In 1943, the Dresden city administration established a Civil Air Defence Construction Office. The acute danger posed by air raids was patently obvious. The construction office had few options for rectifying the severe shortage of civil air defence structures. It was too late to begin the construction of bunkers and secure public air-raid shelters of sufficient capacity. The authorities were thus forced to improvise. Splinter trenches were constructed at several locations throughout the city. These were covered narrow trenches protected by mounds of earth with seats on both sides of a passageway. They could not withstand a direct hit from a high-explosive bomb, but they did offer protection from incendiary bombs, bomb splinters and pieces of rubble.
Such an air-raid trench was constructed directly adjacent the Nymphenbrunnen fountain in 1944. On the night of 13-14 February the residents of the surrounding buildings fled to the trenches. Dozens of people were killed in the firestorm that night; their mutilated bodies were documented in a series of photographs.

Marked in 2001