
exif: {"Image Make": "Sony", "Image Model": "C1905", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Auto", "Image DateTime": "2019:07:11 13:59:06", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "218", "Image GPSInfo": "562", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "662", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "25683", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/30", "EXIF FNumber": "14/5", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "590", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2019:07:11 13:59:06", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2019:07:11 13:59:06", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "349/100", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2560", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1440", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "532", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto"}