Stasi Museum

(From August 6, 2009)*















The gray indoor carpeting gave the building an initial impression of being a modern office—the kind where workers sit on office chairs within gray cubicles. Yet, many aspects made it feel out of place with the modern world.

The smell; not dirty but unnaturally sterile. Whenever I opened my nostrils, a stench made up of an artificial cleaner mixed with the smell of an aged building overwhelmed my olfactory receptors.

The colors; not bright but instead quite drab. The amount of off-white gray did little to stimulate my photoreceptors.

The temperature; warm and stuffy. The dull curtains appeared to do little in mitigating the entering heat. This made the occasional cool breeze feel that much better.

The sounds; nothing unusual—the place is a museum. Although people walked through the hallways and rooms, the usual commotion and air of frenzy remained absent. Taken together, the interior of the Stasi Museum made me feel "out of place" as it felt more like a nursing home or hospital of several decades back.

For the whole guided tour, my sensory world lay in complete disarray and prevented much of the historical information about dates, people, and stories from reaching the higher centers of my brain. The feeling of being “out of place” began with the start of the tour, and I failed to either accept or shake it off. Only the exhibit showcasing the clever contraptions used for domestic surveillance clung—a camera in a watering can, spy devices in a log, etc.

The little information I gleaned from the other exhibits instilled a sense of privilege in not living in a society of forced transparency. To possess a choice in what I share to the government regarding my relationships, jobs, and connections—I take for granted and am okay with it. My lasting impression of the museum, however, will lie in the sensory disarray experienced throughout the tour.

……
Today, I end my blog post with a joke:

“If you hail a cab in East Berlin, you only need to give the cab driver your name and he’ll take you home.”

*We took two other tours over the course of the day, but what my mind remains fixated only on the Stasi Museum.