Stasi Headquarters (Campus for Democracy)

For decades the Ministry for State Security — the Stasi — ran one of history's most pervasive surveillance states from this vast complex in Lichtenberg. At its peak it employed 91,000 officers and 189,000 informants to spy on 16 million East Germans, amassing files that, laid end to end, would stretch over 111 kilometres. On 15 January 1990, weeks after the Wall fell, crowds stormed the compound to stop the shredding of evidence. Minister Erich Mielke's office survives untouched — desk, safe, and the intercom he used to command the apparatus. Today the museum and the vast Stasi Records Archive let citizens read their own files.