Stasi-Zentrale

Until 1990 this site on Frankfurter Allee in Berlin-Lichtenberg housed the headquarters of the Stasi, the GDR Ministry for State Security. The Stasi Records Archive can be described as a monument to surveillance. In Berlin alone it holds 43 kilometres of documents in which masses of personal data are stored. The storming of the site and the opening of the files in the 1990s revealed the extent of those decades of snooping. The so-called Mielke Suite where the Minister for State Security had his office is preserved in its original condition and is a central feature of the Stasi Museum.
In June 2018 the exhibition Access to Secrecy opened in June 2018 in ‘House 7’ of the Stasi headquarters, providing an insight into the Stasi Records Archive and its significance for today. Why and how did the Stasi store and process all that information? Why do the files still exist today, what do they contain and what can they show? Over four floors, the exhibition tells how the records came about and shows with the stories of individual people what impact they could have on the lives of those affected.