Leseprobe

G E R M A N Y 1 3 1 In addition, 50 commemorative markers at the local and regional level commemorate persecution and repression by the state apparatus. These also include sites that were used as prisons until very recently or still are to this day, such as Waldheim, Brandenburg and Torgau. Some of these had been used to detain political prisoners since the 19 th century and continued to serve this purpose, especially during the Nazi era. Even in GDR times, the buildings served as prisons for victims of political persecution; some of them are still in use as prisons to this day. In most cases, plaques or memorial stones highlight the historical background to the political persecution that occurred in these places. Last but not least, a large group is comprised of more than 70 commemorative markers relating to the events of 17 June 1953 and its victims. More than 50 further memorials commemorate the events of the autumn of 1989, which presaged the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November and German Reunification. New ways of marking historical sites have also emerged that recall political persecution, German division, opposition and resistance. These include the “Green Belt” along the 1,381-kilo- metre length of the former inner-German border and the “Berlin Wall History Mile”, which, with its demarcation line set into streets and pavements, retraces the Wall that has been almost completely expunged from the Berlin cityscape. Altogether there are more than 900 commemorative markers, memorial sites and museums in Germany that bear witness to the dictatorship in the Soviet Occupation Zone and the GDR. Three of them are presented below. The third edition of “Orte des Erinnerns: Gedenkzeichen, Gedenkstätten und Museen zur Diktatur in SBZ und DDR” (Places of Remembering: Memorials and Museums to the Dictatorship in the Soviet Occupied Zone and the GDR), which was published by Ch. Links Verlag in March 2016, provides an overview of all the memorial sites. Watchtower at the former Stasi prison in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen