Germany’s cold war-era nuclear bunker opens for tourism

COCHEM, Germany – The secret underground cash stash of the West-German Federal Bank is now open to members of the public as a tourism centre.

 Germany’s Fort Knox of the Cold War era was well camouflaged – a couple of unassuming houses in a middle-class neighbourhood of a small town in the far west of the country.

Cash to the value of 15 billion Deutschmarks – at least $8.5 billion at current conversion rates – was stored here in cardboard boxes and sacks for use in the event of an extreme emergency.

Built between 1962 and 1964, in the immediate aftermath of the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis a year later, the underground stash was intended to keep the West German government afloat financially in the event of nuclear war, hyperinflation or a flood of counterfeit money from the Eastern Bloc.

Decades later, the German central bank’s former bunker in the town of Cochem on the Moselle river is open to the public for tours, and is launching a new visitor centre in April.

A modern glass building now towers over the former entrance to the once secret bunker, and as of the start of April, five regular guided tours (€13 per person) have been taking place every day, with additional guided tours available on request every 15 minutes.

The entrance, masked as a double garage, leads down to a depth of 30 metres past metre-thick concrete, through steel doors and locked grilles.

Banknotes stored there featured the familiar Deutschmark designs of the time on the front, but the backs were decorated in geometric shapes and different colours to distinguish them from possible counterfeit notes.

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Germany’s central bank, the Bundesbank, opted for the deep Moselle Valley in the hope that the cache would gain some protection from the shockwave of a nuclear blast. Officials decided to purchase a former doctor’s practice and its surrounding lots, spanning an area of 9,000 square metres.

“When local residents complained about the construction noise, they were told that they would be accommodated here in a standard civil protection bunker in the event of war,” says museum director Petra Reuter.

In the event of emergency, the cash bunker would in fact have been able to keep up to 175 people alive for two weeks. Apart from food and water, it was equipped with a diesel generator for electricity, sand filters to ensure a constant air supply, and radiation decontamination rooms.

Up on ground level, a training centre hosted seminars for banking officials, who also attended parties around the previous owner’s swimming pool, unaware of the billions hidden beneath them.

Every couple of months the cash was counted by a few trusted individuals. The keys to the doors, which weighed several tons each, were kept at the Bundesbank in Frankfurt.

In 1988, a year before the Wall came down, the banknotes were removed for shredding, and a local Cochem bank as bought the vault, installing strongboxes in the vestibule to the bunker.

After it had stood empty for years, a couple, Petra and Manfred Reuter, bought the site in 2014, turning the bunker, which is a protected landmark, into a museum.

They have also converted the houses on the surface into a hotel with 34 beds for tourists exploring Germany’s hilly Moselle region with all of its riverside villages surrounded by vineyards.