Take a trip back in time and experience what life in Berlin was like about 40 years ago : In various corners of the capital, its eventful history can still be felt today. Whether in a chapel on the former death strip—which is now part of the Berlin Wall Memorial—or in an old Berlin subway station that almost feels like a museum of the past. But the journey through time doesn’t end there. The DDR Museum Depot is located on Pyramidenring in Berlin-Marzahn and is part of the well-known DDR Museum in Berlin-Mitte.
Unlike the permanent exhibition for tourists, the focus here is primarily on collecting, preserving, restoring, and conducting scholarly research on original objects from the GDR and the Soviet Occupation Zone. This is by no means just a small outpost. The GDR Museum’s collection now comprises more than 400,000 objects and, according to the museum, continues to grow almost daily. Thus, Marzahn is home to a vast collection of material evidence of GDR history
The objects come from approximately 10,000 donors. Among the largest exhibits are segments of the Berlin Wall and Barkas vehicles. Some items, however, were particularly difficult to obtain. These include, among others, a 1-megabit chip and a Germina skateboard. Among the most common donations is the GDR award “Activist of Socialist Labor.”
The Depot is still a relatively new destination for Berlin visitors. The new building in Marzahn was not constructed until 2024. The cornerstone was laid on April 24, 2024. Previously, the DDR Museum’s extensive collections were scattered across various storage locations in Berlin. On March 16, 2025, the new DDR Museum Depot opened its doors to the public for the first time. As a result, for just about a year and a half now, visitors have had the opportunity to get a glimpse into an aspect of museum work that normally takes place behind closed doors.
At the heart of the new depot are two large halls that are far more than ordinary storage spaces . The building combines a collection depot, a research facility, and a restoration workshop, while also allowing visitors a glimpse behind the scenes. The rooms are climate-controlled so that the historical objects can be stored under suitable conditions and preserved for the long term. In addition, according to the museum, the building is powered by renewable energy.
The collection includes, for example, vehicles, motorcycles, furniture, technical devices, household items, clothing, posters, and medals, as well as numerous other objects. As a result, the visit feels at times like a giant time capsule. Instead of learning about GDR history exclusively through historical data and texts, visitors encounter objects that were actually part of people’s lives in the GDR.
Among the hundreds of thousands of items in the collection are also original segments of the Berlin Wall. Together with the preserved Barkas vehicles, they are among the largest objects in the collection. The Depot also features its own exhibition area called the “Club of Officials,” which covers approximately 80 square meters. In the long term, the DDR Museum also plans to use the depot to present special exhibitions on topics that have received less attention so far in the permanent exhibition in Berlin-Mitte .
