The Dark Side of Angermünde—On the Trail of Dungeons, Heretics, and Criminal Cases

Are you familiar with Angermünde? Either because you live here or because you’ve already been exploring our beautiful town with its historic center? Either way, we highly recommend a special guided tour—which you’re welcome to take with your (grown) children: Come discover the “dark side of Angermünde” with us!

A unique city experience awaits you, featuring unusual perspectives, spine-tingling stories, and interesting facts about Angermünde’s past and present.

Of Heretics, Executioners, and Murderers

This unique guided tour takes you to places associated with the persecution of heretics, torture, death, and all manner of other criminal activities. These sites can still be seen today in their original state. And once you hear the stories behind them, you may well come to see certain places in Angermünde in a different light.

Execution in Friedenspark

The guided tour of the city, which lasts about an hour, begins at Friedenspark. Contrary to what the name of this idyllic site—situated along the city wall—might suggest, this place is associated with the execution of a pregnant minor in 1733. The execution took place at a site that is roughly where the roundabout stands today.

Death in the Torture Cellar

At the second stop, the tour takes a leap back in time to the “dark side of Angermünde.” After 1945, the stately townhouse at Straße des Friedens 5 was for decades a notorious address where the Soviet secret police and, later, the East German State Security (Stasi) spread fear and terror. Erich Baumgarten, a native of Angermünde, did not leave the interrogation cellar alive in June 1953…

From the Dungeon to the Stork Tower

The 21-meter-high Pulverturm symbolizes the defensive strength of the city wall, which was built in the 13th century. It served as a watchtower, a dungeon, a powder magazine, and emergency shelter for the poorest; it was also the scene of some particularly gruesome events, especially during times of battle and war. Despite all this, the top of the Pulverturm has been the “home base” of the Angermünde storks since the 19th century.

At the Executioner’s House in Angermünde

The “Scharfrichterhaus” at Jägerstraße 28 was built in 1624 and is the oldest surviving residential building in the city. This is where the female executioner (!) Abigail Tugenreich Hahn lived. Learn about her story and the legends surrounding this lovingly restored half-timbered house in the historic city center. After all, where else would you find a judgment stone shaped like a chair right in the courtyard? What could have happened there?

News About the Captain of Köpenick

The next stop, at the former district courthouse on the market square, takes visitors on the trail of the cobbler Wilhelm Voigt, infamous as the “Captain of Köpenick.” That’s because the notorious con artist was also arrested at the Angermünde post office for check fraud and spent one night in Cell 17 of the small town jail. And that cell still exists today.

Off to the pillory

Fraudsters and counterfeiters were put in the pillory, usually a post erected in a central location in town. In Angermünde, the municipal authorities had a wooden donkey erected next to City Hall in 1713; offenders were forced to climb onto it, where they were exposed to public ridicule. This last occurred in 1851. Since the reconstruction of the market square, the wooden donkey has been returned to its historic location. Take a seat!

Nearly 400 years before the pillory was erected, the market square was the site of the burning of 14 Waldensians, who had been accused of heresy and “devil worship” at the instigation of the Franciscan monks. The name “Ketzer-Angermünde” refers to this period, and there are other themed activities related to it as well.

Murder at “Haus Uckermark”

In 1948, West Berlin confectioner Heinrich Lemke did not survive a business trip to Angermünde … However, the murder—orchestrated by his wife—was solved and later became the backdrop for the GDR’s first penny-novel mystery. All that remains is the crime scene in Room No. 4, located at the back of the newly reconstructed and renovated “Haus Uckermark.”

This is the final stop on the tour, where—after all that shivering—you can warm up with some organic mulled wine or organic children’s punch.

Feel free to round out your tour with a visit to the tourist information center and the museum, both of which are located in the reconstructed and renovated “Haus Uckermark.”