The headquarters of the Ministry for State Security (MfS) in Berlin-Lichtenberg was a huge complex with almost 50 buildings and thousands of offices. This is where, for almost four decades, as many as 7.000 official employees organized the surveillance and persecution of the population of the German Democratic Republic.
In January 1990, demonstrators forced their way onto the sealed-off grounds and helped to end the activities of the Stasi. Today this former bastion of SED (East German Communist Party) rule is an educational site about dictatorship and resistance and a learning centre for democracy.
As a place of reflection on the East German dictatorship, the Campus for Democracy is home to the Robert Havemann Society with its archive of the GDR opposition movement and the ASTAK Association running the Stasimuseum. The Stasi Records Archive has its central archive location here. Individual and group visitors can tour the grounds, the archives and the exhibitions as well as attend events.