If the bombs had fallen then, there would not have been much left to survive: a little dry food, a few canisters of water and 0.8 square meters per person in their own bunker, four meters below ground. Completely unimaginable today. But when the West and the Soviet Union threatened total mutual annihilation 40 years ago, nuclear war and a bunker as a last resort were not unrealistic future scenarios.
“There was that SS-20 and SS-21the missile systems on the side of the Russians and the pershing and cruise missiles on that of the Americans, they were facing each other,” says cameraman Michael Wulfes at a meeting in a café in Schwabing. “Of course you had the feeling that something could accidentally go wrong.” Together with director Christian Weisenborn, he wanted shoot a film in the summer of 1983 about the bunkers that were dug in gardens and under terraced houses to protect against nuclear missiles.
Weisenborn is the son of Günther Weisenborn, a writer and resistance fighter in the Third Reich. In the 1970s, Christian worked on Werner Herzog’s “Everyone for Himself and God Against All” about Kaspar Hauser. Perhaps also because of his own story, Weisenborn was not only concerned with the trend towards built-in bunkers at the time, but also with the mentality behind the phenomenon, this future for which one was meticulously preparing and which hopefully would never come about. “The fear was palpable, it had escalated since the Second World War,” he says in the Schwabing café.
At the time, two families from Dachau also wanted to know for sure: What would it be like if the bombs fell? The police teacher Herbert Kirner not only had a bunker built in his basement, he also wanted to practice with the neighbors, the Jacob family, for emergencies: ten people in an area of 8.5 square meters, three and a half days, provided only with what was in the Bunker can store. After a day and a half, a power outage is simulated. Everything as real as possible. What if the bombs are raining down outside, everything is irradiated, chemical weapons are used or some other catastrophe occurs?
Weisenborn and Wulfes were also in the bunker. They made a film about the self-experiment, which was shown at the Hofer Filmtage in autumn 1983; an abridged version was shown on ARD. Then the film fell into oblivion, as did the bunker at the latest with the end of the Cold War. Until Russia attacked Ukraine last year and the Kremlin threatened, not explicitly but unequivocally, to use its nuclear weapons.
“I thought about it again for the first time when the Ukraine war started,” says Thomas Jacob, who was there in the bunker at the age of eleven, a few days after the meeting in Schwabing in a living room in Dachau. Weisenborn and Wulfes show the film to the families who took part in the bunker experiment at the time. Not all are still alive, Kirner, who had the bunker built, has died in the meantime. The bunker also still exists in a neighboring house, but is now a storage room. “That might be an attraction for Airbnb,” jokes Josef Jacob, Thomas’s father.
Colorful sleeping bags, wine and a deck of cards: nuclear war as a sleepover.
(Photo: Nanuk FIlmproduktion/Christian Weisenborn)
There is something slightly bizarre about it: the two families from back then watch their 40-year-old selves drag strangely patterned sleeping bags into the bunker and set up a camping toilet in the vestibule. The mood is initially good, a bottle of wine is opened in the bunker and a deck of cards is unpacked. Nuclear war, but as a sleepover. There is also a lot of laughter in the Dachau living room, about the old self, but also a little about this time that was rehearsing for a future that never came. At least not until now.
Reunion after 40 years: (from left) the filmmakers Christian Weisenborn and Michael Wulfes and father Josef Jacob, Gabriele Kirner, now Stelz, Sieglinde Kirner, now 90 years old, Jürgen Jacob (then 13), mother Irene Jacob and Thomas Jacob ( then 11).
(Photo: Doro Hofmann)
40 years ago the war was a cold one, today bombs are really falling in Ukraine, less than a two-hour flight to the east. “The Ukraine war shows that there really is no such thing as security,” says Irene Jacob, who was in the bunker as a young woman. “Where would I hide? In Bachmut or Mariupol, the bunker wouldn’t help me because at some point I have to get out again.”
In an emergency, the wine bottle would probably not have been the first thing to be cut open in the bunker, as everyone who took part in the experiment realized very quickly. Because what if everyone doesn’t make it down to the basement in time? What if you have to leave a family member outside? How many days will food and water last? How long can you last ten people in the tiny room? Can you just rebuild the destroyed city outside? And what if someone dies in the bunker? “The answers got more and more frightening as we pushed the thought process together,” says cameraman Wulfes. Would the shelter really be the salvation from the atomic inferno? Or just a delayed death, buried alive if you will? “Of course, the question arises as to the point of such a bunker,” says Irene Jacob. In the film, the residents of the bunker soon realize that only disarmament can offer real security. Some want to become active in the peace movement.
With the slowly trickling realization of the potential seriousness of the situation, the anxiety also increases. It gets very hot in the bunker after just one day. There is a pump with a filter for the air supply, but this has to be operated with a hand crank because of the simulated power failure. Nevertheless, it’s almost 30 degrees Celsius in the small room and the humidity is high. Weisenborn talks about the damp sleeping bags.
On the second day, a power failure is simulated: the pump for the air supply has to be operated with the hand crank (scene from “From the End of Time”).
(Photo: Nanuk FIlmproduktion/Christian Weisenborn)
It has also become very quiet in the living room in Dachau. What happened if. If there was really war out there, if you really had to go to the bunker. Even the experiment is difficult to imagine today. “I wouldn’t go down there again,” says Sieglinde Kirner. “We were all changed the next day,” adds Irene Jacob. “There was such a tension, everyone was careful what they said.” Everyone agrees: Today, people would not hide in the basement, but try to flee.
The camera in the film keeps showing the clock on the wall and the date. Another day in the bunker, another twelve hours. Ten people crammed together in the narrow space, with dry food, the humid heat and the constant roar of the air pump. And four meters further up, one has to imagine, there is war. Three more hours. Still an hour. And when the door finally opens again, it’s still there, the world outside. Was just a test.
From the end of time, on May 25, 7 p.m., in the Munich Film Museum