Stasi Museum (Forschungs- und Gedenkstätte Normannenstraße)

The Stasi Museum occupies the former headquarters complex of East Germany's Ministry for State Security, the Stasi, on Normannenstrasse in the Lichtenberg district, from where the agency directed surveillance, informant networks, and repression of the East German population from the early 1950s until 1990. The museum is housed in the actual administrative building, "Haus 1," seized by citizen activists in January 1990 during the collapse of the East German state, which prevented the wholesale destruction of Stasi files and preserved the offices largely as they were left. The centerpiece is the preserved suite of offices belonging to Erich Mielke, the Stasi's longtime minister, including his conference room, private rooms, and original 1950s-70s office furnishings, decor, and communications equipment left largely untouched since 1990. Exhibitions across the building's other floors display surveillance technology, including concealed cameras and listening devices, the extensive paper filing system used to track millions of East German citizens, and object-based case studies of individual surveillance operations and informant recruitment. The museum's location in the actual former headquarters, rather than a purpose-built exhibition space, gives visitors direct access to the bureaucratic environment in which state surveillance was organized, including the scale and mundanity of the office spaces from which a population of roughly 16 million was monitored.