Spandau Prison

Spandau Prison was a prison situated in the borough of Spandau in western Berlin, constructed in 1876 and demolished in 1987 after the death of its last prisoner, Rudolf Hess, to prevent it from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine. The prison was near, though not part of, the Renaissance-era Spandau Citadel fortress. In history, Spandau Prison succeeded as a prison to the citadel and where Frederick II of Prussia had held captive the magistrates of the Prussian Kammergericht and the Spandau gaol, where Carl Schurz had freed his friend Gottfried Kinkel in the aftermath of the 1848 German revolution. The magistrates and Kinkel were held captive as Festungsgefangene (fortress prisoners), being privileged in detainment conditions.

History

The prison was built in 1876. It initially served as a military detention center. From 1919 it was also used for civilian inmates. It held up to 600 inmates at that time.

In the aftermath of the Reichstag Fire of 1933, opponents of Hitler and journalists such as Egon Kisch and Carl von Ossietzky were held there in so-called protective custody. Spandau Prison became a sort of predecessor of the Nazi concentration camps. While it was formally operated by the Prussian Ministry of Justice, the Gestapo tortured and abused its inmates, as Egon Erwin Kisch recalls in his memories of Spandau Prison. By the end of 1933 the first Nazi concentration camps had been erected (at Dachau, Osthofen, Oranienburg, Sonnenburg, Lichtenburg and the marshland camps around Esterwegen); all remaining prisoners who had been held in so-called protective custody in state prisons were transferred to these concentration camps.

After World War II it was operated by the Four-Power Authorities to house the Nazi war criminals sentenced to imprisonment at the Nuremberg Trials.

Only seven prisoners were finally imprisoned there. Arriving from Nuremberg on 18 July 1947, they were:

Rudolf Hess - serving a life sentence (died 1987)

Walther Funk - serving a life sentence (released 16 May 1957)

Erich Raeder - serving a life sentence (released 1955)

Albert Speer - serving a 20 year term (released 30 September 1966)

Baldur von Schirach - serving a 20 year term (released 30 September 1966)

Konstantin von Neurath - serving a 15 year term (released 1954)

Karl Dönitz - serving a 10 year term (released 1956)

Of the seven, only four fully served their sentences; the remaining three, Neurath, Raeder, and Funk, having been released earlier due to ill health. Between 1966 and 1987, Rudolf Hess was the only inmate in Spandau Prison. His only companion was the warden, Eugene K. Bird, who became a close friend. Bird wrote a book about Hess's imprisonment entitled The Loneliest Man in the World.

Spandau was one of only two Four-Power organizations to continue to operate after the breakdown of the Allied Control Council; the other being the Berlin Air Safety Center. The four occupying powers of Berlin would alternate control of the prison on a monthly basis, each having the responsibility for a total of three months out of the year. Observing the Four-Power flags that flew at the Allied Control Authority building could determine who controlled the prison.

The prison was demolished in 1987, largely to prevent it from becoming a Neo-Nazi shrine, after the death of its final remaining prisoner, Rudolf Hess, who had been the prison's sole occupant after the release of Speer and von Schirach in 1966. To further ensure its erasure, the site was made into a parking facility and a NAAFI shopping center, named The Britannia Centre Spandau and nicknamed Hessco's after a British supermarket chain of a similar name. All materials from the demolished prison were ground to powder and dispersed in the North Sea or buried at the former RAF Gatow airbase.

As of 2006, a Kaiser's Supermarket, ALDI, and a Media Markt consumer electronics store occupied the former prison grounds. In late 2008, Media Markt left the main shopping complex. Their space lies now abandoned.

The prison

The prison, initially designed for a population in the hundreds, was an old brick building enclosed by one wall 15 feet high, another of 30 feet, a 10 foot high wall topped with electrified wire, followed by a wall of barbed wire. In addition, some of the sixty soldiers on guard duty manned nine machine-gun armed guard’s towers twenty-four hours a day. Due to the number of cells available, an empty cell was left between the prisoners' cells, to avoid the possibility of prisoners communicating in Morse Code. Other remaining cells in the wing were designated for other purposes, with one being used for the prison library and another for a chapel. The cells were approximately 3 metres long by 2.7 metres wide and 4 metres high. during the war and had pressed at the Nuremberg trials for the execution of all the current inmates, was unwilling to compromise with the Western powers in this regard, both because of the harsher punishment that they felt was justified, and to stress the allegation, in the context of the Cold War, that the capitalist powers had never been serious about denazification. This contrasted with Werl Prison, which housed hundreds of former officers and other lower ranking Nazi men who were under a comparatively lax regime. Western commentators accused the Russians of keeping Spandau prison in operation chiefly as a centre for Soviet espionage operations.

