Completed Research, Documentation and Exhibition Projects of the Centre for Contemporary History, Potsdam, the Potsdam Museum and the State Capital Potsdam - Lindenstraße Memorial Site (2007 – 2013)

Project management:
Hans-Hermann Hertle (ZZF Potsdam)
Thomas Schaarschmidt (ZZF Potsdam)
Gabriele Schnell (Gedenkstätte Lindenstraße)
Hannes Wittenberg (Potsdam Museum)

Exhibition curator:
Gabriele Schnell (Gedenkstätte Lindenstraße)

Exhibition design:
Stefan Charné, Inga Falkenberg, Björn Gripinski (freybeuter, Potsdam)

Funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM)

Located in the heart of historic Potsdam, the Lindenstrasse memorial site is a unique place of memory. With its history under National Socialism as well as in the Soviet Occupation zone and GDR, it is a symbol of the political persecution and violence practiced during two different German dictatorships in the course of the twentieth century. At the same time it stands for the efforts to overcome communist one-party-rule, and the victory of democracy ushered in by the Peaceful Revolution of 1989-90.

The permanent exhibit on display today is the result of project work carried out between 2007 and 2013 by the ZZF and Potsdam Museum. This work was in large part supported by the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship (Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur), the Ministry for Science, Research and Culture of the State of Brandenburg, and the Federal Commissioner for Culture and Media, as well as by the European Union, the cultural initiative “Kulturland Brandenburg,” the Brandenburg State Office for Political Education (Landeszentrale für Politische Bildung), the “Lindenstrasse 54” association, and the Society of Friends and Sponsors of the Center for Contemporary History in Potsdam.

Since 2008, the Potsdam Museum has set aside funds for work at the memorial site. Federal and state funding has enabled the memorial site to expand its visitor facilities. The site’s positive development has been accompanied by a steady increase in visitor numbers – from about 5,000 in 2003 to about 20,000 annually in recent years.

In preparation to becoming a legally recognized foundation, the site was officially disconnected from the Potsdam Museum and put under the responsibility of the Lord Mayor of Potsdam as of January 1, 2012. The recognition of the foundation by the Brandenburg Ministry of the Interior took place in December 2015.

The purpose of the Lindenstraße Memorial Foundation is to commemorate the victims of both very different German dictatorships, to strengthen the antidictatorial consensus in German society, and to reinforce an awareness of the values of freedom and democracy, as well as the necessity of defending human rights.

Publications:

Hans-Hermann Hertle/Thomas Schaarschmidt (Hg.), Strafjustiz im Nationalsozialismus. Rassische und politische Verfolgung im Kontext der NS-Strafjustiz, Potsdam 2008.

Gabriele Schnell, Das „Lindenhotel“. Berichte aus dem Potsdamer Geheimdienstgefängnis, 4. Aufl., Berlin 2012.

Maria Nooke/Hans-Hermann Hertle (ed.), Die Todesopfer am Außenring der Berliner Mauer 1961-1989/The Victims at the Berlin-Brandenburg Border, 1961-1989, Translation: Miriamne Fields, Berlin/Potsdam 2013.

Peter Ulrich Weiß/Jutta Braun (Hg.), Agonie und Aufbruch. Das Ende der SED-Herrschaft und die friedliche Revolution in Brandenburg, Potsdam 2014.

Hans-Hermann Hertle/Gabriele Schnell, Gedenkstätte Lindenstraße. Vom Haus des Terrors zum Potsdamer Haus der Demokratie, Reihe: Orte der Geschichte, hg. v. Martin Kaule, Ch. Links Verlag: Berlin 2014
(engl. Ausgabe: Lindenstraße Memorial Site. From a House of Terror to the Potsdam House of Democracy, Translation: David Burnett, Ch. Links Verlag: Berlin 2014).

Peter Ulrich Weiß/Jutta Braun, Im Riss zweier Epochen. Potsdam in den 1980er und frühen 1990er Jahren, Berlin 2017.

 

Photo cell, Photo by Hans-Hermann Hertle

 

Inside of a cell, Photo by Hans-Hermann Hertle