Klietz, W. Ostseefähren im Kalten Krieg. Geheime Militärtransporte der Sowjetarmee

Wolfgang Klietz presents a vivid documentation of this ferry service during the Cold War, shedding light on the political background as well as the surveillance activities of the secret services and the plans for analogue connections to Lübeck and Kiel.

Between 1982 and 1986, the GDR's largest transport project was realised near Sassnitz on the Baltic Sea island of Rügen: thousands of workers and hundreds of construction soldiers built a four-kilometre-long ferry port with 120 kilometres of tracks in Mukran for two billion GDR marks. Five huge double-decker ferries handled a large part of the freight traffic with the Soviet Union from here. Unnoticed by third parties, dangerous military goods could also be transported across the Baltic Sea during the Cold War. The 190 metre long railway ferries with broad-gauge tracks for more than 100 freight wagons also had secret crew quarters for 300 soldiers inside. Only a few years after the opening, a large number of Soviet troops left the united Germany via the very ferry harbour that had previously been celebrated as a "major construction site of German-Soviet friendship".