Marienfelde refugee transit camp
Marienfelde refugee transit camp (Notaufnahmelager Marienfelde) in Marienfelde, Berlin, was one of three camps[1] operated by West Germany during the cold war for dealing with the great waves of immigration from East Germany, especially between 1950 and 1961. Refugees arriving in West Berlin were sent to the center where they received medical treatment, food, identification papers, and housing until they could be permanently re-settled in the West.
From 1949, after the establishment of the two German states, residents of East Germany fled to West Germany and West Berlin in particular, to settle down and become citizens there. In 1949, 129,245 people emigrated, and the number increased every year.
In 1950, after the approval of the Federal Emergency Law, a small centre was established in Berlin Charlottenburg, to help those who immigrated, but a new, larger camp became necessary due to the increasing numbers of immigrants - about 200,000 in 1950, approximately 165,000 in 1951, and 182,000 1952 - and after the closure of the border between the two Germanies, on May 1952, when tens of thousands of refugees arrived in West Berlin.
On July 1952 a cornerstone for the new camp was laid, in Marienfelde, Schöneberg, in the American occupation zone. Considerations that guided the Federal Emergency department (Notaufnahmelagers des Bundes), responsible for implementing the law, for the location of the camp were its proximity to Tempelhof Airport and to the railway lines of the S-Bahn.
The camp operations started on August 1953, with a capacity of about 2,000 people but it soon became over-crowded with waves of immigration after the construction workers uprising in East Germany on June 17. The camp was expanded later on, but was always densely populated until 1961.
Prior to the construction of the Berlin wall, the numbers of immigrants entering the camp rose sharply: from 19,198 in June 1961, to 30,444 in July (about 1,000 a day), and then more than 1,200 a day in the first days of August. On August 12 it reached 2,400. On 13 August 1961, East German authorities closed the buffer zone between the two parts of Berlin and started building the Berlin Wall. Overnight, the number of refugees in the camp decreased sharply and later on the camp almost emptied.[2]
The center continued processing East German refugees even after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and until the unification of Germany a year later. Today the center remains in use, processing ethnic Germans who are immigrating to Germany from the former Soviet Union.
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Coordinates: 52°25′13″N 13°22′00″E / 52.4203°N 13.3667°E