Runde Ecke Stasi Museum Leipzig: One Of The Best Museums On East Germany

If you ever wanted to walk through a door and go straight back to the 1980s, the Stasi Museum Leipzig is the place to do it.

The Runde Ecke (Round Corner) building was the headquarters of the regional Ministry of State Security (widely known as the Stasi). It has been a Museum dedicated to their repressive work since they were removed from the building in 1990. And much of it is exactly as they left it.

If you lived through the 1980s, especially in Europe, the effect is startling – the drab paint colours and dull fluorescent strip lighting transport you back to the ‘80s. The exhibition takes you behind the Iron Curtain, exploring the often sinister methods of the Stasi to spy on and suppress the people they were (in theory!) meant to serve.

In this guide to the Stasi Museum in Leipzig I show you everything to see there, together with information on opening hours, entry costs and how to get there. I also compare it with other museums related to the Stasi in former East Germany, and suggest other places to visit in Leipzig, most within a few minutes’ walk.

I hope you find it helpful.

The Stasi Museum in Leipzig is especially significant in East German history as it’s located in the city where the 1989 Wende, or Peaceful Revolution, began.

The ‘Round Corner’ building that houses the Museum was built between 1911 and 1913. It was used as the premises of a local insurance company, Alte Leipziger Feuerversicherung.

Towards the end of World War II, it was occupied by American forces.  It was then taken over by the Soviet NKVD secret police, and the predecessor organization of the Stasi, the K5.

It came under the control of the Ministry of State Security (Ministerium fur Staatssicherheit, commonly abbreviated to Stasi) from 1950 onwards. The building also housed the local Volkspolizei (People’s Police).

During the mass Monday demonstration of 9^th October 1989, a crowd of over 100,000 peacefully passed the Stasi headquarters in the Runde Ecke building.

The Stasi building was occupied by demonstrators on 4^th December 1989. By this time Stasi workers had set about destroying as much incriminating paperwork – evidence of decades of spying on their own citizens – as possible.

Part of the building was turned into a Museum in 1990, and has been open as such ever since.

One of the reasons the Stasi Museum Leipzig is such a compelling place to visit is its decor.

The corridors and rooms have been left as they were when the Stasi were removed from the building in 1990. I think this helps the exhibition resonate strongly – whether you lived through the Cold War as I did, or are of younger vintage, this really does take you back to those times.

As a Cold War kid growing up in Wales, the dim lighting and grim faded colours reminded me of the corridors in my old school and the local hospital. Luckily for me, I was on the right side of the Iron Curtain!

The décor of the Museum isn’t the only thing that feels like yesteryear – the exhibition itself feels quite old too. It’s very much a case of reading all the information boards – there’s nothing in the way of contemporary presentation with touch screens and other technology.

The Leipzig Stasi Museum has been criticized for this, and advised to update. However, I think it works well. The surroundings immediately immerse you in the period, and the presentation may not suit everyone. But it’s packed with information, and you’re likely to leave knowing a lot more about the Stasi than when you arrive.

Part of the Stasi’s job was reinforcing State propaganda, especially messages about the West, their Cold War foe.

There are some fascinating examples on display at the Runde Ecke Museum, including the strange capitalist caricature with the dollar sign hat pictured above. This odd figure with skeletal hands represents ‘Imperialism – The Arch-Enemy Of Socialism’. It’s not that different from the anti-Jewish propaganda spewed out by the Nazis in the 1930s.

And a message painted on a house reads, ’The Red Army is a friend of the German people.’  It’s what they wanted you to believe. And as George Orwell – and even Soviets themselves – once wrote, 2 + 2 = 5.

Many Westerners would think that citizens of the GDR would be pleased to see the back of a regime which deprived them of basic freedoms and ruthlessly spied on them. And yet there are many who look back on the days of the GDR with ‘Ostalgie’ – a nostalgia for the former East German.

