Gedenkstätte Lindenstraße 54/55

Gedenkstätte Lindenstraße 54/55 stands in Potsdam as a memorial to victims of political persecution under Nazi and GDR rule. The building began as the Großes Holländisches Haus, a baroque city palace in Dutch style.

Constructed between 1734 and 1737, the palace later housed city commandants and Potsdam’s first freely elected council meeting in 1809. By 1820, a city court and adjoining prison occupied the former palace. From 1933, Nazi authorities used the site to imprison political opponents and others they considered undesirable. A hereditary health court there ordered forced sterilizations. After the Second World War, Soviet secret police made the building a central detention facility in Brandenburg. In 1953, the Ministry for State Security turned it into a detention centre for political prisoners from the Potsdam district.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 ended the prison’s use, and the building became the House of Democracy. Since 1995, exhibitions, workshops and guided tours have explored Nazi dictatorship, Soviet occupation and the GDR regime. In the courtyard, Wieland Förster’s sculpture Das Opfer commemorates victims of violence.