Its permanent exhibitions focus on the experiences of the prison's inmates, the activities of the Stasi, life under the dictatorship, and the Peaceful Revolution which led to German reunification.

Shortly after German unification in 1871, a new courthouse and prison ensemble were planned, as the city had grown rapidly from a population of 16,000 in 1802 to 100,000.

[3] It served as a remand prison for people awaiting trial and for holding those convicted of property offences, fraud and violent crime.

[10] After World War I, during the Weimar Republic era, considerable renovation and modernisation work was carried out using prisoners' labour.

People could be arrested without reason and held in prison indefinitely; they were persecuted for their faith, sexual orientation and political beliefs.

The Andreasstraße prison was used primarily to hold "Andersdenkende" (literally: "differently-thinkers") i.e. anyone who dissented from the views of the Nazi party.

The prison became so overcrowded that political detainees were also held in a police detention centre at Petersberg Citadel, which is on a hill immediately behind Andreasstraße.

[9] It is not known precisely how many people were detained on political grounds in the whole of the GDR, but it is estimated that alone during the period when Erich Honecker was General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party, May 1971 to October 1989, the number was around 35,000.

[26] In October 1972, as part of the celebrations of the 23rd anniversary of the GDR's founding, Erich Honecker announced an amnesty for over 42,000 "political and criminal perpetrators".

According to the historian Andreas Apelt, "Between 1964 and 1989 some 33,755 political prisoners and 250,000 of their relatives were sold to West Germany, for a sum totalling 3.5bn Deutschmarks".

[29] On the 28 October 1989, to try to calm protests against the government, an amnesty was issued for those being held for border crimes or for participation in the weekly demonstrations that were happening all over the country.

[33] "Geklopft wurde meistens nachts vom Bett aus, was zur Folge hatte, dass der raue Putz voller Blutspuren war.

Die Knöchel waren blutig [...], aber es war die einzige Möglichkeit, Kontakt zu Leuten in den Nachbarzellen zu halten, und das war wichtig" "[People] knocked [on the walls] mostly during the night from their beds, which resulted in the rough plaster [walls] being full of traces of blood.

After the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, offences relating to trying to escape to the West became the main political crimes, especially in Thuringia which had the Inner German border on its western and southern perimeters.

[47] The prisoners were only allowed out of their cells to go to interrogations and for a 30-minute per day visit to the exercise yard, which was divided up into separate, walled spaces.

For Jahn, the courageous women and men who carried out the occupations are the only reason that people can now search through the records about themselves which the Stasi had collected."

How ordinary people smashed the Stasi in The Local, 4 December 2014[6] In 1989 and 1990, there were widespread anti-government protests and strikes in towns and cities throughout East Germany, demanding the opening of the borders with the west, human rights protections and genuine democracy.

[49] In Erfurt, from early October 1989 the protests usually took place every Thursday in Domplatz, the Cathedral square neighbouring the Andreasstraße prison.

[52] Erich Honecker was removed as leader on 18 October 1989 and less than a month after the opening of the Berlin Wall, the entire SED party, which had ruled East Germany since it was founded, stepped down on 3 December.

[6][50] The political group New Forum, a nationwide collective of activist organizations, created a leaflet warning about Stasi attempts to destroy files.

[6] Early in the morning of 4 December, smoke was seen coming from the Stasi district headquarters at Andreasstraße 38, indicating that documents were being burned.

[Note 3] A crowd gathered outside and many others then got into the building, walking past armed guards and pushing the Stasi staff out the way, who then locked themselves in their offices.

The protesters set up a watch and checked any Stasi staff leaving the building to make sure they weren't trying to smuggle out any documents.

Over the next few days files from the Erfurt district headquarters and other Stasi offices around the region were stored in cells in the empty men's section.

The volunteer citizens' guard kept watch over the Stasi district headquarters building and the prison for months afterwards, making sure no documents were removed.

[55] The action quickly inspired further occupations of Stasi offices throughout East Germany, starting that same evening in other towns in Thuringia as well as in Leipzig and Rostock.

[63] The prison was transferred to the Stiftung Ettersberg at the end of 2011 and plans were developed for the memorial centre, aiming to preserve the authenticity of the original site, but also to create a modern museum.

This is a 7.5-metre (25 ft) high glass cube, on which the story of the protest movement in Thuringia and the occupation of the prison and Stasi headquarters is told in the style of a graphic novel.

[66] The Memorial and Education Centre opened to the public on 4 December 2013, the anniversary of the citizens' occupation of the Erfurt Stasi headquarters and the prison.

[33] The redevelopment of the prison received a special recognition award at the 2014 Thuringia State Prize for Architecture and Urban Planning.