Spandau Prison

Spandau Prison was a purpose-built prison situated in the borough of Spandau in western Berlin, constructed in 1876. The prison was near, though not part of, the ancient Spandau Citadel fortress.

The prison

The prison, initially designed for a prison population in the hundreds, was an old brick building enclosed by one wall of 15 feet in height, another of 30 feet, a 10 foot high wall of electrified wire, followed by a wall of barbed wire. In addition, 9 machine-gun armed guards towers were manned 24 hours a day by a some of the 60 strong soldiers on guard duty. Due to the superfluous amount of cells available, an empty cell was left in between each of the prisoners' cells, so as to avoid the possibility of prisoners communicating in morse code. Some of the other remaining cells in the wing were designated for other purposes, with one being used for the prison library and another for a chapel. The cells were approximately 3 metres long by 2.7 metres wide and 4 metres high.1

Related Topics:
Barbed wire - 1

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Garden

The highlight of the prison, from the prisoners perspective, was the prison garden. Very spacious given the small amount of prisoners using it, the garden space was initially divvied up into small personal plots that were utilized by each prisoner in a number of ways, usually for the growing of vegetables. Dönitz favoured growing beans, Funk tomatoes, and Speer flowers, although flowers were subsequently banned for a time by the Soviet director. By regulation, all of the produce was to be put towards use in the prison kitchen, but prisoners and guards alike often skirted this rule and indulged in the garden's offerings. Later, as prison regulations slackened in this regard and as other prisoners became either apathetic or of too poor health to maintain their plots, the garden was consolidated into one large workable area. This suited the liking of the former architect Speer, who, being one of the youngest and liveliest of the prisoners, later took up the task of refashioning the entire plot of land into large complex garden, complete with walkings paths, rock gardens, and flower displays. On the days without the garden, as when it was raining for instance, the prisoners occupied their time making envelopes together in the main corridor.

Related Topics:
Garden - Architect - Rock garden

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Controversy

Before the Allied powers requisitioned the prison in November 1946, expecting a hundred or more war criminals, it housed well over 600 prisoners. In addition to the 60 or so soldiers on duty in or around the prison at any given time, there were teams of professional civilian warders from each of the four countries, four prison directors and their deputies, four army medical officers, cooks, translators, waiters, porters and others. This was perceived as a drastic misallocation of resource and became a serious point of contention amongst the prison directors, politicians from their respective countries, and, especially, the government of West Berlin, who were left to foot the bill and suffer from the lack of valuable prison space. The debate surrounding the imprisonment of the seven war criminals in such a large prison with such a large and expensive complementary staff was only heightened as time went on and prisoners began being released. This reached its peak after the release of Speer and Schirach in 1966, when only one prisoner, Rudolf Hess, was left remaining in an otherwise un-utilized prison. Various proposals were made to remedy this situation throughout, ranging from moving the prisoners to an appropriately sized wing of another larger, occupied prison, to releasing the men from prison entirely and instead putting them under house arrest. Nevertheless the prison remained as one exclusively for the housing of the 7 war criminals, and was demolished after the death of Hess in 1987 to prevent it from becoming a Neo-Nazi shrine.To further ensure its erasure, the site was made into a complex parking facility, and all demolished materials from the prison were ground to powder and dispersed into the cold waters of the North Sea.

Related Topics:
1946 - West Berlin - 1966 - House arrest - 1987 - Neo-Nazi - North Sea

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