In terms of state legal systems, punishment is understood as a legally regulated sanction that is imposed on individuals in order to punish a culpable violation of legal norms. Punishment presupposes individual responsibility for a specific, legally defined offence - it is bound to the principle of guilt. This principle was systematically overridden under National Socialism. The National Socialist state abused the form of exercising state power in order to persecute people regardless of individual guilt. Anyone who did not fit into the totalitarian and racist world view of the regime - such as Jews, political opponents, Sinti*zze and Rom*nja, people stigmatized as 'asocial' or 'unable to work' - was disenfranchised, deported, imprisoned or murdered. No crime in the legal sense was required; mere membership of a certain group could be declared a 'misdemeanor'.
National Socialist violence was organized by the state, ideologically justified and aimed at complete exclusion and extermination. It represented a radical departure from the constitutional understanding of punishment - a departure that fundamentally violated the inviolability of human dignity and the principle of justice. These historical abysses must not be relativized, glossed over or forgotten.
Since its establishment in 1907, the police instruments of detention have been used in the Kassel police headquarters under various governments and legal systems: German Empire, Weimar Republic, Nazi dictatorship and Federal Republic. The exhibition aims to place the crimes of the Nazi era in the historical and legal contexts and conditions of this architectural and spatial continuity. In addition to the different forms of detention and prison typologies in Kassel and the surrounding area, the historical and legal background to detention and imprisonment is presented. This makes the central importance of the police headquarters for National Socialist rule in Kassel unmistakably clear.
Article 1 paragraph 1 of the Basic Law:
Human dignity is inviolable. It is the duty of all state authorities to respect and protect it.
The exhibition is a cooperative project between Dr. Dr. Arne Winkelmann, Prof. Rebecca Stephany and Abetare Prenici (Graphic Design, Visual Communication class, Kunsthochschule Kassel), Susanne Hesse-Badibanga and Conny Weckmann (Department of Architectural Theory and Design, University of Kassel) and the initiative Gedenkort Polizeipräsidium Königstor.
Content of information boards:
Dr. Dr. Arne Winkelmann (freelance curator)
Contents of lists and quotations:
Abetare Prenici, Rebecca Stephany, Conny Weckmann
Exhibition design and graphic design:
Abetare Prenici with Rebecca Stephany
July 9 to September 18, 2025
Opening: July 9, 5:30 p.m.
ORBIT
Königstor 33
34117 Kassel