The record
The 1953 reception centre where 1.35 million people arrived from the East, with a wall element and plaque outside on Marienfelder Allee.
The emergency reception centre opened in 1953 to process people arriving from the East, and is now a museum run by the Berlin Wall Foundation. Around 1.35 million people passed through Marienfelde between 1953 and 1990.
This record used to say there was no wall here. That was wrong. A wall element with a commemorative plaque stands in front of the museum on Marienfelder Allee, and the Foundation, which runs the site, lists it in its own directory of surviving traces as MAU-746, photographed in 2022. The record's pin had also been placed about half a kilometre south of the building; it now stands where the Foundation puts the element.
The element is still the smaller reason to keep the record. This catalogue is otherwise a list of concrete, and the concrete only means anything because of the movement it was built to stop. Marienfelde is where that movement arrived.
How did it get here?
Not established. The Foundation's directory records the element and its plaque without giving where it came from.
Sources & verification
Sites — Stiftung Berliner Mauer (Berlin Wall Foundation) ↗
The Foundation's own listing of the sites it runs and documents, with addresses and what survives at each.
Source accessed 2026-09-17
MAU-746 Mauerelement vor der Erinnerungsstätte Notaufnahmelager Marienfelde — MAUERSPUREN, Stiftung Berliner Mauer ↗
A wall element with a commemorative plaque in front of the Erinnerungsstätte Notaufnahmelager Marienfelde on Marienfelder Allee, catalogued as MAU-746 and photographed in 2022.
Source accessed 2026-09-17
Last verified: Not yet verified
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