The sentry box in the middle of Friedrichstraße – a mere copy. At Checkpoint Charlie, history meets kitsch and commerce, but that doesn’t stop millions of tourists having their photos taken there. A glimpse into the real GDR is possible without the fairground atmosphere, though. At the Stasi Museum in Building 1 of the former Ministry of State Security in the Lichtenberg district of Berlin, the offices of Erich Mielke, the German Democratic Republic’s last minister of state security, have been preserved in their original state, exactly as he left them in 1989; and since 1990, they have been open to the public. The permanent exhibition Staatsicherheit in der SED-Diktatur (State Security in the SED Dictatorship) also provides an impressive insight into the ways and means with which the ministry once spied on East Germany’s citizens.

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