"Contemporary witnesses in conversation" - Anita Moeller

The tunnel, which Anita Moeller's older brother Hasso Herschel played a key role in planning and building, was around 130 meters long and led from the cellar of Bernauer Straße 78 (West Berlin) to the cellar of Schönholzer Straße 7 (East Berlin).


She says about the reasons for her escape: "We were locked up. We couldn't read the books, listen to the music or watch the movies we wanted to. We weren't allowed to travel, we were afraid of being locked up if we said the right things to the wrong people. My brother had spent years in GDR prisons just because he had bought a few things in East Berlin as a student and sold them in West Berlin. I didn't want my child to grow up in that state."


Anita Moeller was born in Dresden on February 18, 1940. Bombed out, the family fled to Austria in 1945 and returned to Dresden in 1948. daughter Astrid was born in 1961. After fleeing the GDR, she lived with her husband and daughter in Trier from 1963 to 1967, where their second daughter Miriam was born in 1967. From 1968 to 1971, the family lived in what is now Namibia. After returning to Germany, Anita Moeller studied architecture at the Technical University of Berlin and worked as a production designer on various TV productions from 1980 to 2007. She has been retired since 2007 and lives in Berlin.


Location: Brunnenstraße 142, 10115 Berlin (near Bernauer Straße subway station)


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