“Hidden & Gone” connects, for the first time, two prisons in East Berlin where people were incarcerated for various reasons during the GDR era: the former Barnimstraße Women’s Prison and the Keibelstraße Pretrial Detention Center—two sites that are visible in very different ways today. Interested visitors can explore these two sites on newly designed guided tours and learn more about the GDR justice system and its impact on the lives of those affected. The tours form the basis for a permanent joint program offered by both sites, which is scheduled to launch in 2027.
The Keibelstraße remand prison and the Barnimstraße women’s prison tell the story of a system that determined who belonged and who did not, what was permitted and what was punished. It is about deviation and conformity, about control, and about decisions that are not made freely. And it raises the questions that remain: What is worth remembering? What remains? And what disappears?
While the rooms of the former pretrial detention center on Keibelstraße—with its cells, hallways, and doors—have been preserved, the former women’s prison on Barnimstraße no longer stands. Today, an audio tour created by artist Christoph Viscorsum makes the perspectives of women, their voices, and their experiences accessible there.
The newly designed, approximately two-hour guided tour, titled “Hidden & Vanished,” takes visitors from the pretrial detention center on Keibelstraße to the former women’s prison on Barnimstraße. The tour focuses on the question of how imprisonment, control, and political persecution have shaped people. In the first part of the tour on Keibelstraße, visitors gain insights into the history of the former pretrial detention center as well as the structures and mechanisms of state control and surveillance in the GDR.
The second part is devoted to the former women’s prison on Barnimstraße and the history of the site, which was used as a prison between 1864 and 1974. Particular attention is given to the experiences of politically persecuted women in the GDR, their conditions of detention, and the effects of state repression.
