HISTORY - RE-IMAGINED WITHIN HISTORIC WALLS

19th Century

PLANNING AND CONSTRUCTION OF THE PRISON

The construction of the prison on Grabenallee came about thanks to a judicial reform which was engineered by Grand Duke Leopold von Baden (1790-1852). Prior to this, prisoners had been crammed together under appalling conditions, usually in the old city towers: in overcrowded, far too small cells where they were left vegetating and inactive. The Grand Duke commissioned his court architect Heinrich Hübsch (1795-1863) to design prisons after the American model to accommodate detainees in a humane manner. The template they followed was the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. And so Baden became the location for the centralised district and local prisons. From the very start, the site for the Offenburg district prison (also known as “Villa Hübsch”) was disputed, being right next to the Grimmelshausen secondary school (then known as the Großherzogliches Gymnasium). The teachers fiercely resisted the building project. They saw it as posing a threat to the morals of the young people entrusted to their care: “Be aware that there will be blasphemous cursing, obscenities, suggestive chants, songs and proclamations that openly encourage bestial salaciousness. The philanthropist and teacher’s heart must keep such perils at bay ... as teachers and educators we would need to keep the windows hermetically sealed at all times of year, even in the hottest summer months.” The protests by teaching staff were successful and so the new prison for approximately 40 inmates was constructed on the far side of the ditch by the wall. The front building was constructed between 1843 and 1845, the rear building between 1847 and 1849. Offenburg was one of the district prisons which primarily accommodated prisoners awaiting trial, petty criminals with short sentences and prisoners awaiting deportation on their way to other prisons.

Everyday prison life

The building, cells and facilities corresponded to a prototype plan which was intended to apply to all prisons in Baden. Even the prisoners’ clothing, daily routine and menu were specified. For the first time, inmates were meaningfully occupied with work outside or in their cells. For instance they were put to work sewing up bags, stripping tobacco or weaving straw. The prisoners’ food was cooked by the superintendent’s wife, who would have lived with their family in accommodation in the front building. A produce garden was therefore a standard provision in a district jail. Keeping domestic animals, on the other hand, was not permitted: “It is routinely prohibited for the supervisor to keep cattle, pigeons, chickens, geese, goats or pigs as this is incompatible with cleanliness and also to avoid suspicion (sodomy)”. Pigs could only be kept outside the yard walls or in a self-contained separate courtyard.

The prisoners

After the failure of the Baden Revolution in 1848/1849, its was the Offenburg Revolutionaries who appeared on the "List of rebels and crooks" and who were now incarcerated in the new prison awaiting trial. According to prison guard Uhl's report, half of the inmates in 1849 were political prisoners. During the second half of the 19th century, more and more political offenders were imprisoned. They were social democrats who had broken Bismarck's laws on socialism, as well as clergy who had spoken out in the cultural battle against the separation of church and the state. Many of these prisoners were renowned citizens of Offenburg worthy of respect, even from the prison staff. So there was a more comfortable cell on the ground floor, known as the "Citizen's room", where high-profile people were accommodated. It was here that Alexander Reiff, the publisher of the "Ortenauer Boten", was imprisoned. He was found guilty in 1872 for "dereliction of press obligations" and chose a high-profile custodial sentence over a fine. Adolf Geck (1854 - 1942), the son of the Zähringen innkeeper, was imprisoned numerous times for disseminating prohibited social democratic literature. He was later the SPD representative at the Baden parliament and at the Reichstag in Berlin. Geck operated a printshop and published the "Der Volksfreund" newspaper and later the "D'r alt Offeburger". He was not allowed to use the "Citizen's room". He wrote: "This Offenburg radical was not given the quiet spot in the Citizen's room. That shouldn't have upset the page printer too much ... Last semester, the bachelor moved into a tiny room on the top floor of the prison with the most refreshing distant view of the landscape." The workers' choral society serenaded Geck from the Grabenallee.

20th Century

The first modernisation

In 1929, the prison was modernised. Electricity was installed, along with central heating, showers, washbasins with running water, a library for the education and advancement of the prisoners and a toilet in every cell. Prior to this, cells had been heated using stoves with bars, which inmates who were deployed on housekeeping duties kept fuelled from the corridor. Instead of the water closet, prisoners had previously used chamber pots, something which Adolf Geck remembered well when visiting the modernised institution: “At one time, when the cell occupants cleaned their cells in the morning, they would take the metal chamber pots to a disposal point under the supervision of one of the guards.” Life was fairly uneventful in the Offenburg prison. Only three executions were carried out there over the years, with the last one being in 1932. The dismantled guillotine was transported by train from Bruchsal to Offenburg and set up in the prison yard.

