The grey misery of Potsdam – Soviet detention and tribunal site Lindenstraße 1945–1952

“The time spent in pretrial detention on Lindenstrasse was the most inhumane thing imaginable,” says actor Jochen Stern (born 1928). He was arrested by the Soviet secret service in 1947 as a political opponent and imprisoned in the Lindenstrasse prison in Potsdam. Jochen Stern's fate is one of thousands of people who, after 1945, fell victim to the establishment of a new Stalinist dictatorship in the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ). The new special exhibition “The Grey Misery of Potsdam,” opening on September 26, 2025, focuses precisely on this Soviet period of use of the Lindenstrasse prison as a place of justice and detention.


More information about cycling in the Leipzig Region as well as more interesting routes:

• The grey misery of Potsdam