10 am – 6 pm: Free admission and free audioguides.
The audio guide is available in different languages (German, German Easy Language, English, French and Spanish) all day. All offers on the open day are free of charge.

10 a.m.: Guided tour in German Easy Language through the Lindenstraße Memorial Site

10 a.m. – 4 p.m.: Hourly teaser tours through the Lindenstraße Memorial (in German)
Every hour on the hour, contemporary witnesses and memorial site staff give visitors a 30-minute guided tour of the former place of detention and justice.

1 p.m.: Curator’s tour of the special exhibition “Blind in the Right Eye… Political Justice in Potsdam between 1919 and 1933” (in German).
Curator Dr. Johannes Leicht takes a critical look at the judicial practice at Potsdam’s district and regional court during the Weimar Republic. The current special exhibition presents aspects of Potsdam’s city history that have hardly been addressed to date and adds significant new insights to the house history of the judicial and detention complex at Lindenstrasse 54/55 as a place of pre-trial detention and political injustice.

3 p.m.: Interview with Birgit and Detlef Grunzel (in German)
In 1986, Birgit and Detlef Grunzel apply to leave the country in the hope that their daughter, who suffers from a heart defect and chronic kidney disease (the result of faulty treatment), can receive better medical care in the Federal Republic. The application is repeatedly rejected by the GDR authorities. Suddenly, in 1988, both are arrested and imprisoned in the MfS investigation prison in Lindenstraße. Their daughter is just nine years old. They are sentenced to 426 and 488 days in prison for “disparagement of the state”. In 1989 they are released from prison (Markleeberg and Halle) by the Federal Republic after 8 months. Their daughter, however, is still in the GDR. It takes eleven more weeks until Detlef Grunzel is allowed to enter the GDR for 24 hours to bring his daughter to him and his wife in the West. After more than 41 weeks, they can hold her in their arms again for the first time. Almost 13 weeks later, on November 9, 1989, the Wall falls.

Guests: Birgit and Detlef Grunzel
Moderation: Maria Schultz, Director of the Lindenstrasse Memorial Foundation