Steinwache

The Steinwache in Dortmund is a memorial and place of remembrance that recalls the Nazi era and houses the City Archives' permanent exhibition "Resistance and Persecution in Dortmund 1933–1945." The complex of buildings was originally constructed in 1906 as the headquarters of the fifth police precinct and was expanded in the late 1920s in the New Objectivity style. Alongside the administrative building, a modern jail was built that went into operation in 1928. With the Nazi seizure of power, the function of the site changed drastically. The Gestapo used the premises for interrogations and torture, which earned the place its notorious reputation as the "Hell of Western Germany." Those imprisoned here included members of the Communist and Social Democratic opposition, Jewish citizens, and, during World War II, numerous foreign forced laborers, especially from Poland and the Soviet Union. In total, more than 66,000 people from the Arnsberg administrative district were held in the Steinwache, and many of them were deported from here to concentration camps.

After the war, the building continued to serve police purposes for a long time before the jail wing was converted into a memorial in the 1980s. The exhibition, which has been on view at this authentic site since 1992, takes visitors through the history of the building and the prehistory of the Nazi regime. Reconstructed spaces such as the admissions room and an isolation cell convey an impression of the conditions of imprisonment at the time. The exhibition is organized thematically across several floors: the ground floor and first floor focus on the forced Nazification of society (Gleichschaltung) and the persecution of the labor movement and of gay people. The upper floors are devoted to the resistance of various groups, the persecution of forced laborers, the role of the churches, and the systematic persecution of Jews, Sinti, and Roma. The basement addresses direct Gestapo terror, the justice system under National Socialism, and the euthanasia program. Well-known figures such as Johannes Joachim Degenhardt, later Archbishop of Paderborn, and the writer Paul Polte were also imprisoned here.

The building is a protected historic monument and was opened to the public after extensive renovation work. The memorial commemorates not only the local victims but also the broad range of forms that resistance took. Because the city council has approved a structural expansion and modernization of the permanent exhibition, the Steinwache closed in June 2025 for at least three years for construction work. Construction on the new extension is scheduled to begin in fall 2025, with total costs estimated at €17.3 million.