In Leipzig The Stasi Headquarters was fascinating with its low-tech displays of espionage and grim control. Frightening but ludicrous with its wigs and false noses, jars of body odours collected so that sniffer dogs could track the victims, photographs of surveillance on foot, bicycle, cars; photographs taken by secret cameras in a book or from their pockets wearing false moustaches and spectacles. It sounds comic but the purpose was deadly.
In this building all the DDR prisoners awaiting the death sentence were kept in bleak small cells. The entire killings, executions, were carried out in Liepzig. While they were subjugating and terrorising the people, the Stasi building had a bowling alley and cinema for their own staff.
It is said that the Stasi buildings all had the same unique smell and that it still lingers here. Anyone who was interrogated or kept in a cell there recognises it instantly. Was it the paint, or linoleum, or brutality and fear mixed? To me it had a musty institutional slight smell, but would I recognise it again?
