Deep underground near Halberstadt, tons of GDR (German Democratic Republic; often called East Germany) banknotes were stored. The film “Zwei zu Eins” (Two to One) tells the story of three friends who find the money in the summer of 1990. What happened to the millions?
Halberstadt in the summer of 1990. Maren, Robert, and Volker have known each other since childhood. By chance, they find millions of GDR banknotes in an old shaft—a huge pile of money stored there to rot. While this incredible story in the film “Zwei zu Eins” (Two to One) sounds fictional, it is based on real events.
GDR banknotes intended to rot
With reunification, the Deutsche Mark replaced the GDR currency in citizens’ wallets and accounts. As of July 1, 1990, GDR banknotes were no longer legal tender. The Staatsbank Berlin collected the banknotes and stored them in an underground facility near Halberstadt. They were sealed and covered, with the expectation that they would rot, a 1992 expert report confirmed this.
But that didn’t happen, according to Christine Volk, spokesperson for the KfW Bank, who has firsthand knowledge. “Over 600 million individual notes were stored down there. Three thousand tons of cash. Sixty meters underground in a labyrinthine tunnel system, kilometers long. Huge and overgrown.”
The Halberstadt treasure attracted fortune hunters
This so-called Halberstadt treasure didn’t remain undiscovered—unlike in the film, it took about ten years from the time of storage until the tunnels were broken into. In 2001, KfW Bank received information that banknotes from the tunnel were circulating, as Volk explained on tagesschau24’s Update Wirtschaft: “These were the 200 and 500 notes, which were never in circulation in the GDR, so they couldn’t have been found in someone’s attic.”
KfW Bank as legal successor to the GDR State Bank
How did KfW, the federal development bank, become involved with GDR money? Though not part of the currency transition, KfW became the legal successor to the Staatsbank Berlin in 1994 after its merger, and thus the owner of the buried notes. Volk, who stood in the shaft among the GDR notes in the early 2000s, recounts this responsibility.
“We found a hole in the concrete wall of one of these deep tunnels, indicating a forced entry, and we had to decide whether to leave the money there,” Volk says. From KfW’s perspective, the risk was too high “that someone might get hurt or worse during another break-in attempt.”
298 truckloads of GDR money were destroyed
In March 2002, KfW began disposing of the GDR money at the underground facility in Halberstadt. After fully breaking through the tunnel walls, the sand- and gravel-mixed money was removed with wheel loaders from the 300-meter-long tunnels. Underground, the notes were separated from sand and gravel in a drum screen and loaded into 33-cubic-meter containers. In total, 298 truckloads of GDR banknotes were transported to the BKB Buschhaus waste incineration plant and finally destroyed.
