When Rügen got a new ferry port with Mukran

On October 2, 1986, the Sassnitz-Mukran ferry port in the northeast of the island of Rügen began operations. He should connect the GDR and the Soviet Union more closely. But with the end of the GDR, the port also had to reinvent itself.

by Henning Strüber

With the Mukran-Klaipėda ferry connection, the prestige project established a direct sea connection between the socialist sister states of the GDR and the Soviet Union from 1986. Such a system saved millions in transit fees for the slow rail transport through Poland. And since the Solidarność movement there had grown stronger, Moscow and East Berlin had increasingly had doubts about the reliability of their ally. Until the end of the 1980s, the loading bridges in Mukran were initially very busy. But the history of Mukraner Hafen is so shaped by the GDR, its decline and the political upheavals at the end of the 20th century that the face of the port has also changed with them.

A fishing village becomes a major construction site

In 2016, on the occasion of the 30th port birthday, the Stralsund resident Jürgen Grieger recalled how things started in 1982 in an interview with the NDR. At that time, Grieger was employed in the construction assembly combine in Greifswald. He helped build the nuclear power plant in Lubmin and was on major construction sites in Rostock's overseas port. In Mukran, Grieger was responsible for the supply of building materials. And the small fishing village turned into a gigantic construction site:the shore was leveled, the docks were dredged, piers were laid, buildings were erected, and there was even a fire brigade.

"At the peak, we worked with 3,200 employees in Mukran," says Grieger. The workers were brought in by 30 buses and eight trains every day. The ferry port was supposed to be put into operation as early as October 1986. "That was a big challenge." Two hard winters gave the construction crews a hard time, there was always a lack of cement, "sometimes the construction vehicles couldn't be refueled because there was no diesel."

Mukran becomes a construction site for "German-Soviet friendship"

On Sundays, he and his three sons drove past the checkpoint to the construction site and threw stones at the silo containers, says Grieger - to check whether there was enough cement in the supply. "We didn't have a level indicator." But despite all the hardships, the workers' collective made up of NVA soldiers, FDJ members, Soviet specialists and "spade soldiers" from Prora - it was later awarded the honorary title "Major construction site of German-Soviet friendship" - was finished on time:On The "Mukran" ferry docked in the new ferry terminal for the first time on October 2, 1986. "Proof of the power of socialism", as the SED party newspaper "Neues Deutschland" hailed it. The port cost two billion marks - and provided work for 2,500 people.

From Rügen to Klaipėda and back in 48 hours

In fact, the line from Rügen to Klaipėda (now Lithuania) was considered one of the most powerful in the world in the late 1980s. This was ensured not least by the five 190 meter long railway ferries specially built at the Mathias-Thesen shipyard in Wismar - they are the largest ever made in the GDR. They could transport 103 freight cars, needed only 48 hours for the return trip and were able to unload the load quickly. The GDR mainly supplied machines, furniture and paper. On the other hand, when sailing west, the ships were often loaded with iron, fertilizer and wood.

However, the military presence of the Soviet Army in the GDR, which had grown to around 400,000 soldiers and tens of thousands of tanks, guns, aircraft and rockets, provided the largest volume of freight. The connection would also be a trump card in the event of war:below deck there were secret troop transport rooms for 300 soldiers, and the ferries had a double-hulled hull to protect against torpedoes. There is also speculation about the transport of nuclear missiles.

The "Westernmost station of the Trans-Siberian Railway"

Three million tons of goods were brought to the GDR per year, but transhipment to the Soviet Union remained below that. At the heart of the ferry port were the facilities for changing the gauge and axles of the freight wagons from the European standard gauge to the Soviet broad-gauge rail network, which earned Mukran the nickname "the westernmost stop on the Trans-Siberian railway". Around 100 kilometers of tracks were laid on the huge area in order to be able to transport such quantities of goods onward. But even before the ferry port reached its target strength, everything changed with the reunification of 1989 and the political upheavals. The "Wismar", planned as the sixth ferry, was not even built.

Deduction, downturn and agent stories

In the early 1990s, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the GDR once again caused a boom in Mukran. A large part of the armed forces and their personnel set out from Mukran for their old homeland and an uncertain future. It was probably the highest volume of transport that the ferry port had to deal with to date. Many an agent story about the port at the extreme tip of the GDR is also entwined from this time. As early as the 1980s, agents of the western military mission - under the suspicious eyes of the numerous Stasi employees stationed there - paid spy visits to the area mysteriously hidden behind high fences.

But even after reunification, the floppy hats still romped around there, according to the descriptions of former BND agent Norbert Juretzko. Accordingly, Juretzko and Co. should find out more about alleged nuclear warheads that were shipped to Russia via Mukran. To do this, the West agents had to install a box with highly sensitive sensors for analyzing the weapon technology in the track bed under the wagons with the secret cargo. But how do you get hold of the well-guarded and shielded transports? According to Juretzko's reports, the coup was achieved with the help of a signalman in Samtens, who brought the mysterious train to an unscheduled stop signal - right above the spy box.

Broken Dream of the Gate to the East

In the years that followed, the importance of the largest German railway ferry port on the Baltic Sea steadily decreased. Rail transport to Russia and the Baltic States decreased. Although a new ferry terminal was built in 1995 to relieve the city port of Sassnitz, which was bursting at the seams, when it came to transporting passengers to Scandinavia, competition was growing and shipping companies relocated their routes to other ports such as Stena Line to Rostock. The handling of goods and passengers shrank by more than half. The dream of a gateway to the east and to Scandinavia was shattered for the time being.

Offshore boom on the Baltic coast

But the port reinvented itself. Last but not least, the new name "Mukran Port" stands for this. The energy sector provided the necessary impetus in the 2000s. "The gas pipeline was the first sensation," says Grieger. During the construction of the first Nord Stream pipeline, through which Siberian natural gas flows on the Baltic Sea floor from the Russian Ust-Luga to Lubmin near Greifswald, the ferry port fulfilled an important function as a land base. In Mukran, the pipes for the two more than 1,200-kilometer-long pipelines were coated and shipped in specially constructed plants. Mukran also played an important role in the construction of Nord Stream 2.

For several years, the port has also benefited from the booming offshore business in the Baltic Sea. The assembly of the "Baltic 2" wind farm was carried out from Mukran. Mukran also acted as a hub for the construction of the "Arkona" and "Wikinger" wind farms. The energy company Iberdrola moved a maintenance base to Mukran, other companies settled on the site. Since 2019, Sassnitz-Mukran has also been connected to the "New Silk Road" to China, which quickly gave the port a significant increase in handling. And a deepening of the harbor basin should ensure that even larger cargo ships can call at the port in the future.