The national socialism era

The dark period of National Socialism then followed. Following Hitler's ascent to power in 1933, more and more critics of the regime from all sectors of the population were put in preventive detention. On 10th November 1938, all of the male Jews in Offenburg were arrested and brought to the prison. Because their deportation to Dachau was scheduled for that same day, they were accommodated in the yard and in the passageways. One Jew had to read aloud from Hitler's "Mein Kampf". In the evening, the 70 prisoners were taken to the station. The humiliating walk took over an hour. After a few weeks, the Offenburg Jews returned, but not all of the men had survived the Nazis' brutal act of intimidation. In the autumn of 1943, four French resistance fighters were held in the Offenburg prison for a year. In November 1944, during the "Schwarzwälder Blutwoche", in which all of the imprisoned resistance fighters from the region were executed, with the women being shot at the command of SS Obersturmführer Gehrum in the woods between Bohlsbach and Durbach. Eleven young people from Alsace who had hidden to avoid forced conscription also suffered the same fate. They were arrested in October 1944 by the Gestapo, brought to the prison and also murdered in the woods in December.

Further Renovation measures in the mid-20th century

By 1971 further renovations to the old prison were urgently needed. Inmates had been complaining in particular about the defective old steam heating system. This was replaced by oil heating. In addition, a shift in use led to the creation of a large, new workroom in building II. This brought to an end the practice of working in the cells. The view of the outdoors and therefore contact with the environment or the harassment of passers-by was inhibited by the positioning of screens in front of the windows. By this point it was already clear that the renovation would be a limited, temporary one and that a new building would be required long-term. The state's financial situation, however, would not allow such a project at that time.

The prisoners and its "Famous faces"

From 1972 the prison in Offenburg became an independent penal institution (known as a JVA, or Justizvollzugsanstalt in German), operating independently of the local court. Until its closure it served as a location for prisoners pending deportation, for civil confinement and, first and foremost, as a detention facility for prisoners awaiting trial. Famous prisoners awaiting trial included Dieter Kaufmann, who in October 1990 carried out the attack on Wolfgang Schäuble, and the Schmider brothers, the founders of the Flow Tex company, who were subsequently sentenced to imprisonment for fraud. It has been reported that the two of them had their food ordered in from a hostelry in Offenburg, something which was evidently an option for well-heeled prisoners awaiting trial. The wife of the prison superintendent no longer did the cooking for the other inmates. They were provided with food from the kitchen in the front building (building I), with religious or vegetarian requirements being fully accommodated. Before it closed, the prison on the Grabenallee officially provided space for 52 prisoners. But it was overcrowded and the old buildings could of course no longer satisfy the requirements of a modern penal system. The cells and the outdoor areas were too small, the workrooms inadequate and there were no social or recreation rooms. Prisoners were forced to use the corridors instead. A new building was urgently required.

21th Century

New building and closure

Once again a long and heated debate raged about the location for the new prison. Eventually it was agreed to build it in west Offenburg, in the inter-municipal industrial area. In April 2009, the new penal institution was opened with 440 places for convicts and prisoners on remand, and the venerable, historic prison on the Grabenallee closed its doors. The repurposing of the old penal institution began with the idea of turning it into a hotel. After two years of planning, the proposals from the original architects were rejected. These plans had envisaged a central building with guest accommodation between the two historic buildings. The hallways would have had to be made considerably smaller in order to create more rentable floor space. This would have largely lost the building's historic character. Instead, the developers insisted on a delicate glass box which now spans the former prison yard and which houses the lobby, restaurant and bar. Interior designers from Knoblauch-Design were commissioned to completely revamp the rooms into their current design. The completion and management of the construction project was then taken over by Trend Concept from Offenburg and pursued with passion and dedication right through to the end. Since October 2017, guests from all over the world have stayed in the stylish, designer hotel. What a wonderful wonderful use for a prison that the people of Offenburg used to fondly call the "Grabenhotel".