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The Barkas was a quick-change artist – since 1961, it was possible to customize the GDR’s pickup truck for all conceivable requirements using a wide variety of superstructures and paints. At times it was produced in 40 variants: it was used as a minibus, police vehicle, with a red cross as an ambulance, in red as a fire engine, as a flatbed truck or camouflaged as a military vehicle. Painted gray with a white roof he was used for the last trip. However, its most inglorious task it performed as a prisoner transporter in the service of the MfS, the Ministry for State Security.
When the MfS’s driver service was housed in the small neo-Gothic chapel on Fröbelstrasse from 1950 to the 80s, the octagonal building with the pointed roof had already had already been in the hands of several owners. It was built between 1886 and 1889 as a morgue and pathology for the adjoining hospital and infirmary; later it served as a repository for the deceased. After the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship in 1933, the chapel became a National Socialist celebration hall; s year later, the district office moved into the surrounding buildings. And it did not get any lighter on Froebelstrasse for quite a while. After the end of the war, the Red Army requisitioned the entire area for the Prenzlauer Berg district and the Soviet Military Command (SMAD) sent former Nazi officials and unwanted opponents of Soviet power to penal camps from here.
Anyone walking along Prenzlauer Allee today will see the octagon freshly renovated. The town planning officer Hermann Blankenstein in his times put a lot of effort into the building décor; he covered the entire building complex including the surrounding wall with numerous shaped stones and colored brick strips.