The record
Elements standing on the canal bank in the town that became, by accident, the distribution point for the Wall's leftovers.
Wall elements stand beside the Teltow Canal on the Oderstraße, catalogued by the Berlin Wall Foundation as MAU-711 and photographed in 2018. Teltow sat immediately outside West Berlin, on the far side of the outer ring.
Teltow appears in this catalogue more often than any place except Berlin itself, and not because of what stands in the town. When the border was dismantled, the VEB Betonwerke bought elements from the National People's Army to use as bins for loose material, and they ended up stacked in builders' yards here. The firm Klösters later took over the 160 still standing on one Teltow site, and from 2011 its managing director invited artists and amateurs to paint them.
What left those yards is scattered across this atlas. Five segments went to a peace park at Uijeongbu in South Korea, thirty kilometres from the North Korean border. One was given to the French twin town of Gonfreville-l'Orcher and laid on its side on the Nelson Mandela Promenade. A class of sixteen-year-olds from Colombes raised the money for two by running a painting competition. A small Brandenburg town with a builders' yard is the reason pieces of the Wall are standing on three continents.
How did it get here?
Not established for these elements. Teltow's yards held the surviving stock after the border was dismantled: the VEB Betonwerke bought elements from the National People's Army for use as material bins, and 160 of them were later taken over by the building materials firm Klösters.
Sources & verification
MAU-711 Mauerelemente am Teltowkanal in der Oderstraße — MAUERSPUREN, Stiftung Berliner Mauer ↗
Wall elements beside the Teltow Canal on the Oderstraße in Teltow, catalogued as MAU-711, classified as Mauerelemente, dated from 1980 and photographed in 2018.
Source accessed 2026-09-17
Federal Foundation — Berlin Wall worldwide, Uijeongbu site entry ↗
The VEB Betonwerke's purchase of wall elements from the National People's Army for use as material bins, the 160 elements later held by the building materials firm Klösters at Teltow, and Elmar Prost's painting campaign from 2011.
Source accessed 2026-09-17
Last verified: Not yet verified
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