Honeckers Zuchthaus

With up to 3,500 prisoners, Brandenburg-Görden was one of the four largest prisons in the GDR. Using this case study, the study examines the functioning of the penal system under the political guidelines of the SED. It is a bitter irony of history that the prison in which General Secretary Erich Honecker was a political prisoner before 1945 was again used in the GDR to hold political opponents. The study sheds light on all aspects on the basis of numerous, newly evaluated files of the prison system: the prisoners, the prison conditions, the prison staff and the state security. This secretly directed by recruiting prisoners as well as their guards as informers. She did not even shrink from instrumentalizing the prison psychologist. The reality of prison was characterized by petty rules and the discrimination against political prisoners. Harsh disciplinary practice prevailed, made even more intolerable by the arbitrary acts of poorly trained and ideologically indoctrinated overseers. Fraternization tendencies, which sometimes still existed in the 1950s, were rigorously fought. The prisoners from Brandenburg-Görden had to work hard in various factories. They were also exploited by the corrupt behavior of the long-time autocratic head of the prison, Fritz Ackermann, who had prisoners illegally build their own homes for himself and his management cadres, even though the visit of Western delegations to the GDR prisons under Ulbricht and the practice of releasing prisoners under Honecker contributed a little to the alleviation of the prison conditions, the question arises whether the West could not have achieved more for the political prisoners in the GDR.