Tunnel 29

by Helena Merriman

  We talk about the towns and cities in East Germany that lost their purpose, their rusting polluting factories closed down, thousands made redundant, many of them flocking to the hard-right in search of something new to believe in.

  And we talk about the so-called Mauer im Kopf – ‘Wall in the head’ – referring to the psychological Wall that lives on, with many in Germany still thinking of themselves as Ossis (people from the East) or Wessis (people from the West). Joachim tells me how whenever he meets people from his generation, he always knows whether they’re an Ossi or a Wessi because, after all, they’ve lived entirely different lives; the East is still much poorer than the West and it will take years for the two Germanys to feel like one.

  Just as we’re about to finish the interview, Joachim asks if I want to see them: the shoes he’d found back in the tunnel moments before it collapsed. He disappears into his bedroom and returns with them, nestled into the palm of his hand. They’re beige leather, once soft on top but, with age, they’ve hardened. I turn them over and there on the soles I see them – flakes of mud from the tunnel, still there after sixty years.

  I return the shoes to Joachim and he cradles them protectively. They’re special to him, something to remind him of the time he gave half a year of his life to dig a tunnel and rescue twenty-nine strangers. But they’re special too, for another reason: for the shoes were kicked off in the tunnel by Evi’s daughter Annet, now Joachim’s step-daughter. Joachim and Evi keep them in their bedroom, a homage to the tunnel that brought twenty-nine strangers into the West and brought Joachim a family.

  Before I leave, I ask Joachim what he thinks about the other walls in the world right now, for the world is riddled with walls like never before: there’s the wall on the American–Mexican border, the barrier separating Israel from the West Bank and from Gaza, the wall separating Egypt from Israel, Syria from Israel, Jordan from Syria, Turkey from Syria, Greece from Macedonia, Macedonia from Serbia, Serbia from Hungary, Kuwait from Iraq, Iran from Pakistan, Malaysia from Thailand, Pakistan from India, India from Bangladesh, China from North Korea, Botswana from Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe from South Africa – thousands upon thousands of kilometres of wall separating countries all over the world, often accompanied by watch-towers, mines, electric fences, armoured vehicles, night-vision cameras, dogs, just like the Berlin Wall.

  Then there are the walls within countries – the so-called peace walls that divide Protestant and Catholic areas in Northern Ireland, the walls that separate communities from one another in Cape Town, Lima and São Paulo, the blast walls that surround neighbourhoods in Baghdad and Damascus. There are walls that run through desert (such as the 1,700-mile Moroccan wall) and even plans for a floating barrier on the sea, off the island of Lesbos to stop migrants crossing by boat from Turkey.

  As usual, Joachim is thoughtful. He talks about how the politics behind many of these walls are different: after all, some walls are built to keep people in, others to keep people out; some are built to contain violence and have done so successfully, others are built to give a country a sense of identity.

  Then a thought occurs to him. ‘There is one thing they all have in common,’ he says. Holding the shoes in his hands, he continues: ‘Wherever there’s a wall, people will try to get over it.’ Then he laughs. ‘Or under it.’

  What They Did Next

  Piers Anderton left NBC in 1964 and worked for two other broadcasters (ABC and KNBC) before leaving journalism in 1971 and moving to Sussex, England. He died of cancer in 2004.

  Reuven Frank became president of NBC in 1968, serving for two terms. The Tunnel was his proudest achievement. It won three Emmys at the 1963 awards, including the most coveted award, Program of the Year, never before (or since) won by a news organisation. On stage at the award ceremony, Reuven Frank addressed the 50 million TV viewers, criticising the State Department for interfering with the film, before dedicating the awards to the tunnellers. In a New York Times obituary after his death in 2006, Reuven Frank was described as a ‘founding father of broadcast journalism’.

  Joan Glenn continued working for the Girrmann Group as an escape-helper, even after the American Embassy in West Berlin called her in to warn her that the Stasi were on to her. After Joan eventually left West Berlin’s escape network, she remained in West Germany, working as an occasional translator.