Daily life

Every day, prisoners were ordered to rise at 06:00 hours, wash, clean their cells and the corridor together, eat breakfast, stay in the garden until lunch-time at noon (weather permitting), have a post-lunch rest in their cells, then return to the garden. Supper followed at 17:00 hours, after which the prisoners were returned to their cells. Lights out was at 22:00 hours. Prisoners received a shave and a haircut, if necessary, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday; they did their own laundry every Monday. This routine, except the time allowed in the garden, changed very little throughout the years, although each of the controlling nations made their own interpretation of the prison regulations.

Within a few years of their arrival at the prison, all sorts of illicit lines of communication with the outside world were opened for the inmates by sympathetic staff. These supplementary lines were free of the censorship placed on authorised communications, and were also virtually unlimited in volume. Every piece of paper given to the prisoners was recorded and tracked, so secret letters were most often written on toilet paper, whose supply went unmonitored for the entire duration of the prison's existence. Many inmates took full advantage of this illegal privilege. Albert Speer, after having his official request to write his memoirs denied, finally began setting down his experiences and perspectives of his time with the Nazi regime, which were smuggled out and later released as a bestselling book, Inside the Third Reich. Dönitz wrote letters to his former deputy regarding the protection of his prestige in the outside world. When his release was near, he gave instructions to his wife on how best she could help ease his transition back into politics, which he intended, but never actually accomplished. Funk managed to obtain a seemingly constant supply of cognac (all alcohol was banned) and other treats that he would share with other prisoners on special occasions.

All prisoners feared the month during which the Soviets took command; the Russians were much stricter in their enforcement of prison regulations and offered poorer quality meals. Each nation in charge would bring its own cook and, in the American, French, and British months, feed the prisoners better than regulations allowed. The Soviets would offer an unchanging diet of coffee, bread, soup, and potatoes. This rigidity was primarily due to the much-loathed Soviet director, who perpetually enforced these measures and whom Russian and Western guards alike feared and despised. Until this director's sudden removal in the early 1960s, the 'Soviet month' was dreaded. Afterwards, matters, including diet, were improved.

The Spandau Seven

The prisoners, still subject to the petty personal rivalries and battles for prestige that characterized Nazi party politics, divided themselves into groups: Albert Speer and Rudolf Hess were the loners, generally disliked by the others — the former for his admission of guilt and repudiation of Hitler at the Nuremberg trials, the latter for his antisocial personality and perceived mental instability. The two former Grand Admirals, Erich Raeder and Karl Dönitz, stayed together, despite their heated mutual dislike. This situation had come about when Dönitz replaced Raeder as Commander in Chief of the German navy in 1943. Baldur von Schirach and Walther Funk were described as "inseparable". Konstantin von Neurath was, being a former diplomat, amiable and amenable to all the others.

Despite the length of time they spent with each other, remarkably little progress was made in the way of reconciliation. A notable example was Dönitz's dislike of Speer being steadfastly maintained for his entire ten year sentence, with it only coming to a head during the last few days of his imprisonment. Dönitz always believed that Hitler had named Dönitz as his successor due to Speer's recommendation, which had led to Dönitz being tried at Nuremberg (Speer always denied this).

Albert Speer

The prisoners were assigned numbers corresponding to the order in which they were first assigned cells and were, by regulation, referred to by their number only. Speer, number five, was the most ambitious of the prisoners, dedicating himself to a rigorous physical and mental work regime, then scheduling "vacations" of two weeks in length every few months where he relieved himself from his self-imposed routine. He secretly wrote two books, a draft of his memoirs entitled Inside the Third Reich and a collection of diary entries, . Speer also kept busy with architectural works, designing a Californian summer home for a guard. He would frequently go on "walking tours of the world" by ordering geography and travel books from the local library and walking laps in the prison garden visualizing his journey. Meticulously calculated, he "travelled" more than 24,000 km before his release.

Erich Raeder and Karl Dönitz

"The Admiralty," as the other prisoners referred to Dönitz and Raeder, were often teamed together for various tasks. Raeder, with a liking for rigid systems and organization, designated himself as chief librarian of the prison library, with Dönitz as his assistant. Both men often withheld themselves from the other prisoners, with Dönitz claiming for his entire ten years in prison that he was still the rightful head of the German state, and Raeder having contempt for the insolence and lack of discipline endemic in his nonmilitary prison-mates. After Dönitz's release in 1956 he wrote a pair of books, one on his early life, My Ever-Changing Life, and one on his time as an admiral, Ten Years and Twenty Days. Raeder, in failing health and seemingly close to death, was released in 1955 and died in 1960.

