Between 1953 and 1990, more than a million people who had fled or left East Germany passed through a camp in Marienfelde, in the far south of West Berlin. The Notaufnahmelager, the emergency reception centre, was where they were registered, questioned by Western intelligence services, housed and sent on to new lives in the West. Part of it is now a museum, with exhibits and personal stories that bring the divided city vividly to life, and it is one of the more moving places in Berlin to spend an hour.
Marienfelde has older roots too. The village church, a sturdy fieldstone building from the early thirteenth century, is considered the oldest surviving village church in Berlin, still standing on its green among the trees. And the district has a long industrial tradition: the Mercedes-Benz plant here is often described as the oldest still-operating production site of the Daimler group, and has been making components for more than a century.
Today Marienfelde is a quiet residential area on the southern edge of the city, with housing estates, allotments and fields, and on its southern side, the line of the former Berlin Wall, now a cycle path, the Mauerweg, which you can follow through woods and meadows. For rides south into Brandenburg it is convenient, because it lies right on the city boundary.
The Spreewald ride heads south from here, through the sandy forests and villages of the Teltow and Dahme areas, towards the maze of channels and alder woods around Lübbenau and Lehde, where the river splits into hundreds of waterways and boatmen pole flat-bottomed punts through the forest. Roads in that direction are flat and mostly quiet, lined with trees, with occasional cobbles in the villages and long, straight stretches through pine forests. Fuel, bakeries and supermarkets are easy to find in Marienfelde and the surrounding districts.