Barnimstraße 10 – An audio tour through a defunct women’s prison
“Hidden & Gone” brings together, for the first time, two prisons in East Berlin where people were detained for various reasons during the GDR era: the former Barnimstraße women’s prison and the Keibelstraße remand centre – two sites that are visible in very different ways today.
Image gallery
Lernort -Polizeigefängnis Keibelstraße-
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 programme between the two sites, which is due to be launched in 2027.
The remand centre on Keibelstraße 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, about decisions that are not freely made. And about the questions that remain: What is worth remembering? What remains? And what disappears?
Whilst the rooms of the former remand centre on Keibelstraße – with its cells, corridors and doors – have been preserved, the former women’s prison on Barnimstraße no longer stands.
An audio tour created by the artist Christoph Viscorsum brings to life the perspectives of women, their voices and their experiences.
The guided tour, lasting around two hours and entitled ‘Hidden & Vanished’, takes visitors from the remand centre 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’s lives.
In the first part of the tour on Keibelstraße, visitors gain insights into the history of the former remand centre, 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 paid to the experiences of politically persecuted women in the GDR, their conditions of detention and the effects of state repression.
- Over the course of approximately 120 minutes, you will move between these two sites, between what is hidden and what has vanished, between what was and what remains.
Start: Keibelstraße Learning Centre, c/o Senate Department for Education, Youth and Family Affairs, Bernhard-Weiß-Straße 6, 10178 Berlin
End: Barnimstraße, Friedrichshain Traffic School, Weinstraße 2, 10249 Berlin
Booking: anmeldung@keibelstrasse.de
Dates
November 2026
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