Barnimstrasse women's prison

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Barnimstrasse women's prison, 1931
Cell corridor, 1931

The Barnimstrasse women's prison was a prison in the royal city of Berlin from 1864 to 1974 , which was divided into the districts of Mitte , Friedrichshain and Prenzlauer Berg in 1920 .

Building history

In 1864 a new guilty prison was built in Berlin's royal city , northeast of today's Alexanderplatz , under the direction of architects Carl Johann Christian Zimmermann and Albert Cremer . After the state of Prussia abolished guilty detention in 1868, it was converted and expanded into the Royal Prussian Women’s Prison . A maternity ward and a mother-and-child ward were also built. With an extension built from 1910 to 1913, it was the most modern prison in the city and offered space for 357 inmates, and could even be increased to 500. There was now a hospital with 38 beds for sick inmates . In addition, the architects added a three-story new building to the farm yard, which accommodated the kitchen and other economic units such as the laundry, bathing facilities or a steam boiler.

The buildings survived the bombing and fighting at the end of the Second World War with only minor damage. In 1974, however, a women's prison was built in Berlin-Köpenick because of the work opportunities in a neighboring large laundry . The buildings in Barnimstrasse were then torn down. First a sports field with a gym, concrete floor and diving pit was set up on the site, and a traffic garden was set up in the 1990s .

Grounds for detention

Monarchy and Weimar Republic

At the time of the Kingdom of Prussia, the prison was primarily occupied by petty criminals , including many prostitutes . In the wake of the socialist laws and the anti-war movement of the First World War , women were also imprisoned for political reasons . Rosa Luxemburg served prison terms here in 1907 and 1915/16.

Within the prison buildings, it was compulsory to wear institutional clothing, which consisted of a clean blue washcloth with a white and blue scarf and blue knitted woolen stockings with a red stripe. For cooler days there was a blue jacket with the old sleeve cut. The women in charge of preparing the food had to cover their hair with a white cloth.

Anyone who was sentenced to more than six months' imprisonment was placed in a three-tier system , the various levels of which gave the inmates some advantages over the other women, among other things, the lights were allowed to stay on for longer in the cell, and a second book from the prison library was allowed per week. With good guidance, prisoners could work their way up.

Particular consideration was given to imprisoned mothers with children: they lived with their children in a mother's cell that contained toys, and flowers were also allowed to be set up. A doctor came once a day to check that everything was going well.

National Socialism

During the Nazi era , the prison served as a remand prison for the Gestapo and as a stopover to the Plötzensee execution site or to other prisons and camps. Pregnant women gave birth here before the execution. Here were z. B. Hans Coppi junior and Anita Leocádia Prestes were born. Over 300 women of the resistance began their last journey from here, including:

A-D
Judith Auer Marianne Baum Lina Beckmann Olga Benario-Prestes Liane Berkowitz
Cato Bontjes van Beek Erika von Brockdorff Eva-Maria book Hilde Coppi
E-H
Anna Ebermann Charlotte Eisenblätter Katharina Fellendorf Ursula Goetze Helene Gotthold
Auguste Haase Liselotte Herrmann Frieda Horstbrink
I-P
Else Imme Hildegard Jadamowitz Wanda Kallenbach Johanna Kirchner Helene Knothe
Sala Kochmann Annie Krauss Ingeborg Kummerow Vera Obolensky
Q-T
Galina Romanova Klara Schabbel Pelagia Scheffczyk Rose Schlösinger Elfriede Scholz
Oda Schottmüller Maria Terwiel Elisabeth von Thadden Kathe Tucholla Elfriede Tygör
U-Z
Kate Voelkner Elli Voigt Frida Wesolek Irene Wosikowski Emma Zehden

These include women from well-known resistance groups and movements:

post war period

In the post-war years, black market shops and theft of groceries or other everyday items were predominant as grounds for detention. Later “ anti-social behavior ”, “ boycott agitation ” and “attempted escape from the republic ” were added.

memorial

Memorial plaque, Barnimstrasse 10, in Berlin-Friedrichshain

A memorial cell for Rosa Luxemburg was set up in the prison as early as 1950. After the building was demolished in 1977, a small memorial was erected in front of a neighboring school on Weinstrasse. The stele , reminiscent of prison bars, reads on a plaque:

"Here was the women's prison in which Rosa Luxemburg was imprisoned because of her revolutionary convictions."

The murdered resistance fighters were not remembered at this point in the GDR era. Therefore, a provisional plaque was installed in 1994, the text of which read:

“Between 1933 and 1945, many women resistance fighters against National Socialism were imprisoned in Barnimstrasse women's prison. For more than three hundred women, this was the last stop before their execution in Plötzensee. They were murdered because they distributed leaflets, helped the persecuted, listened to foreign broadcasters, expressed doubts about the “final victory” or committed minor crimes for which the Nazi judiciary sentenced them to death as “pests of the people”. The building continued to be used as a women's prison after 1945 and was demolished in 1974. "

After the wanton destruction of this plaque, a memorial plaque was unveiled again in 1996 with the following text:

“This is where the Barnimstrasse women's prison stood until 1974. Between 1933 and 1945 it was the last stop for more than 300 resistance fighters against National Socialism before their execution in Plötzensee. "

The responsible district administrations made several decisions, for the first time in 1993, to redesign the memorial, but these have not yet been implemented. To this end, however, an art competition was announced in 2007, which was decided in April 2008. The winner of the competition is christoph meyer chm with an "audio path through a prison for women and 5 political systems".

The audio trail was opened on May 30, 2015.

literature

  • Claudia von Gélieu : Barnimstrasse 10. Berlin women's prison 1868–1974 . Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-86331-224-4 .
  • Claudia von Gélieu: women in custody. Barnimstrasse prison. A justice story . Elefanten Press Verlag, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-88520-530-0 .
  • Helen Ernst with Eva Raedt-de Canter: Vrouwen-Gevangenis . Bruna & Zoon, Utrecht 1935

Filmography

  • Barnimstrasse women's prison. Contemporary witnesses report on their imprisonment from 1933 to 1945 . A documentation by Maria Binder, Ingrid Fliegel, Susanne Krekeler, Claudia von Gélieu ; 1996.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Extension and renovation: Women's prison in Barnimstrasse in: Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung , 1914, p. 469f.
  2. ↑ a b c d Dorothea Ziegel: Barnimstrasse 10: A visit to the Berlin women's prison . In: Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung , April 25, 1929.
  3. ↑ List of women imprisoned in Barnimstrasse 1933–1945 who were executed ( Memento of the original from May 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. from the web documentation of the Association for Research into the History of Kreuzberg; Retrieved June 24, 2009.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ml-architekten.de

Coordinates: 52 ° 31 ′ 29 ″  N , 13 ° 25 ′ 32 ″  E