The Stasi, acronym for Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (Ministry of State Security) was created in February 1950 and was the main security and espionage organization of the former GDR). The Stasi had its headquarters in Normannenstraße in the District of Lichtenberg. At the center of this complex is the “Haus 1”, the building in which the head of the ministry Erich Mielke had his offices. The spaces from which Mielke directed the enormous apparatus of espionage and repression are perfectly preserved in their original state. On the two floors of the building, the exhibition illustrates the methods adopted by the secret police and the effects they produced on their victims. Microphones and cameras hidden inside everyday objects show how the spying of the civilian population by the employees of the ministry took place.
On 15th January 1990, thousands of people entered the Stasi headquarters, thus dissolving the secret agency.
The DDR-Museum, opened in 2006, has several rooms each of which are parts of life in the former Democratic Republic. It starts from the reconstruction of a typical East Berlin apartment, furnished with lamps, furniture and various objects of everyday life while a television broadcasts typical programs of the Soviet era. Remaining in the domestic sphere there is also a typical kitchen with its appliances. There are also typewriters, radios, books and readings of the time and food consumer products: from Mocca-Fix coffee, Roter Oktober beer to the well-known gherkins of the Spreewald. In a separate room there is the legendary small car with a two-stroke engine, the Trabant or Trabi, cross and delight of the citizens of the GDR that once ordered had to wait for about ten years.
