Bautzen, Memorial Prison Complex ("Stasi Prison").
The first field lesson on October 18, 2019 for a group of trainees of the Regional Museum Academy was devoted to the topic of museumification of such a complex object as a political prison. The place of employment was the former prison Bautzen II (Bautzen Zwei) in the town of Bautzen near Dresden, currently operating as a memorial complex. Bautzen, before the construction of the Bautzen I convict prison and the Bautzen II remand prison in it at the beginning of the twentieth century, had a completely peaceful reason for fame - the mustard produced there. In the 20th century, the name Bautzen became associated with the theme of state violence and political repression.
Until 1933, Bautzen II operated at the district court, and since 1933 it became the official investigative branch of the Bautzen I prison. After coming to power, the Nazis adapted the complex for the maintenance of political prisoners and especially important prisoners of war. It was here that the Czech writer and journalist, resistance fighter, communist Julius Fucik, author of the famous book “Reporting with a noose around his neck”, who was later executed in Berlin in the Pletzensee prison, was under investigation.
From 1945 to 1949, the Bautzen II prison served as a pre-trial detention center for the Soviet occupation troops. In addition, it was used by the State Security Department of the NKVD. From 1956 to 1989, the prison was actually controlled by the Ministry of State Security of the GDR (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, Stasi), abbreviated "Stasi", although it did not officially belong to this ministry.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, all political prisoners were released and Bautzen II again became a pre-trial detention center for Bautzen I. However, at the same time, the Committee of Former Prisoners was created, at the insistence of which the prison was closed in 1992 and turned into a memorial complex.
The interns from Belarus focused on approaches to memorialization of the prison complex, the creation of museum expositions inside the main memorial object - the prison itself, as well as the disclosure by museum means of such complex topics as the mechanisms of self-preservation of the state and their relationship with the concepts of humanity, freedoms and individual rights.
Photo - Tatiana Bembel
The organizer of the German program Dr. Kristiane Janeke used the walk through the town from the railway station to the Bautzen II memorial prison complex for an orientation tour.
In the first courtyard, located just outside the entrance gate to the Bautzen II complex, a group of trainees were met by Silke Klewin (pictured second from left), curator of the exposition part of the memorial prison and head of the training.
Here, in the former garages for prison vehicles, the first of many museum expositions of the complex was located. The diverse equipment of the penitentiary system - such as paddy wagons from the GDR - is an important part of the collections of the prison-museum.
A museum buffet has also been organized in a part of the former garage space. On the right in the photo, its ascetic interior is visible through a floor-to-ceiling window - exactly the size of the former garage doors, which are now shutters. This is a place where you can gather your courage before visiting the specific area of the memorial prison or restore balance after the experience.
The leader of the training, Silke Klewin, shows the group a diagram of the prison complex and tells how and why the museum was created, about the activities of the Committee of Former Prisoners of Bautzenzwei in 1989-1992. on museumification of the place of their imprisonment, on approaches to the memorialization of the very recent past.
Each element of the space of the former political prison, whether it be internal fences or service passages, now serve as exposition tasks.
Specially designed showcases of the main exhibition combine the principle of presenting information in chronological order, traditional for museum stands, with the image of a closed box that does not want to reveal its secrets. The glass windows here are narrow and small, like prison windows, and you can see very little through them, but these masterfully constructed installations have a powerful emotional impact in contrast to the numbers, dates, graphics, texts and video materials.
Curator Silke Klewin explained that the section of the exposition dedicated to the prisoners of Bautzen II is built on the principle of identical frame modules-cells, each of which contains all the available information about a particular person. Sometimes it's just a name, sometimes it's a few personal things, photos, sometimes just an empty cell. This technique is an expressive metaphor, associated with the same type of cells-boxes, each of which contained someone's life.
The layout of the entire prison complex is located in the window so that it can be seen against the background of a through corridor that unites all floors with stairs and passages. Prison architecture is a special type of design that reflects the state of society, its laws, morality, philosophy, psychology and other aspects that are important for museum interpretation.
The tour gives you the opportunity to compare yourself with the prison space in the corridors, cells and punishment cells, which aggravates the emotional effect of the visit, and also allows you to see the exposition techniques used to reveal different aspects of the topic (escape, resistance, loneliness, control, coercion, etc.) in the same type spaces.
