Gedenkstätte Münchner Platz Dresden

The Gedenkstätte Münchner Platz Dresden stands in the city’s southern district, a former court and prison complex that became a site of political injustice. It occupies the old Landgericht building on Münchner Platz, once part of a larger judicial precinct. The buildings and courtyards now bear plaques and an exhibition that recall wrongful sentences under the Nazis, the Soviet occupation and the early German Democratic Republic. Between 1933 and 1945 the site served as one of the regime’s permanent execution centres. During those years 1,330 people were killed here, two-thirds of them Czechs. After 1945 the Soviet authorities used parts of the complex as a prison and military tribunal, while the East German state turned it into its central execution site from 1952 to 1956. The place matters because it links three periods of state violence in a single setting. In the 1930s and 1940s the Volksgerichtshof and Dresden’s special courts sentenced Czech resisters, German communists and Polish fighters to death. The courtroom records show charges such as ‘preparation to commit high treason’ and ‘aiding the enemy’. After the war Soviet tribunals tried war criminals and Nazi functionaries alongside opponents of the new dictatorship. From 1952 the site’s execution chamber claimed 66 more lives, including participants in the 1953 uprising and members of resistance groups. The Gedenkstätte’s research and public programmes keep this history visible. Visitors walk through the preserved courtrooms and prison wings where the sentences were pronounced and carried out. Informative panels explain each phase of injustice, from the Nazi courtrooms to the Soviet prison cells and the East German execution room. The exhibition uses original documents, photographs and personal accounts to show how law was used as an instrument of terror. Outside, the courtyards where prisoners once waited recall the scale of suffering. The site is run by the Stiftung Sächsische Gedenkstätten under the direction of Birgit Sack, who ensures that the memory of the victims remains central to everything shown.