September 8, 2023 until January 7, 2024 (extended until, March 17, 2024)

The special exhibition “Blind in the Right Eye… Political Justice in Potsdam between 1919 and 1933” takes a critical look at the judicial practice at Potsdam’s district and regional court during the Weimar Republic. From September 8, 2023 to January 7, 2024, (extended until March 17, 2024) the show presents aspects of Potsdam’s city history during the period of the Weimar Republic 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 pretrial detention and political injustice.

With World War I over and the monarchy swept away by revolution, Germany establishes its first-ever democracy on the foundation of the Weimar Constitution. This document for the first time sets forth that every German is equal before the law. Women and men have the same civil rights and duties.

Within the justice system, most judges would retain their positions following the 1918 revolution. Many are still molded by the past and reject the new republic. A great number of them are partisan in their handling of criminal and civil cases. The sentences handed down to wrongdoers on the political left are much harsher than the verdicts delivered to perpetrators on the right. These judges put their political sentiments above the rule of law.

This tendency of going “soft on the right and hard on the left” is also evident in the criminal cases brought before the Potsdam Local and Regional Courts. Many of these trials are held in the courtroom in Lindenstrasse, with the accused jailed here as they awaited their trial.

This exhibition shows how judges in Potsdam based their decisions on political criteria, and how this would increasingly erode the population’s trust in the neutrality of the justice system and in the potency of democracy.