  Hasso Herschel dug more tunnels – some were betrayed by spies, others succeeded. Along with another digger, Burkhart Veigel, Hasso invented a new escape scheme, sneaking thousands across the border, hidden in a Cadillac. Hasso went on to run clubs and restaurants, and now lives on a sheep farm just outside Berlin.

  Erich Honecker, leader of East Germany when the Wall fell, was arrested in 1990 on suspicion of corruption and high treason. While on remand, Honecker fled to Moscow but two years later he was extradited to Berlin to face trial. The trial was suspended due to Honecker’s terminal liver cancer and he died in Chile in 1994.

  President Kennedy was shot five months after his visit to West Berlin by an assassin in Dallas, Texas. Tens of thousands of West Berliners returned to the square at City Hall, holding torches as they mourned Kennedy’s death. Though the Wall outlived Kennedy and five other American presidents, none of his successors ever backed away from Kennedy’s promise in his speech in Berlin to stand by the city, and Khrushchev never meddled again in West Berlin.

  Uli Pfeiffer helped dig three other tunnels, though none succeeded. In the late sixties, he drove across Africa with Hasso Herschel in a Land Rover and when he returned to Germany, Uli set up his own engineering company. After his girlfriend, Christine, was released from prison, she was forced to become a Stasi informant, though, unlike Siegfried Uhse, Christine never gave the Stasi information they could use, and two years later the Stasi dropped her. Christine married and had children, as did Uli. They met on 9 November 1989, and ate dinner together, a few hours before the Wall fell. Widowed in 2015, Uli lives in West Berlin, and now and then he still sees Christine.

  Evi Rudolph worked as a librarian until she retired in 1992. When East Berliners were finally allowed to visit family and friends in West Berlin in 1972, Evi applied for a permit so that she could see her grandparents. By then, her grandfather had died and her grandmother had dementia and no longer recognised her. Her daughter, Annet, became a teacher and has two sons.

  Joachim Rudolph finished his degree in communications engineering in 1971, despite losing so much study time to the tunnel. After university, he worked as a sound man with the Dehmel brothers, then became a maths and physics teacher and taught in a school in Nigeria. In 2012 he was given one of Germany’s most prestigious awards, the Federal Cross of Merit, for his bravery in digging the tunnel. Joachim lives in Berlin with his wife, Evi.

  Wolf Schroedter helped dig more tunnels using some of the NBC money. He abandoned one after he heard noises underground and realised the Stasi were digging towards his tunnel to cut it off. Wolf lives in the middle of a forest, just outside Berlin, with his wife and a beautiful Rhodesian ridgeback.

  Conrad Schumann, the border guard who leapt to West Berlin over the barbed wire, the subject of that famous photograph, married and worked in a car factory in West Germany. After the Wall fell, Schumann visited his family in East Germany, where he discovered that many thought he was a traitor. Depressed and turning to alcohol, Conrad Schumann hanged himself.

  Ellen Sesta wrote a book about her involvement in Tunnel 29 called Der Tunnel in die Freiheit (The Tunnel to Freedom). It was published shortly after Mimmo died.

  Luigi Spina and Mimmo Sesta flew to Paris, Rome, Vienna and Zurich, selling photographs and footage of the escape to magazines and broadcasters. Mimmo used some of the money to fund his wedding to Ellen at the end of 1963. Mimmo Sesta died of a heart attack in 2002.

  Renate and Wolfdieter Sternheimer remained separated by the Wall for a year after Wolfdieter’s release from prison, deciding it was too risky to attempt another escape. Wolfdieter visited Renate in East Berlin at weekends,
but they never felt safe and were convinced that Renate’s flat was bugged. One night, Renate told Wolfdieter they should split up; he should find someone in West Berlin to be with. But, secretly, Wolfdieter had enlisted the help of lawyers to negotiate Renate’s release from East Berlin. In September 1965, Renate crossed the border at Friedrichstrasse with Wolfdieter and they married a few years later. Every year, on 8 August, the day they were arrested, Wolfdieter and Renate eat at a restaurant and celebrate their life together, their two beautiful sons, and the fact that they didn’t let the Stasi destroy their lives. At the end of the night, they raise their glasses and say: ‘Ätsch!’ (‘Up Yours!’)

