The reconstructed flats
Kitchens and living rooms exactly as they were.
Stefan Kuehn — CC0 · Stefan Kuehn — CC0 · Stefan Kuehn — CC0 · Toffel — CC BY-SA 4.0
The difference is fundamental: Bautzner Strasse was the Stasi's Dresden prison, and a visit deals with arrest, interrogation and repression in the original building — a heavy and direct experience. The Pirna museum is about furniture, kitchens, schools and cars. The two complement each other; anyone who sees only one leaves with half the picture, and the heavier half is Bautzner Strasse.
Sign in to write your review of this place.
No reviews yet — be the first.
This is a museum of everyday life in the German Democratic Republic, in Pirna — a small town on the Elbe about twenty kilometres south-east of Dresden, and also the gateway to the Saxon Switzerland region. Its approach is material rather than primarily political: whole flats furnished in period, kitchens and appliances, children's toys, clothing, advertising, Trabant cars, shopfronts and school classrooms. The aim is to understand what an ordinary day looked like for an ordinary person between the 1950s and 1989, rather than what the Party looked like. This kind of museum is argued about in Germany: some see nostalgia that prettifies a repressive state, others see necessary documentation of the lives of millions who do not find themselves in the official narrative. A foreign visitor gains from both readings if they take in the displays with the history of surveillance and the Wall in mind. The visit combines naturally with a day in Pirna and Saxon Switzerland.
Kitchens and living rooms exactly as they were.
The icon of Eastern industry and its long waiting lists.
Pirna, 01796 Saxony