”It’s unimaginable, everything is just gone”. This was how a resident of the city described the wide expanses of rubble in the centre of Dresden. The Municipal Building Office made a similar assessment of the situation: ”The city centre within the circle of tramline 26 has been destroyed completely.”
In view of the scale of the destruction and the personnel and material limitations caused by the “total war”, it was impossible to immediately secure the city centre, let alone repair it. Between 22 February and 3 March, the city administration and the police identified a total of seventeen areas to be cordoned off so as to prevent limited resources from being used in areas which, in their view, it would take too long to render functional. Almost no clear-up operations were allowed to take place here. These ”dead areas” included almost the entire old city centre and extensive sections of the suburbs Pirnaische Vorstadt and Seevorstadt.
Lüttichaustraße and Bürgerwiese formed the south-eastern border of ”dead area” number thirteen, which extended up to Prager Straße.

Marked in 2001