Tunnel 57 was a tunnel under the

Berlin Wall The Berlin Wall (german: Berliner Mauer, ) was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and East Germany (GDR). Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the government ...

that on 3 and 4 October 1964 was the location of a mass escape by 57

East Berlin East Berlin was the ''de facto'' capital city of East Germany from 1949 to 1990. Formally, it was the Allied occupation zones in Germany, Soviet sector of Berlin, established in 1945. The American, British, and French sectors were known as ...

citizens to

West Berlin West Berlin (german: Berlin (West) or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin during the years of the Cold War. Although West Berlin was de jure not part of West Germany, lacked any sovereignty, and was under mi ...

. Built from the basement of an empty bakery at 97

Bernauer Straße Bernauer Straße is a street of Berlin situated between the localities of Gesundbrunnen and Mitte, today both belonging to the Mitte borough. It runs from the Mauerpark at the corner of Prenzlauer Berg to the Nordbahnhof. The street's name refe ...

in West Berlin, under the Berlin Wall – which at that time and place consisted of empty, bricked up apartment buildings on the east side of Bernauer Straße – all the way to a disused

outhouse An outhouse is a small structure, separate from a main building, which covers a toilet. This is typically either a pit latrine or a bucket toilet, but other forms of dry toilet, dry (non-flushing) toilets may be encountered. The term may als ...

in the rear courtyard at 55 Strelitzer Straße in East Berlin. At a depth of 12 meters (40'), and a length of 145 meters (475'), Tunnel 57 was the longest, deepest and most expensive flight tunnel built in Berlin. 35 West Berliners, including Wolfgang Fuchs, the future astronaut

Reinhard Furrer Prof. Dr. Reinhard Alfred Furrer (25 November 1940 – 9 September 1995) was a German physicist and astronaut. Furrer was born in Wörgl, Ostmark (now Austria). After the end of World War II, his father was expelled from Austria. The family f ...

, and many students from the Freie University in West Berlin, helped to build the tunnel from April till October 1964, until on 3 and 4 October 57 people fled the GDR via the tunnel. Gedenktafel Strelitzer Str 55 (Mitte) Egon Schultz

Gedenktafel Strelitzer Str 55 (Mitte) Egon Schultz

History

Some of the organisers of the tunnel – the so-called couriers – had made contact with 120 people in East Berlin and planned for their escape. These couriers would bring them to the apartment building at 55 Strelitzer Straße and into the courtyard, where Reinhard Furrer would show them to the tunnel entrance in the disused outhouse. Amongst those 120 people who were planned to escape was a collaborator with the

Stasi The Ministry for State Security, commonly known as the (),An abbreviation of . was the Intelligence agency, state security service of the East Germany from 1950 to 1990. The Stasi's function was similar to the KGB, serving as a means of maint ...

, the East German secret police. On 4 October around midnight, the second night of fleeing, two Stasi officers in plain clothes presented at the entrance, claiming they wanted to flee, and had another friend they wanted to fetch to come as well. When they returned not with a friend but with

border guards A border guard of a country is a national security agency that performs border security. Some of the national border guard agencies also perform coast guard (as in Germany, Italy or Ukraine) and rescue service duties. Name and uniform In diff ...

, one of the helpers, Christian Zobel, shot at the guards, hitting

Egon Schultz Egon Schultz (4 January 1943 – 5 October 1964) was a German sergeant of the East German Border Troops who became the fifty-second known person to die at the Berlin Wall. While responding to the discovery of "Tunnel 57," Schultz was kille ...

on the shoulder. He fell to the ground, and, while trying to get up again, was fatally shot by

friendly fire In military terminology, friendly fire or fratricide is an attack by belligerent or neutral forces on friendly troops while attempting to attack enemy/hostile targets. Examples include misidentifying the target as hostile, cross-fire while eng ...

from one of his fellow officers. Seeking to use the incident for propaganda, the East Berlin press reported on the following day that “West Berlin terrorists” had murdered a border guard. The

SED sed ("stream editor") is a Unix utility that parses and transforms text, using a simple, compact programming language. It was developed from 1973 to 1974 by Lee E. McMahon of Bell Labs, and is available today for most operating systems. sed w ...

, the GDR’s dictatorial ruling communist party spread this rumour and made a martyr out of Schultz, the victim of a ruthless enemy of the border 'Grenzverletzer'' Only after

German reunification German reunification (german: link=no, Deutsche Wiedervereinigung) was the process of re-establishing Germany as a united and fully sovereign state, which took place between 2 May 1989 and 15 March 1991. The day of 3 October 1990 when the Ge ...

could the exact events be recreated using the Stasi’s records from the time. Zobel wrongly believed that he had fatally shot Schultz right up until his death in the 1980s. A memorial plaque on the site today commemorates both the successful escape, and Schultz's death as a victim of the Berlin Wall. Tunnel 57 caught the attention of the western press too. The German news magazine ''

Stern The stern is the back or aft-most part of a ship or boat, technically defined as the area built up over the sternpost, extending upwards from the counter rail to the taffrail. The stern lies opposite the bow, the foremost part of a ship. Ori ...

'' reported about the tunnel, though they distanced themselves from the events, despite having helped finance the tunnel. The builders of the tunnel went different ways. Most stayed away from risky flight operations, with Reinhard Furrer continuing his physics degree at the Freie University and going on to become an astronaut. Wolfgang Fuchs and Hasso Herschel continued to help people to flee from the GDR. The tunnel was partly financed by selling the rights to film and photograph the tunnel to several German and international press and news agencies. The largest single contribution of about 30,000

Deutschmark The Deutsche Mark (; English: ''German mark''), abbreviated "DM" or "D-Mark" (), was the official currency of West Germany from 1948 until 1990 and later the unified Germany from 1990 until the adoption of the euro in 2002. In English, it was ...

came from the West German Federal Ministry of Intra-German Relations.

References

{{Coord, 52, 32, 10.62, N, 13, 23, 33.79, E, type:landmark, display=title Berlin Wall Tunnels in Berlin 1960s in Berlin 1964 in West Germany 1964 in East Germany

History

See also

References