A small exhibit in the corridor of the Museum touches on this. It features various GDR ‘souvenirs’, including DDR gift boxes, car stickers and a copy of the country’s only national newspaper, Neues Deutschland.

It’s fascinating to hear the stories of people who grew up in East Germany. Some miss the old certainties, including jobs (and state-owned apartments) for life. Others missed aspects of life in East Germany, from food brands that disappeared overnight to the state-controlled rock music scene.

There’s even a shop – Ossiladen (‘East Shop’) on the lowest floor of Leipzig main train station where you can pick up a few kitsch souvenirs.

The Soviet KGB and Stasi were supposedly ‘brother’ organisations, but there was a clear hierarchy in place. The KGB was very much the senior of the two, and the Stasi the junior partner.

The Stasi was modelled on the KGB, its motto and logo as the ‘Shield and Sword’ of the Socialist state.

This is reflected in one of the most bizarre exhibits I’ve seen anywhere in the world. The links between the two are illustrated by thick terry towelling bathmats, one showing the KGB, the other the Stasi.

Quite why anyone would ever want a KGB or Stasi bathmat is something I will never come to understand!

If you had plans to subvert the Socialist state in some way, the chances are that the Stasi knew all about it.

One room contains examples of equipment used by the Stasi to spy on East Germans.  Some of it – such as the make-up, wigs and disguises used – borders on the comical. Others – like the sophisticated phone tapping and hidden microphones which would be concealed around targets’ apartments.

There is a moment in the excellent 2007 film about the Stasi, The Lives of Others, which brilliantly sums them up. As a team leaves an apartment having planted recording devices everywhere, a neighbour happens to see the officer overseeing the operation. He warns her against telling her neighbour, otherwise her daughter wouldn’t be admitted to college the following year.  

The Stasi informer network was possibly the most pervasive ever created. As well as around 80-90,000 employees at any one time, they also relied on informants (mitarbeiter) and more loosely affiliated members of the public (inoffizielle mitarbeiter).

This exhibit shows how this system worked. The Stasi were obviously keen to please their masters in  Moscow, but if anything they surpassed their Soviet colleagues. It has been estimated that as many as 1 in 6 East Germans co-operated with the Stasi in some way.  

The Stasi tactic of zersetzung – disintegration – was one of the most sinister aspects of their work. If they thought that someone might be a threat to the State, they would target them without them ever knowing.

They would set out to make the target’s life as difficult as possible. This would involve instigating crises, with marriage break-up and job loss among the most common. The thinking behind this was that if the target was debilitated enough by these problems, they wouldn’t be able to do anything to undermine the State.

The Stasi would routinely detain anyone they suspected of wrongdoing, often forcing confessions under severe duress. The Runde Ecke premises were not used as a prison, but a room has been made up to look like a Stasi prison cell.

Conditions were very basic, but this was often the least of the prisoner’s concerns. They would often be deprived of sleep, woken in the early hours of the morning for interrogation under bright lights. The Stasi were experts in tormenting their own citizens.  

When it became clear that the SED government was about to be removed, the Stasi frantically went about destroying as much evidence of their work as possible.

This was several years before you could press Ctrl + Alt + Delete – everything was meticulously recorded on paper. And so there was only one way to avoid potentially being incriminated – which was to destroy the evidence.

Methods differed around Stasi offices around the former East Germany. Stuffing shredders was a common, but not very efficient option. In Leipzig they resorted to using an industrial machine in which water was mixed with paper, and mulched. The end product – pictured – was bizarre – vast lumps that look like rocks. Several have been preserved for posterity.

Very few Stasi officers were prosecuted for what were clearly state-ordered crimes.  The most that they suffered was the loss of their jobs. A career in the Stasi was not going to serve them well landing work in the new police force in the reunified Germany. Unsurprisingly, many suddenly redundant Stasi officers were greatly embittered about the demise of the East German state.

