Spandau Prison Spandau Prison Spandau Prison was located in the borough of Spandau in western Berlin. It was constructed in 1876 and demolished in 1987 after the death of its last prisoner, Rudolf Hess, to prevent it from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine. The site was later rebuilt as a shopping centre for the British forces stationed in Germany. Spandau Prison was built in 1876 on Wilhelmstraße. It initially served as a military detention center. From 1919 it was also used for civilian inmates. It held up to 600 inmates at that time. In the aftermath of the Reichstag fire of 1933, opponents
Spandau (locality) the Swedes in 1634. In 1806, after the Battle of Jena and Auerstedt, French troops under Napoleon took possession of the city and stayed there until 1807. In 1812, Napoleon returned and the Spandau Citadel was besieged in 1813 by Prussian and Russian troops. The poet and revolutionary Gottfried Kinkel was an inmate of the Spandau town prison from 1849, until he was freed by his friend Carl Schurz on the night of November 6, 1850. Before World War I, Spandau was a seat of large, government, cannon foundries, factories for making gunpowder, and other munitions of war making, it