The struggle to establish the memorial

Initially it was one lone fighter, Sammy Maedge, a gilder of weather-cocks for Church spires, who mounted public campaigns to draw attention to the history of the EL-DE House already in the mid-1960’s. The reputed exhibition of the Cologne History Archive ‘Resistance and persecution in Cologne 1933– 1945’ highlighted, in detail for the first time, essential parts of the NS history of the City of Cologne. The story of the EL-DE House however, was only mentioned in passing. It was only subsequent to the US-American television series ‘Holocaust’ and the trial of Kurt Lischka and other NS perpetrators at the courthouse across the street that EL-DE House began to garner national attention. Maedge succeeded in triggering a bigger response to his activities in 1979. Around the same time, the teacher Kurt Holl and the photographer Gernot Huber hid in the basement of the EL-DE House and had themselves locked in after the municipal Legal and Insurance Office closed for the day in order to take pictures of the cells and the inscriptions during the night and then present them to the public. Finally, the request to turn the former Gestapo house prison into a memorial came to fruition and the City Council gave its permission in late 1979. The inscriptions the prisoners had written on or carved into the walls were carefully uncovered, restored and painstakingly deciphered before being masterfully edited by an archivist of the Cologne History Archive, Manfred Huiskes. Furthermore, a double cell that had been used as a coal cellar after 1945 was turned into a room for a small exhibition about the history of the Cologne Gestapo and the general history of National Socialism in Cologne. Photographs of inscriptions were reproduced, translated and mounted on relatively simple boards in the aisles of the former prison. On 4 December 1981, the former Gestapo house prison was finally opened for the public as a memorial.

New design in 2009

In 2009, the memorial was completely re-designed. 26 new boards were installed covering a range of different topics; the inscriptions were also displayed on these boards both in the original German and translated English versions. Additional boards were also installed to display the biographies of five prisoners who had been authors of the inscriptions found on the cells walls. The majority of prisoners left messages on the walls of the cells anonymously. In the course of the past few years, however, it has become possible to research the story of some other prisoners and thus ‘faces’ could be put to several more of the inscriptions. The new small exhibition is limited to the actual place, the Gestapo house prison and the life and death of the inmates. A glass show- case holds the pieces that were found in the course of the renovation at the beginning of the 1980’s.

Moreover, the memorial was extended to cover essential parts of the former prison. The dark cell with its anteroom, the Gestapo air raid shelter in the house and the rear part of the prison, which served as the guard room, were integrated. During the late 1970’s, when the installation of a memorial was first requested it was limited to the cell block of the prison. The original iron gate separating the two parts of the prison was opened in 2009. The differing significance of both areas is visually exemplified by the new lighting system. A memorial room was installed in the former prison guards’ common room. It is directly along the path to the inner court, where the gallows were located. During the final phase of the war, more than 400 people were executed here.