Berliner Unterwelten

Berliner Unterwelten: Bunkers and Escape Tunnels as an Extracurricular Learning Site

The inconspicuous entrance is located at Gesundbrunnen station, from there, steep stairs lead down to the air-raid shelter beneath the subway station. Almost fifty rooms on three floors have been preserved because an explosion after the war would have endangered the subway tunnel. The association only rediscovered the facility in 1998.

Berliner Unterwelten e.V. was founded in 1997. It now manages fourteen predominantly underground sites and has around 580 members. For its work on the city’s architectural heritage, the association received the Silver Hemisphere in 2006, Germany’s highest award for monument preservation, and welcomed its one millionth guest in November 2011. In addition to guided tours, seminars for school classes on National Socialism, civil defense, and escape are part of the program.

Guided Tours for School Classes into the Berlin Underground

The “Dark Worlds” tour through the bunker complex lasts approximately 90 minutes and is booked for groups of no more than 25 people. For older students, the escape tunnel tour at Brunnenstraße 141 is worthwhile. There, an approximately thirty-meter-long visitor tunnel leads nine meters below the surface to the only preserved original escape tunnel from 1970 and 1971. More than 75 escape tunnels are known in Berlin, but only 19 of them were successful.

A group tour costs a flat rate of 260 Euros for school classes. The tours are recommended from the eighth grade, the escape tunnel variant from the tenth grade; children under seven years are excluded. Three points are important for planning: The facility is not barrier-free, there are no visitor toilets on site, and sturdy closed footwear is mandatory. Tour buses can be parked on Behmstraße along the green area at Blochplatz.