Nearly 19 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the nuclear shelter for former East German leaders will be opened for three monthsPRENDEN (Germany) - Visitors flocked to the once top-secret bunker of Erich Honecker and other leaders of former East Germany as it opened to the public last Friday, almost 19 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The huge underground complex northeast of Berlin, close to where Honecker and the former ruling elite of communist East Germany used to live, will be open for three months and then closed for good.
It was built between 1978 and 1983 at the height of the Cold War as a shelter and command centre for the East German National Defence Council in case of nuclear attack.
Honecker visited the bunker only once. 'Contemporary witnesses told us that Honecker was more or less frightened or shocked when he walked through here,' said Mr Sebastian Tenschert, a founder of the Berlin Bunker Network, which helped make the facility accessible.
The complex covers an area slightly smaller than a soccer pitch. The guided tour of the three-storey bunker takes visitors through heavy steel doors and musty hallways past some 300 rooms. The tours are being booked up quickly, he said.
The interest in Honecker's bunker is the latest example of Ostalgie - a nostalgia for the former east. Last year, a communist-style hotel, or Ostel, opened in Berlin with pictures of Honecker on the walls.
Mr Wolfgang Schubert, a member of the former East German government who helped plan the bunker, said the facility had been unknown in western Germany.
It was closed in 1993 and declared a historical building, but intruders repeatedly broke in to hunt for souvenirs.
In October, the bunker will be sealed with a concrete cap intended to make it fully secure.
Reuters
