The world's heaviest door

Stasi prison April 14, 1985

2pm.

Back in Leipzig.
What a joke!

Entrance door to the former Stasi headquarters in Leipzig. Today it hosts the Stasi Museum Runde Ecke. To me it felt like the world’s heaviest door.

I know exactly what to do now after they repelled me in Berlin.
“Runde Ecke” or round corner - by the design of the building but also as a metaphor - that’s what we call the Stasi headquarters in Leipzig.
Everyone knows it.
Everyone is scared of it/THEM.

Walking to the huge, heavy door makes me choke.
This will be my last moments out here.
Not in freedom, not in liberty, theirs is not a free world.
That would be in the West.

And that’s EXACTLY what I’ll demand now.

A small button to push for such a big step.
For a second I am irritated that I haven’t thought about my folks for the last hours.
After leaving the Normannenstrasse Stasi headquarter I contemplated shortly to still do the Checkpoint Charlie stunt.
But I liked the efficiency and directness better to get there directly and get it over with fast and with vigor.

I won’t waver.
Can’t!

A huge bloke in uniform answers the door.
I guess you need that type to even move it.
He looks down at me as if I had punched him.

“Here is my passport - you let me leave to West Germany - I’m on hunger strike now!"

 

*Testimony -> Start. This blog entry is part of a linear narrated testimony of the contemporary witness Jens Thieme who was imprisoned 1985-1986 as a political prisoner in various GDR prisons by the GDR Ministry of State Security. Stasi prison, Stasi jail, Stasi detention.