The man with the Key

The Man with the Key

Michael Brack unlocks the door to a cell in the former Stasi prison at Hohenschönhausen. Inside is a cramped room with a barred window, a bed, a washbasin, a toilet, a table and a chair.

He knows the room well. When he was twenty he occupied a cell just like it. There was one difference: in his day, there was no toilet. He had a bucket instead.

Brack, now 78, tells the group gathered around him what it was like to be imprisoned here: the intimidation, the isolation, the crushing loneliness.

“You were completely on your own. You never saw another prisoner. You weren’t allowed to talk to the guards – all they did was shout. The only person who spoke to you was the interrogator,” he says. “That loneliness, being reduced entirely to yourself, was one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had.”

Fourteen years ago, Brack came back to Hohenschönhausen for the first time. Returning to the place where he had once been imprisoned brought his memories rushing back.

“I had such a powerful flashback that my knees went weak. I thought I was going to stop breathing.”

Today, Brack has a key.

For the past twelve years, he has worked as a guide at the memorial site, leading visitors through the former prison grounds and its corridors. He describes the work as a kind of therapy.

“Now I walk across the yard with the key in my hand,” he says. “It’s not those men in uniform who have the key anymore.”

There is something quietly symbolic about the gesture. The man who was once powerless now opens the doors.

Brack has no hesitation in describing the former East Germany as a dictatorship. When he leads school groups through Hohenschönhausen, he wants them to understand what that meant in human terms – and what it means to live in a democracy.

“If the students leave here after a tour looking thoughtful, then I feel we’ve achieved something,” he says.

Brack himself was once a civil rights activist in East Germany. For his long-standing commitment to democracy and civic engagement, he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

The honour left him with mixed feelings.

“I’m torn between embarrassment and satisfaction,” he says. Satisfaction, he explains, because for someone who was once “a pariah” in East Germany, being recognised in this way by the society he lives in today is deeply gratifying.

“And embarrassment,” he adds, “because when you receive such a great honour, I suppose you can be a little embarrassed, can’t you?”

He smiles.

The key remains in his hand.