,
castle or
palace in the middle of the Erzgebirge belongs to the town of Stollberg. It had
many different owners, since it was used in 1864 as a prison, in the beginning
for men and women.
In 1950 the
prison was taken over by the East German police, who made it to the number one
prison in the GDR for women. The first prisoners who came there were women who
were brought in 1950 from the soviet special camp Sachsenhausen, a former
concentration camp, after the camp was closed and the women were handed over to
the East German authorities. The women had been condemned by soviet military
tribunals for political reasons, many to 25 years. The soviet and the East
German authorities called them dangerous criminals.
Among the women
behind the prison walls there were babies and children, who were born in the
soviet special camps of Sachsenhausen,
Buchenwald or Bautzen. For example, there were 30
babies and children among the 1.119 women, who were brought from Sachsenhausen
to Hoheneck on February 11th, 1950. Even in Hoheneck babies were born. They all
could only live for a few months with their mother before they were separated
and send to children homes in the GDR.
Since the end
of the GDR Hoheneck was used for female prisoners. The life in the overcrowded
and primitively furnished cell rooms and halls was often made unbearable by
harassment and psychological terror of the guards. Most of the women, who were
condemned by soviet military tribunals, were released by 1956. Then more and
more women, who were condemned the East German courts have been brought to
Hoheneck, many of them for political reasons. In the 70th and 80th
the political and criminal prisoners lived often together in rooms of 24 women.
