Plötzensee Prison (German:Justizvollzugsanstalt Plötzensee, JVA Plötzensee) is a men'sprison in theCharlottenburg-Nord locality ofBerlin with a capacity for 577 prisoners, operated by the State of Berlin judicial administration. The detention centre established in 1868 has a long history; it became notorious during theNazi era as one of the mainsites of capital punishment, where about 3,000 inmates were executed. Famous inmates includeEast Germany's last communist leaderEgon Krenz.
The prison was founded by resolution of thePrussian government under KingWilliam I and built until 1879 on the estates of the Plötzensee manor, named after nearbyPlötzensee Lake (Plötze is the local German name of thecommon roach, cf.Płoć inPolish). The area divided by theBerlin-Spandau Ship Canal opened in 1859 was located at the outskirts of theTegel forest northwest of the Berlin city limits in theProvince of Brandenburg. The theologianJohann Hinrich Wichern had established theEvangelicalJohannesstift borstal nearby, which in 1905 moved to Spandau–Hakenfelde. In 1915, the lands east of the canal with Plötzensee Lake were incorporated into Berlin (the present-dayWedding district), the remaining area around the prison walls became part of the BerlinCharlottenburg borough upon the 1920Greater Berlin Act. Since 2004, it belongs to the Charlottenburg-Nord locality.
The original name of what is todayHaus 1 wasStrafgefängnis Plötzensee, which also translates to Plötzensee Prison. Up to 1,400 inmates lived on premises of 25.7 ha (64 acres) including a church and a Jewish prayer area, then the largest prison of theGerman Empire. AfterWorld War II, the buildings demolished by thebombing of Berlin were rebuilt and housed ayouth detention center (Jugendstrafanstalt Berlin) for offenders between the ages of 14 and 21. When it in 1987 moved to a newly built annex on Friedrich-Olbricht-Damm in the west,Haus 1 of Plötzensee Prison again became a men's prison with capacity for 577 inmates.[1] Upon the end of theCold War andGerman reunification, the last communist East German leaderEgon Krenz, convicted for manslaughter bySchießbefehl order at theBerlin Wall, from 2000 until 2003 served his sentence there.[2]
In 1983, a modern women's prison was built south of Friedrich-Olbricht-Damm on theBundesautobahn 100 (Stadtring) highway, since 1998 it houses theJVA Charlottenburg for about 300 adult male prisoners, mainlydrug addicts.
One in three inmates of the prison is incarcerated for repeated public transportfare evasion.[3][4] In December 2021, Plötzensee was the first prison visited byArne Semsrott as part of hisFreiheitsfonds initiative, which pays for the release of people in prison for unpaid public transport fares.[5][6]
Exterior sign at Plötzensee Memorial, 1984Plötzensee Memorial, 2005
DuringImperial andWeimar Republic eras until 1933 there were 36 executions carried out in Plötzensee, all for murder and all bybeheading with anaxe according to the old GermanStrafgesetzbuch penal code. After the NaziMachtergreifung, the prison housed both regular criminals and political prisoners. Plötzensee was one of eleven selected central execution sites established in 1936 throughout Germany by the order ofAdolf Hitler and Reich Minister of JusticeFranz Gürtner. Each was operated by a full-timeexecutioner carrying out the rising numbers of death sentences, especially after the penal law was again tightened inWorld War II. By a 1943 agreement with theOKW they became also responsible for the execution ofWehrmacht members according toGerman military law. The convicts were beheaded by a stationaryguillotine (Fallbeil), from 1942 also byhanging.During the Nazi regime, an official record of 2,891 people convicted by the BerlinKammergericht, the notorious "People's Court" underRoland Freisler and severalSondergerichte, were executed in Plötzensee, initially with an axe in the prison's courtyard. From 1937 the convicts were beheaded with a guillotine brought fromBruchsal Prison and installed in a backyard work shed, a ground-level brick building near the prison walls, to where the victims had to walk from a nearby cell block. In 1942, a beam was assembled in the same room, serving as gallows for up to eight victims at one time. The bereaved were obliged to pay a fee of 1.5 ℛ︁ℳ︁ for each day the detainee had spent in prison plus an extra execution charge of 300 ℛ︁ℳ︁.
Peter Buchholz; "OMGUS MILITARY TRIBUNAL – CASE THREE OMT-III-W-56 / Witness Peter Buchholz, former prison chaplain at the Berlin-Plötzensee Prison, who described prison conditions there. He stated that there were people executed there during his time for whom stay of execution papers were in processing, perhaps even reprieve action."
About half of those executed were Germans, most of whom were sentenced to death for acts ofresistance against the Nazi regime, among them members of theRed Orchestra, the20 July plot and theKreisau Circle. A total of 677 executed prisoners were fromCzechoslovakia, among them many members of theCzech resistance to Nazi occupation from 1938 to 1939 onwards. A total of 253 death sentences were carried out againstPoles, and 245 against French citizens. These people included both the members of resistance organizations and people who were deported to Germany forforced labour. About 300 were women.
After execution, their bodies were released toHermann Stieve, an anatomist at the medical college of what is nowHumboldt University of Berlin. He and his students or assistants dissected them for research purposes. Stieve was especially interested in the effects of stress on themenstrual cycle, and wrote 230 papers based on this research, among them one that demonstrated that therhythm method was not an effective method of preventing conception.
After anRAF air raid in the night of 3 September 1943 irreparably damaged the guillotine and destroyed large parts of the prison buildings, State SecretaryCurt Rothenberger in the Reich Ministry of Justice via telephone ordered the immediate execution of the Plötzensee condemned. About 250 people—six of them "erroneously"— waiting in rows of eight were hanged during the so-called Plötzensee Bloody Nights from 7 to 12 September. The last execution was carried out on 20 April 1945. The remaining inmates were liberated by theRed Army in the course of theBattle of Berlin five days later.
Memorial wall covering the execution shed
Today the execution shed is a memorial site operated by theMemorial to the German Resistance institution to commemorate those executed by the Nazis. Separated from the prison area, it was dedicated by theSenate of Berlin on 14 September 1952 in the remaining two rooms with its drain and the preserved gallows. The guillotine had been dismantled after the war and disappeared in theSoviet occupation zone. Onto the execution room a memorial wall was built "To the Victims of Hitler's Dictatorship of the Years 1933–1945". In 1963, theCatholic Diocese of Berlin erected its memorial for the victims about 2 km (1.2 mi) to the west in the commemorative church ofMaria Regina Martyrum; the nearbyProtestant Church of Plötzensee was inaugurated in 1970, featuring aDanse Macabre cycle (Plötzenseer Totentanz) byAlfred Hrdlicka. Both institutions are site of the annualEcumenical Plötzensee Days. Several streets in the surrounding Charlottenburg-Nord housing estates were named after executed resistance fighters.
Oleschinski, Brigitte; Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand (1994).Gedenkstätte Plötzensee (in German). Berlin: Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand.ISBN3-926082-05-4.OCLC32033090.
Cox, John M. (2009).Circles of resistance : Jewish, leftist, and youth dissidence in Nazi Germany. New York: Peter Lang.ISBN978-1-4331-0557-9.OCLC316736955.