Leipzig city centre is small and compact, with most of the main Leipzig sights within walking distance of each other.

The Stasi Museum in Leipzig is only a 10-15 minute walk from the Hauptbahnhof (Leipzig main train station). You can also catch trams 9 and 16 from there – they stop around 300 metres beyond the Museum, at the Thomaskirche (St Thomas Church) stop.

The Stasi Museum Leipzig is only a 3-4 minute walk from the Markt (Market Square) and the Altes Rathaus (Old Town Hall).

And it’s just 10 minutes’ walk from the Nikolaikirche Leipzig, the church where the ‘Peaceful Revolution’ that brought down the East German regime and the Stasi began in 1989.

Entry to the Museum is free.

However, if you don’t speak German fluently, you’ll need an audioguide. These are available for a non-returnable fee of €5.00.

The Leipzig Stasi Museum is the most thorough exhibition on the methods of the Stasi that I have visited.

It covers all of their elaborate plots to surveil their own citizens, from wigs and lipstick disguises to bugging devices planted in apartments.

It also covers hidden methods used by the Stasi, most notably zersetzung (disintegration) when they interfered in people’s lives. They would aim to debilitate these victims with personal setback, all to prevent them devoting their energies to rising up against the East German state.

At the time of writing, the audioguide in English makes a great deal of difference compared the other Stasi museums I have visited. At the Stasi Museum Dresden, the emphasis is very much on the grim prisons where detainees were held. However the information about the Stasi was sparse by comparison.

I also visited the excellent Bautzen II Stasi Memorial. This Museum has more information on the Stasi and how they went about their work than at Dresden, but it doesn’t go into as much depth.

The forbidding conditions inside (enhanced by the freezing conditions outside) made it a chilling experience, and the information kindly provided by staff there revealed so much, especially the many political prisoners held there. Bautzen is one of the most beautiful small towns in Germany – but in the days of the GDR the name was one of the most feared in the country’s penal system.

I hope you have found this guide to the Stasi Museum in Leipzig useful.

It’s one of the most detailed museums of its kind in the former East Germany. And it’s of particular interest as it’s located in the city that I feel is the ‘least East’ in the former GDR. Even the most extensive monitoring network on the planet couldn’t cope when tens of thousands of emboldened demonstrators emerged in Leipzig in 1989.

Leipzig is an outstanding city to visit, one of my favourite in Germany. It’s unquestionably one of the best places to visit in eastern Germany, along with the likes of Dresden. The Runde Ecke is one of several excellent museums in Leipzig – the Bach Museum, dedicated to composer Johann Sebastian, is a short walk away, and the brilliant Leipzig City History Museum is another must-see. And don’t miss the Nikolaikirche, where the Peaceful Revolution began in 1989.

If you have time, also spend an hour visiting the N’Ostalgie Museum off Nikolaistrasse, which shows you day-to-day life in the GDR, and is a much gentler introduction for curious kids than the Stasi Museum.

Leipzig is also an excellent base for exploring eastern Germany. Check out my guide to the best things to do in Quedlinburg, the stunning World Heritage-listed town with around 2,000 half-timbered houses.  It’s also less than an hour from another World Heritage Suite – check out my guide to Visiting Naumburg Cathedral for more information.

If you’re planning on using Leipzig as a staging post for a longer trip across Germany, check out my article on the best places to visit in Germany for more inspiration.  You could head into Central Germany and discover the best things to do in Goslar, or venture south to spend one day in Nuremberg, more if you have time.  

Discover all of these and more on my Germany Travel Guide page.

David Angel is a British photographer, writer and historian. He is a European travel expert with over 30 years’ experience exploring Europe. He has a degree in History from Manchester University, and his work is regularly featured in global media including the BBC, Condé Nast Traveler, The Guardian, The Times, and The Sunday Times.  David is fluent in French and Welsh, and can also converse in Italian, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Czech and Polish.

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Mail
• Pinterest