The Franzke brothers' first tunnel in the Heidelberger Straße is betrayed

After the Wall was built, the brothers Boris and Eduard Franzke were cut off from their family. Their mother and a sister lived in Pankow, and Eduard's wife and two children were in Prenzlauer Berg. Their first tunnel project, in the Wollankstraße, failed in January 1962. The brothers then moved to the Heidelberger Straße between Neukölln and Treptow, where the houses on the two sides of the border stood only 15 to 25 metres apart.

In February 1962 they and a third man began digging from a shed on the West Berlin plot between Heidelberger Straße 26 and 27. The tunnel was meant to come up in an empty garage on the eastern side, at Heidelberger Straße 83. They dug two metres down and then worked forwards for almost three weeks, storing the sand in the shed.

The escape was set for 22 February. Before breaking through, the diggers realised they had miscalculated and would come up just behind the barbed wire, not in the garage. At the same time the Stasi had been tipped off. The breakthrough was never made, according to the TF-Mapping survey; neukoellner.net, also from Boris Franzke's account, says they did break through at 22 metres, came up in the lit death strip, closed the hole and dug on to no. 83 before the tunnel was betrayed. The relatives waiting in the East were arrested, among them Boris's mother, one of his brothers, Eduard's wife, Boris's fiancée Ingrid and several friends.

The brothers filled in the tunnel and its entrance. Boris Franzke later said the project had been betrayed 'by someone from East Berlin'. The brothers kept on digging. Boris Franzke was later involved in the Kleinmachnow tunnel of November 1962 and, in April 1963, in a successful tunnel from Heidelberger Straße 35.