Dortmund - Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Steinwache The Steinwache Memorial Centre     Steinstrasse Police Station, 1906 Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the fast rate of building, and thus population, expansion in the area north of the main railway station in Dortmund - the "Nordstadt" - created the need for the establishment of a police station to keep control over the suburb inhabited by workers from the nearby colliery and steel works and therefore regarded as politically unstable. In 1906, the police station was moved to the new building - especially designed as a police station - at Steinstrasse 50. The population soon came to regard this as the police headquarters in northern Dortmund and it quickly acquired the nickname "Steinwache" (Stone guard) or - in relevant circles - "the castle at Steinplatz". After the Great War, unrest and civil war-like conditions pertained in Dortmund during which period the Steinwache was besieged. Between 1926 and 1928, the police station on the Steinwache was extended by the addition of a four-storey wing and a five-storey police cell block in order to reduce the pressure on the police headquarters then situated on what was formerly Rathenauallee (now known as Ruhrallee / Saarlandstrasse). The cellblock, where the Memorial Centre is now accommodated, was regarded as the most modern in Germany by the end of the Weimar Republic and as a model for socio-integrative penal policy. The prison seen in longitudinal section, 1927 Report in the Dortmunder Generalanzeiger, 8 April 1931 According to an article in the Dortmund newspaper "General-Anzeiger" dated 16 June 1927, there were sufficient cells in the three upper storeys of the Steinwache to accommodate 126 prisoners. The ground floor of the prison accommodated rooms for interrogation, reception and waiting, a prisoners' galley, medical room and the living quarters of duty police officers. During the world- wide economic crisis which came to a peak in Dortmund with 33% unemployed, some people sought to survive by causing themselves to be held in the Steinwache for a petty offence in order to benefit from the heating and regular meals provided. With the arrival of the Gestapo at the prison in 1933, some of the cell areas were - contrary to their original purpose - perverted to use for torture and extortion of confessions from political opponents. During the twelve years of Nazi rule, the Steinwache became one of the most notorious places of torture in the German Empire and achieved tragic fame as "West Germany's Hell". Between 1933 and 1945, a total of 65,000 people were detained here, 30,000 of them on "political grounds". Countless functionaries of political parties and trade unions, representatives of the Christian Churches, Jewish citizens, Sinti and Roma and foreign forced labourers were interrogated in the Steinwache, maltreated and detained, some only for a few days or weeks, others for months or years. Former torture cell with stone pallet, 1987 Many of those held were transported from the Steinwache to concentration camps. It is not possible to estimate the numbers killed as the Gestapo only recorded deaths until 1936. Until that year, 17 people died of the consequences of torture. Despite the fact that the centre of Dortmund, including the area around the main railway station, sustained 90% damage through Allied bombing, the Steinwache escaped any direct hits. Prison wing of the Steinwache, ca. 1945 After the war, the building at Steinstrasse 50 was again used as a police station, most recently by the Northern division, only being dispensed with in 1976. After being converted and extended, it became the home of the Rhenish-Westphalian Foreign Association (Auslandsgesellschaft). The police cells were used as such until the end of the 1950s after which they were used, until 1986, as civic dormitories for those of no fixed abode. Overnight holding bay in the former prison section for those of no fixed abode, 1980 Threatened by demolition in the 1980s, the building was transferred by the State of Northrhine-Westphalia to the City of Dortmund after the Council had resolved to preserve the building. In 1987, the City Archive became the trustee of the cell block area. Furthermore, the City Council resolved that the exhibition "Resistance and Persecution in Dortmund 1933 - 1945" - until then operating from the Museum am Westpark - should have a permanent home in the Steinwache. Prison cells in 1986 The former prison section under reconstruction, 1990/1991 Since 1989, an exhibition concept suited to the building has been developed under the direction of Dr. Guenther Hoegl with assistance from a design company, the local curator of monuments and a firm of architects. On 14 October 1992, the Steinwache Memorial Centre opened its permanent exhibition. Both the Memorial Centre and the permanent exhibition are curated by the Dortmund City Archive. Contact details | Webmaster | Imprint | References