The Green Mile, Germany

“Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not. Time takes it all, time bears it away, and in the end there is only darkness. Sometimes we find others in that darkness, and sometimes we lose them there again.”

– The Green Mile, by Stephen King

The Green Mile is a disused prison, in the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany). The prison was built at the turn of the 20th Century, as a medium-term prison and pre-trial detention centre. There were enough cells to house around 50 inmates when the facility was run at maximum capacity. At the time of construction, the single-occupancy cells were seen as a relatively modern luxury. Earlier prison cells were typically communal, with several inmates sharing a cell.

During the Nazi regime, this site was used as a detention and torture centre for ethnic minorities. After the Second World War, the cells housed juveniles offenders and prisoners on remand. The prison has been disused since around the 1980’s.

The cells are small, with thick wooden door re-enforced with steel struts. A double locking system was used to secure the doors, and the guards could view inmates through a spy hole. Each cell had a folding wooden bunk bed. Cells were devoid of any form of heating. The cell windows are small and high, only flooding the cells with sunlight when the sun is at its highest. The rest of the time, only a glimmer of light entered the cramped cell. The toilet would have been a metal bucket, the imprint of which can still be seen on the floor in some cells.

Most of The Green Mile is painted khanki and paler green. This paint is now peeling and flaking off to reveal paler cream-coloured layers underneath.