The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
Tunnel under Berlin Wall open 30 years on
An escape tunnel under the Berlin Wall has opened to the public for the first time amid celebrations of the 30th anniversary of the opening of communist East Germany’s border.
The tunnel at Bernauer Strasse was opened by mayor Michael Mueller.
He thanked those who began to dig the 100-metre tunnel in late 1970, nine years after East Germany sealed its border, before he toured the new exhibition.
The tunnel was built by people who had escaped earlier to West Berlin. They wanted to help friends and family to flee but, days before it was finished, somebody informed East German officials about it.
East German authorities then found the tunnel by using ultrasound tracking and partially destroyed it.
Built in 1961, the wall stood at the front line of the Cold War. It cut off East Germans from the supposed ideological contamination of the West.
In the 28 years that the wall split the city, more than 70 tunnels were built under the 97.2-mile barrier and around 300 people fled via them, according to the Berlin Underworlds Association, which leads tours of historical bunkers and tunnels.
Through two windows, 25ft under the ground, visitors can peek into the dimly lit 1970 tunnel but not get inside. The original tunnel is so narrow that the men who built it could only crawl through it.
Ulrich Pfeifer, a civil engineer and one of the tunnel builders, made calculations and created maps for the project.
Mr Pfeifer fled to West Berlin through the sewage system just a few weeks after the Wall was erected in August 1961.