Rudolf Hess

, seen here in prison in Nuremberg in 1945, was the last inmate of Spandau Prison]]

Rudolf Hess, sentenced to life but not released due to ill health like Raeder, Funk, or Neurath, served the longest sentence out of the seven and was by far the most demanding of the prisoners. Regarded as being the 'laziest man in Spandau', Hess avoided all forms of work that he deemed below his dignity, such as pulling weeds. He was the only one of the seven who almost never attended the prison's Sunday church service. A paranoid hypochondriac, he repeatedly complained of all forms of illness, mostly stomach pains, and was suspicious of all food given to him, always taking the dish placed farthest away from him as a means of avoiding being poisoned. His stomach pains often caused wild and excessive moans and cries of pain throughout the day and night and their authenticity were repeatedly the subject of debate between the prisoners and the prison directors.

Raeder, Dönitz, and Schirach were contemptuous of this behavior and viewed them as cries for attention or as means to avoid work. Speer and Funk, acutely aware of the likely psychosomatic nature of the illness, were more accommodating to Hess. Speer, in a move that invoked the ire of his fellow prisoners, would often tend to Hess's needs, bringing him his coat when he was cold and coming to his defence when a director or guard was attempting to coax Hess out of bed and into work. Hess occasionally wailed in pain at night, affecting the sleep of the other prisoners. The prison's medical officer would inject Hess with what was described as a "sedative" but was in reality distilled water and succeeded in putting Hess to sleep. The fact that Hess repeatedly shirked duties the others had to bear and received other preferential treatment because of his illness, irked the other prisoners and earned him the title of "His imprisoned Lordship" by the admirals.

Hess was also unique among the prisoners in that, as a matter of dignity, he refused all visitors for more than twenty years, finally consenting to see his long-since adult son and wife in 1969 after suffering from a perforated ulcer that required his treatment at a hospital outside the prison. Fearing for his mental health, now that he was the sole remaining inmate, and that his death was imminent, the prison directors agreed to slacken most of the remaining regulations, moving Hess to the more spacious former chapel space, giving him a water heater to allow the making of tea or coffee when he liked, and permanently unlocking his cell so that he could freely access the prison's bathing facilities and library.

Hess was frequently moved from room to room every night for security reasons. He was often taken to BMH (British Military Hospital) not far from Spandau prison where the entire second floor of the hospital was blocked-off for him. He continued to be under heavy guard while in hospital. Ward security was provided by soldiers including Royal Military Police (RMP) Close Protection personnel. External security was provided by one of the British infantry battalions then stationed in Berlin. On some unusual occasions, the Russians relaxed their strict regulations; during these times Hess was allowed to spend extra time in the prison garden, and one of the warders from the superpowers took Hess outside the prison for a stroll and sometimes dinner.

Miscellany

The SS commando Otto Skorzeny, who freed Benito Mussolini from his captors in 1943, claimed in an interview in 1953 that, given "a hundred reliable men and two planes", he could easily have freed all of those held in Spandau Prison.

British comedian Bernard Manning served as an armed guard at the prison shortly after being called up to the British Army just after World War II.

A British Army soldier who served as an armed guard there in the 1980s was interviewed by Soldier Magazine in the late 1990s. He claimed that Spandau prison was haunted and being on guard, alone, in the watch towers at night could be a harrowing experience. Allegedly, one soldier was found unconscious, having fired his self-loading rifle at what he claimed was an apparition.

In popular culture

The prison featured in the 1985 film Wild Geese II, about a group of mercenaries who are assigned to kidnap Rudolf Hess (played by Laurence Olivier).

The band Spandau Ballet took their name after a friend of the band, journalist and DJ Robert Elms, saw 'Spandau Ballet' scrawled on the wall of a nightclub lavatory during a visit to Berlin. The term "Spandau Ballet" is slang to describe the last jerking leg movements of somebody hanged at the gallows in Spandau Prison.

The book Spandau Phoenix by Greg Iles is a fictional account of Rudolph Hess and Spandau Prison.

See also

Nuremberg Trials

Spandau Citadel

Four-Power Authorities

Cold War

Berlin blockade

Speer und Er (Extensive footage of the prison recreated in a studio)

References

Bibliography

Goda, Norman J.W.: Tales from Spandau. Nazi Criminals and the Cold War (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007).

Notes

External links

Spandau Prison on Western Allies Berlin Website

Category:1876 establishments in Germany Category:Buildings and structures demolished in 1987 Category:Defunct prisons in Germany Category:Aftermath of World War II Category:Buildings and structures in Spandau Category:Allied occupation of Germany