NO PRISON

Theatre, concerts, films, discussions, the Festival Centre in prison: the former prison Rennelberg opens its doors to the public for the first time

A look inside a prison says a lot about a society and its injustices. Who is imprisoned and what for? During the Nazi regime, Rennelberg Prison was an instrument for breaking political resistance. Today, too, authoritarian states all over the world use prisons as ways to maintain their power. But in liberal societies too, people question whether prisons can really bring about justice. 

Theaterformen Festival will be opening the doors of Rennelberg Prison to the public for the first time and will interweave the history of the City of Braunschweig with the perspectives of international artists on injustice and state violence. New, site-specific performances by Harald Beharie, Nicoleta Esinencu / teatru-spălătorie, LASTESIS, Sonya Lindfors & Maryan Abdulkarim and Public Movement will be created especially for the festival.  

The Festival Centre will provide a space to debate, relax with a drink in the sun and dance in defiance of the violence of the architecture at the Silent Discos.

Rennelberg Prison, which is no longer a functioning prison, but has not yet been taken over by the investment sector, will open up as a space of possibility for a brief period. NO PRISON invites you to come together in this place of isolation and exclusion and to experience community and art in precisely such a place. 

History of Rennelberg Prison 

The Rennelberg Correctional Facility was built in 1884/85 on a site that was then outside the city limits of Braunschweig. The prison was originally supposed to replace the city’s other detention centres, whose buildings were old and overcrowded, and no longer fulfilled the safety standards of the time. The new building was intended to bring together pretrial detention and the district court under one roof, instead of having them in different locations throughout the city as they had previously been. Rennelberg Prison was built according to the new standards from the prison reforms of the 1880s and 1890s (cross-shaped design, individual cells, better use of natural light) and originally housed 296 inmates in 150 cells. From the beginning, Rennelberg Prison was designed to be the main women’s prison in the region and therefore became one of the key institutions in the regional prison system.

During the Nazi period, the prison was used to hold political opponents, Jews, queer people and other people persecuted by the regime. Many were kept in what was referred to as “preventative custody” – usually the first step on their way to a concentration camp or other execution facilities, like the nearby prison in Wolfenbüttel. One prominent example was 19-year-old Erna Wazinski, a Jew, who was later executed in Wolfenbüttel after a forced confession. Rennelberg Prison was thus a part of the regional network of repression that connected the Gestapo detention centre, forced labour camps in Braunschweig and the execution facility at Wolfenbüttel. Among the well-known prisoners were Ernst Böhme, the mayor of Braunschweig, and Heinrich Jasper, the former minister president of the state, who was tortured there and later murdered in Bergen-Belsen. According to historical estimates, more than 500 people were held in “preventative custody” in the prison by the police or the Gestapo. During the Nazi period, the prison was completely overcrowded and around 900 prisoners were liberated by American troops on the 12th of April 1945.         

After 1945, a large number of Nazi functionaries were detained in Rennelberg Prison, including the former minister president of the state, Dietrich Klagges. In the first few years after the war, the prison also held persons waiting for denazification or prosecution.     

The prison was closed in 2024 due to serious structural defects and once again outdated security standards. Its closure was preceded by decades of criticism regarding understaffing, inadequate security technology and the advancing decay of the building. In May 2024, the remaining 44 prisoners were finally moved to Wolfenbüttel Prison. Since 2025, Rennelberg has been up for sale to investors. Given the prison’s long and eventful history, historians and politicians are campaigning to establish a memorial site on its grounds.