Grim era revisited in German prison museum

ROSTOCK, Germany — It looked like just another bland apartment building in a quiet neighborhood of this northern German city.

It wasn't. Tucked inside the three-story building was a grim, 46-cell prison once run by the Stasi, the dreaded and all-powerful East German secret police.

The prison, now a somber museum, held 4,800 men and women from 1960 until the fall of the repressive Communist regime in 1989 when East and West Germany were reunited into one country.

Throughout East Germany and in Rostock, a Baltic port city, people were snatched from the street, their homes and workplaces by the all-powerful State Security Service, or Stasi.

They were held for months, sometimes years, in Rostock's and similar prisons without being charged. It was the dictatorial East German government's way to squash dissent and keep itself in power. Some people were imprisoned for the simplest of offenses, for telling an anti-government joke or talking wistfully about immigrating to the West.

In the Rostock prison, now called the Documentation and Memorial Museum, visitors can walk through the echoing corridor of the metal-barred cellblock. It's lined with windowless, barren cells, barely big enough for two wood-plank beds and a toilet.

Videos and tape recordings are displayed in the cellblock, documenting Stasi history. A seemingly ordinary-looking suitcase sits on a cellblock desk; it opens to reveal a hidden surveillance camera used on the streets by Stasi spies.

For Germans, the Rostock museum and other ex-Stasi sites scattered through the country are more than museums. They're also places where citizens can get information and examine the once-secret files kept on them. It's estimated that Stasi, one of the world's most efficient domestic spy agencies, kept files on about six million East Germans, about a third of the population.

Beyond the prison

Rostock, a city of about 200,000, also suffered under an earlier 20th-century dictatorship — the Nazis. A vital Baltic Sea port and industrial center at the broad mouth of the Warnow River, Rostock was heavily bombed in World War II by the Allies. Some of its centuries-old buildings survived the bombing. Others were severely damaged, then painstakingly rebuilt after the war.

For visitors, Rostock, home to about 200,000 people, is compact enough to explore on foot. And it's a snapshot of Germany's history, from its medieval life — the University of Rostock was founded in 1419 and is one of the oldest in Northern Europe — to its Cold War history and the unemployment and other social struggles that followed German reunification.

Parts of Rostock's medieval defensive wall, with ramparts and fortified gates, dot the city. A milelong pedestrian street, Kropeliner, winds through the city's heart toward the medieval Marienkirche, an imposing cathedral with a 600-year-old clock that still keeps accurate time. The walking street is lined with centuries-old gabled buildings, and street musicians serenade walkers and cafe patrons enjoying the locally-made beer (appropriately called Rostocker).

These days, the city is pleasant and prosperous enough, especially in summer when German tourists flock here and to the sandy beaches of the adjoining seaside resort of Warnemunde. But as a visit to the prison museum shows, Rostock's painful past remains close.

Kristin Jackson: 206-464-2271 or kjackson@seattletimes.com