After the Dresdeners had been expecting the city to fall for several weeks, troops of the Red Army’s 1st Ukrainian Front captured the city on 7 and 8 May 1945. There were pockets of fighting – sometimes fierce – in outlying areas as the German Wehrmacht units retreated.
On the same day, a mine-clearing unit, including the twenty-year-old sergeant Ivan Khanutin, began clearing numerous ruins in the devastated city centre. Among other buildings, Khanutin discovered and defused German explosives on the portal of the Semper Gallery and the bridge to the Kronentor (Crown Gate). After the danger had been averted and the mines had been defused, Khanutin guaranteed the building’s safety by clearly writing in Cyrillic letters on the façade: “MUSEUM CLEARED. NO MINES. KHANUTIN”.
Four of these contemporary inscriptions – albeit weather-worn – have remained to this day. They can be found to the left of the main entrance to the cathedral, on the Residence Palace (at the corner of Theaterplatz), at the entrance to the Carillon Pavilion and at the passageway to the Semper Gallery.

Marked in 2002