Wollankstrasse escape tunnel
The Wollankstrasse escape tunnel (also known as Wollank tunnel ) was built in Berlin in January 1962 to help them escape from the GDR . Shortly before its completion, the escape route dug under the Wollankstrasse S-Bahn station in a construction period of around three weeks in the direction of East Berlin collapsed a few meters behind the entry point. The wooden walls and wooden stamps built in for protection were too weak for the vibrations caused by rail traffic. When a circular depression had formed in the platform above, employees of the Deutsche Reichsbahn discovered the project on January 26, 1962. The tunnel was not used for an escape.
tunnel
After the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961, those willing to flee and their supporters developed various methods to make it possible to escape from the eastern part of the city to the western part. This also included escape tunnels , of which the " Pankower Friedhofstunnel " was the first to be used successfully in September 1961 for the escape of 20 people. While those wishing to flee were digging tunnels from east to west themselves, students and relatives of those wishing to flee worked from West Berlin on the tunnels, among other things tunnels 29 and 57 became known . A student escape aid group - mainly students from the Technical University of Berlin - around the brothers Boris and Eduard Franske also worked on the tunnel under the Wollankstrasse S-Bahn station . Their plan was to dig out of the vaults under the train station into the back yard of a house on Schulzestrasse. The material required for this cost between DM 4,000 and DM 8,000. It took about three weeks from the start of construction to the collapse of the tunnel.
location
The elevated Wollankstrasse S-Bahn station was on East Berlin territory, but could only be reached from the French sector via two entrances from Nordbahnstrasse . Trains of the Berlin S-Bahn , operated by the Reichsbahn , stopped . Long-distance trains and military transports of the French armed forces also ran on the tracks in Berlin . While the two northeastern tracks were laid out on a railway embankment, the southwestern track was stored on vaulted arches that were used by traders as sales and storage space before the Second World War . When Berlin was divided, the arches were bricked up and remained unused. The passage under the flyover over Wollankstrasse was also walled up.
execution
First, the group wanted to create a two to three meter deep shaft and then drive the tunnel to East Berlin. Concealed from view by the walled-up arches, the students began to pry open the concrete floor in several places and dig the shaft. After two unsuccessful attempts, they dug a shaft about 2 meters deep and 1.5 meters × 2 meters wide at a third point. From the bottom of the tunnel, they began with the actual tunnel, which they supported with boards and beams to protect it from sand sliding in.
Burglary and discovery
On January 26, 1962, the tunnel collapsed about five meters after the entrance shaft under the platform of the station. The support of the tunnel ceiling had not withstood the loads of the constant train traffic. Loose sand slipped into the tunnel. None of the tunnel builders was buried.
The following night an employee of the Reichsbahn noticed a subsidence in the pavement of the platform, which by the afternoon of the day reached a depth of one meter. Initially, a water pipe burst was assumed. Around 8 p.m., the station master observed eight to ten young people coming out of one of the arches. In the course of the evening he saw another car and three trucks loaded with boards on the arches. Around 8:30 p.m., a student is said to have come to the platform and talked about a tunnel. At around 1 a.m. on January 28, two officers of the transport police from East Berlin came to the train station and began an investigation. On the same night members of the East Berlin People's Police standby entered the West Berlin Nordbahnstrasse and opened the arches. During their search, they discovered the entrance to the tunnel. Tunnel builders were no longer on site at this point.
Reactions
press conference
The GDR's transport minister, Erwin Kramer , invited journalists to a press conference at Wollankstrasse station on February 1, 1962, and presented them to the tunnel, which he described as the “agent lock”. In addition to the tunnel, found equipment such as batteries and axes as well as a sketch of the tunnel and a note from the builder were exhibited. At the appointment, Western media representatives were not allowed to bring cameras or tape recorders. They were also not allowed to descend into the tunnel, while journalists from Warsaw Pact countries were allowed to do so . Members of the GDR border troops monitored the event.
The State Secretary in the GDR Foreign Ministry , Otto Winzer , published a letter of protest to the French city commanders on the same day, in which he presented the tunnel construction as a danger to rail traffic that had arisen from the collapse of the tunnel. Train traffic was not endangered by the tunnel, however, as it was too little and the load was distributed over the sleepers and rails to the ground.
By order of Erich Honecker , Secretary of the National Defense Council of the GDR , the GDR mass media used the discovered tunnel extensively. Honecker had previously criticized that the discovery of the "Pankow cemetery tunnel" in December 1961 had not been used sufficiently for the purposes of the GDR. The government of the GDR repeatedly used the Wollanktunnel as an example of attacks on its own territory. The mostly student escape assistance was declared terrorism .
Press coverage
The press coverage differed in the two halves of the city. The headline of the SED central organ Neues Deutschland : "Western agencies have to admit: Stollen - work of bandits". In the depiction of the East Berlin newspapers, the tunnel was built by spies and agents in order to be able to penetrate undetected into the GDR and to harm it. This line corresponded to the statements of the officials. The western media reported on a student action and expressed their rejection of the SED regime and the Berlin Wall.
State Security Investigations
The Ministry of State Security (MfS) started the investigation shortly after the tunnel was discovered. In an interim report dated February 13, it estimated the construction costs at around 8,000 DM and stated that those involved were poorly funded people who would not have been able to bear the costs. The head office of the tunnel builder suspects it to be in the student union of the TU Berlin. As in the final report, the MfS identified the Girrmann Group and Bodo Köhler as the main responsible in addition to the Franzke brothers . Neither Girrmann nor Köhler had worked on the tunnel, but they were involved in tunnel construction elsewhere in Berlin. The MfS falsely reported about the Franzke brothers that they had multiple criminal records. No tunnel builder was arrested.
The MfS suggested looking for three students by name and applying for a search to the West Berlin law enforcement authorities.
literature
- Dietmar Arnold , Sven Felix Kellerhoff : The escape tunnel from Berlin . 2nd Edition. List, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-548-60934-8 , pp. 43-48 (first edition: 2009).
- Marion Detjen: A hole in the wall. The history of refugee aid in divided Germany 1961–1989 . Siedler, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-88680-834-3 , p. 130 ff .
- The third man was waiting in the grave. “Company travel agency” - the organized escape through the wall . In: Der Spiegel . No. 13 , 1962 ( online ).
- Assassination under the railway embankment . In: Neue Berliner Illustrierte , 7/1962, pp. 16-17
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Detjen 2005, pp. 130 ff.
- ↑ a b Detjen 2005, p. 191 f.
- ↑ Writings of the Institute for Political Science at the Free University of Berlin , Volume 19, 1965. P. 369.
- ↑ a b c Arnold / Kellerhoff 2011, p. 47.
- ↑ a b c Arnold / Kellerhoff 2011, p. 44.
- ↑ a b Arnold / Kellerhoff 2011, p. 46.
- ↑ a b c Arnold / Kellerhoff 2011, p. 43.
- ^ Arnold / Kellerhoff 2011, p. 48.
Coordinates: 52 ° 33 '54.2 " N , 13 ° 23' 32.6" E