"Der Tunnel" is an intense made-for-German-TV movie about the building of the Berlin Wall and the determination of some refugees (escapees) to build their own infrastructure underneath that wall. This team of refugees and others with an interest in helping East Berliners escape into West Berlin built a tunnel and (spoiler in white type) 29 people found their freedom as a result. But not without peril and heartbreak.
It's one thing to restrict immigration into a nation but it's something else entirely for a government to turn its citizens into virtual prisoners.
I was in junior high when the Wall was built and I remember the impact of Peter Fechter's murder on August 17, 1962. Peter was an 18-year-old construction worker who attempted to cross the Wall and was shot by East Berlin guards. It took him about an hour to die. Nobody came to his aid. "Der Tunnel" brought that misery to mind, since it depicts something very similar. I had this image of a bloody arm and barbed wire on the cover of TIME, with a lot of gray. Yes, there was such a cover.
"Der Tunnel" also put me in mind of a column I wrote for the weekly newspaper I edited in the late 1980s. The newspaper's focus was strictly within the county and I never wrote about "outside" issues. But the fall of the Berlin Wall and the re-opening of Eastern Europe struck a nerve. It was the issue before Christmas and I decided at about 10:30 on the Monday night before the paper was put to bed to use the structure of Luke 2 as the format for my "Hartline." I had to go home to get a Bible and then I sat at the Compugraphic machine and did my thing. Note the dropped first letter. It was a big deal when I taught myself how to do that! (Click on the column for a readable version.)
It's one thing to restrict immigration into a nation but it's something else entirely for a government to turn its citizens into virtual prisoners.
I was in junior high when the Wall was built and I remember the impact of Peter Fechter's murder on August 17, 1962. Peter was an 18-year-old construction worker who attempted to cross the Wall and was shot by East Berlin guards. It took him about an hour to die. Nobody came to his aid. "Der Tunnel" brought that misery to mind, since it depicts something very similar. I had this image of a bloody arm and barbed wire on the cover of TIME, with a lot of gray. Yes, there was such a cover.
"Der Tunnel" also put me in mind of a column I wrote for the weekly newspaper I edited in the late 1980s. The newspaper's focus was strictly within the county and I never wrote about "outside" issues. But the fall of the Berlin Wall and the re-opening of Eastern Europe struck a nerve. It was the issue before Christmas and I decided at about 10:30 on the Monday night before the paper was put to bed to use the structure of Luke 2 as the format for my "Hartline." I had to go home to get a Bible and then I sat at the Compugraphic machine and did my thing. Note the dropped first letter. It was a big deal when I taught myself how to do that! (Click on the column for a readable version.)