  Claus Stürmer wanted to help dig more tunnels, but his wife, Inge, said no more. Enough drama.

  Siegfried Uhse never worked for the Stasi again after that meeting in 1977. Very little is known about Siegfried after he stopped working for the Stasi. Reports suggest that he died in 2007 from liver disease in Thailand.

  Joachim and Evi’s wedding day, June 7, 1971.

  Joachim and Evi in their apartment in Berlin, standing beneath the original ceramic number 7 from Schonholzer Strasse.

  Interviewing Joachim Rudolph at his apartment in November 2018.

  The shoes that Joachim rescued from the tunnel, belonging to Annet, his future step-daughter. You can still see traces of mud from the tunnel on the soles.

  Renate and Wolfdieter Sternheimer holding a photo from their wedding day in January 1966.

  Number 7 Schönholzer Strasse. To the left of the entrance, a plaque commemorates Tunnel 29.

  It reads, ‘In the basement of this house ended a 135-metre-long tunnel, which was dug from West Berlin, through which 29 people on the 14th and 15 September 1962 succeeded in escaping to the West. Dug by brave men, who chose this dangerous way so they could hold their wives, children and loved ones in their arms, this [tunnel] achieved worldwide fame as “Tunnel 29”. In the area of Bernauer Strasse at least twelve tunnels were started, of which only three were successful. The other projects failed – mostly after being betrayed. These escape tunnels demonstrate the despair people had after the building of the Berlin Wall and their longing to find, across the inhumane border, a way to freedom.’

  Notes

  FOREWORD

  Over seventy countries: This figure comes from Elisabeth Vallet, Director of the Center for Geopolitical Studies, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM).

  The first thing: Author interview with Joachim Rudolph.

  CHAPTER 1

  Joachim pulls his: Author interview with Joachim Rudolph.

  ‘Das Ministerium des’: Recording of the announcement by the GDR Interior Ministry about the closure of the sector border, 13 August 1961. Source: The German Broadcasting Archive (Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv).

  ‘Wollankstrasse, Bornholmer’: Ibid.

  CHAPTER 2

  Joachim wakes to: Author interview with Joachim Rudolph.

  Six million soldiers: Beevor, Berlin, 11.

  Millions of refugees: In Berlin, Anthony Beevor says that around 8.5 million Germans fled their homes in the East between 12 January and mid-February 1945.

  CHAPTER 3

  They’d arrived back: Author interview with Joachim Rudolph.

  Red Cross: Beevor, Berlin, 339.

  Raping over a hundred thousand: Beevor, Berlin, 410.

  Unearthed by Soviet soldiers: Richie, Faust’s Metropolis, 594.

  CHAPTER 4

  Coating him in: Author interview with Joachim Rudolph.

  Prisoner-of-war camps: Epstein, The Last Revolutionaries: German Communists and Their Century, 83.

  Known as socialists: Richie, Faust’s Metropolis, 620.

  ‘It has to look democratic’: Cited by Wolfgang Leonhard, one of the ten German Communists who returned with Ulbricht in an interview with Der Spiegel, 18 April 2005; https://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-40077646.html.

  CHAPTER 5

  ‘Get over here!’: Author interview with Joachim Rudolph.

  ‘Beautiful horses’: Quoted in Kempe, Berlin 1961, 109.

  A hundred and fifty thousand people to Bautzen: Taylor, The Berlin Wall, 47.

  ‘Hurrah! We’re still alive’: Richie, Faust’s Metropolis, 672.

  CHAPTER 6

  ‘High on the Yellow Wagon’: Author interview with Joachim Rudolph.

  One of the most powerful weapons: General Clay, quoted in Richie, Faust’s Metropolis, 669.

  CHAPTER 7

  Joachim and his friends: Author interview with Joachim Rudolph.

  ‘Brothers, to the sun’: Richie, Faust’s Metropolis, 684.

  CHAPTER 8

  Joachim is on the train: Author interview with Joachim Rudolph.

  ‘Tausend kleine dinge’: Jampol, The East German Handbook, 147.

  CHAPTER 9

  Closely guarded secret: Koehler, Stasi, 49.

