Tunnel 57

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Coordinates: 52 ° 32 '10.6 "  N , 13 ° 23' 33.8"  E

Memorial plaque on Strelitzer Strasse 55 in Berlin-Mitte
Location marking in the Berlin Wall Memorial , in the background Bernauer Strasse

Tunnel 57 was an escape tunnel in Berlin , which from the basement of an empty bakery on the West Berlin side of Bernauer Straße  97 under the Berlin Wall - which at that time still consisted of the windowed facades of the formerly inhabited houses on the east side of Bernauer Straße - into one Toilet house in the courtyard of Strelitzer Strasse  55 in East Berlin . With a length of 145 meters and a depth of 12 meters, it was the longest, deepest and most expensive escape tunnel that was built in Berlin. From April to October 1964 35 people, including the escape helper Wolfgang Fuchs , dug from West Berlin at the tunnel through which a total of 57 people - the number of refugees was eponymous - were able to escape from the GDR on October 3 and 4, 1964 .

history

Contrary to the plan, the tunnel did not end in the cellar of the house on Strelitzer Strasse, but in a no longer used toilet block in the courtyard. The 57 refugees were contacted by couriers and led covertly to the tunnel entrance. Reinhard Furrer received the refugees at the entrance to the courtyard . Among the 120 planned refugees was an unofficial employee of the Ministry of State Security . Two plainclothes Stasi employees found the tunnel around midnight on October 4th and presented themselves to Furrer as refugees who wanted to bring a friend along. Instead, they brought in soldiers from the border troops . When the escape helpers withdrew, Christian Zobel shot several times in the face of the armed soldiers and hit one of them, Egon Schultz , on the shoulder. He went down and was accidentally shot while trying to get up by a volley from an AK-47 of the GDR border troops.

However, the GDR press reported the next day that "West Berlin terrorists" had murdered a border soldier. For decades, the SED spread this propaganda and glorified Schultz as a martyr and victim of unscrupulous "border violators". It was only after German reunification that the exact process could be reconstructed with the help of Stasi files, while until his death in the 1980s, Zobel thought he had shot Schultz.

The tunnel also received attention in the western press. In the Star reported on the tunnel, but it distanced itself from the events, even though they had financed the tunnel. The escape helpers involved went different ways after the incident. So led Reinhard Furrer , who had contributed to Erdtransportwagen used in tunneling, studying physics and was continuing scientific astronaut. While most of them withdrew from the escape assistance, Wolfgang Fuchs and Hasso Herschel continued to work in the escape assistance.

The tunnel was partially financed by selling the film and image rights to the national and international press and news agencies . The largest individual amount of around DM 30,000  came from a secret fund of the Federal Ministry for All-German Issues , which the Federal Government used to support escape aid. In return for this support, the CDU was allowed to smuggle members who remained in the east through the tunnel.

reception

The 2001 documentation Heldentod - The tunnel and the lie by Britta Wauer illuminates the escape action of tunnel 57 from October 1964 and the fatal exchange of fire. The documentary, which was awarded the German Television Prize, was shown for the first time on August 8, 2001 on Arte .

In 2011 the publication Fluchthelfer was published by Berlin Story Verlag . The group around Wolfgang Fuchs . The authors Klaus-M. von Keussler and Peter Schulenburg were active as escape helpers in the group. On the basis of extensive archive research, interviews with contemporary witnesses and their own memories and records, they convey the various escape aid activities of this group, which also included the successful escape through tunnel 57.

In 2012, the exhibition History in the Underground was opened in the Bernauer Straße underground station not far from the scene of the event . Comic exhibition on Tunnel 57 by Thomas Henseler and Susanne Buddenberg shown. The book accompanying this exhibition with the original comic story and in-depth information on the origins of the comic, interviews with contemporary witnesses and didactic material for school lessons was published in 2013 by Ch. Links Verlag in the series of publications of the “Berlin Wall Foundation”. The English edition was published in the same year.

In 2014 the comic Escape Tunnel to West Berlin (original title Tunnel 57 ) by the French cartoonists Nicolas Brachet and Olivier Jouvray was published.

literature

  • 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. 155–158 (also dissertation at the FU Berlin 2005).
  • Lee Hall, Rudolph Chelminski: Berlin: The Great Tunnel Thriller . In: Life , October 16, 1964, pp. 55-61. (Photo report, English)
  • Dietmar Arnold , Sven Felix Kellerhoff : The escape tunnel from Berlin . 2nd Edition. List, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-548-60934-8 , pp. 117 ff . (First edition: 2009).
  • Klaus M. v. Keussler, Peter Schulenburg: escape helpers. The group around Wolfgang Fuchs. 3. revised Edition. Berlin Story Verlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-95723-013-3 (first edition 2011).
  • Thomas Henseler, Susanne Buddenberg: Tunnel 57. An escape story as a comic. 2nd Edition. Publications of the Berlin Wall Foundation, Ch. Links Verlag 2014, ISBN 978-3-86153-721-2 (first edition 2013).
    • Thomas Henseler, Susanne Buddenberg: Tunnel 57. A true escape story. 2nd Edition. Publication of the Berlin Wall Fondation, Ch. Links Verlag 2014, ISBN 978-3-86153-729-8 (1st edition 2013).

Web links

Commons : Tunnel 57  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b Hubertus Knabe : The discreet charm of the GDR. Stasi and western media. Propylaea, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-549-07137-X , p. 46.
  2. Escape aid. The group around Wolfgang Fuchs. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on February 10, 2016 ; accessed on February 10, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.berlinstory-verlag.de
  3. Tunnel 57. A story of escape as a comic. Retrieved February 10, 2016 .
  4. avant-verlag.de