  Thousands of helium balloons: Koehler, Stasi, 130. KgU stands for Kampfgruppe gegen Unmenschlichkeit.

  His police would come: As the Stasi put it: ‘The Ministry of State Security is entrusted with the task of preventing or throttling at the earliest stages – using whatever means and methods may be necessary – all attempts to delay or hinder the victory of socialism.’ Stasi guidelines from 1958, cited in Fulbrook, Anatomy of a Dictatorship, 47.

  Hundekeller: Koehler, Stasi, 108.

  Sixteen thousand died: Koehler, Stasi, 109.

  330,000 people left: Hertle, The Berlin Wall Story, 34.

  ‘Failed to spot…’: ‘Universal Appeal’, Time, 28 July 1961.

  CHAPTER 10

  Open sealed envelopes: Taylor, The Berlin Wall, 161.

  Hosting a garden party: Chronik der Mauer website.

  Soldiers skulking: Taylor, The Berlin Wall, 160.

  12,000 members: Kempe, Berlin 1961, 326.

  Bought secretly: Kempe, Berlin 1961, 324.

  Twenty-seven-mile-long internal border: Kempe, Berlin 1961, 325.

  CHAPTER 11

  ‘That is all over now’: Robert Lochner interview recorded in the US National Archives.

  Ulbricht! Murderer!: Taylor, The Berlin Wall, 183.

  CHAPTER 13

  800 people escaped: Richie, Faust’s Metropolis, 720.

  Sixty-seven more: Taylor, The Berlin Wall, 265.

  CHAPTER 14

  350,000 Soviet soldiers: They were stationed in East Germany and in other parts of Soviet territory nearby. Kempe, Berlin 1961, 56.

  Sidle up to European diplomats: Financial Times, 25 August 1991, IX.

  ‘Like sausages on an assembly line: Taylor, The Berlin Wall, 116.

  ‘Chronic opportunist’: Wedge, ‘Khrushchev at a Distance: A Study of Public Personality’, Society 5, 24–28 (1968).

  ‘Went berserk’: O’Donnell, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye, 295.

  Wasn’t going to be constrained: Smyser, Kennedy and the Berlin Wall, 67.

  ‘Roughest thing in my life’: Harrison, After the Berlin Wall, 152.

  Wept on his brother Bobby’s shoulder: Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot, 383.

  Doodle the word ‘Berlin’: O’Donnell, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye, 306.

  ‘I think they have the right’: Reeves, President Kennedy: Profile of Power, 204.

  ‘A wall is a hell of’: Smyser, Kennedy and the Berlin Wall, 106.

  ‘Why,’ President Kennedy asks: Ausland and Richardson, ‘Crisis Management: Berlin, Cyprus, Laos’, Foreign Affairs 44 (2 January 1966), 301.

  ‘Thousands of concrete slabs’: Taylor, The Berlin Wall, 241.

  ‘Look how slowly I’m working’: As recounted by US Army First Lieutenant Vern Pike, quoted in Kempe, Berlin 1961, 473.

  Walter Ulbricht had broken: The agreement stipulated that East Germany was not allowed to restrict movement in Berlin. By building the barbed-wire fence, Ulbricht had done just that.

  ‘We could have moved’: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Vol. XIV, Berlin Crisis, 1961–2, Doc. 181, Letter from the President’s Specia
l Representative in Berlin (Clay) to President Kennedy, Berlin, 18 October 1961.

  ‘Band of stonemasons’: quoted in “Die Mauer”, New Yorker article, 20 October 1962.

  CHAPTER 15

  Wasn’t allowed to study: Author interview with Joachim Rudolph.

  The party sent Grenzgänger: Taylor, The Berlin Wall, 191.

  Quadrupled to 7,200: Dennis, The Rise and Fall of the German Democratic Republic 1945–1990, 102.

  ‘Anti-fascist protection barrier’: Walter Ulbricht, Neues Deutschland, 28 August 1961.

  The Black Channel: The Black Channel ran on East German TV every week for thirty years.

  CHAPTER 16

  Decided to escape: Author interview with Joachim Rudolph.