8x11mm is the film format for the Minox miniature camera, which was built in various models for 75 years until 2012. The Minox C was launched in 1969 as the new top model, one of the first cameras with electronic automatic exposure. It is also known as the agent’s camera.
In the summer of 2022, I bought one of these cameras on the Internet, as film has been available again for some time and you can also have it developed. Shortly afterwards, an article in the newspaper drew my attention to the alternative headquarters of the NRW state government in the Eifel region.
This is a bunker built during the Cold War, which was intended to enable the state government to manage civil defense in NRW in the event of a nuclear war. It was abandoned in the early 1990s, has been privately owned since 1997 and now serves as a documentation site. The bunker can be visited on a guided tour.
I booked a photo day a short time later. During this tour, which shows the bunker as part of a gripping scenario and encourages visitors to discover it and operate the technology themselves in order to experience the tension under which the officials of the NRW state government would have had to work if the bunker had been used.
After the lunch break in the bunker’s dining room, where hard-boiled eggs, bockwurst and filter coffee were served, the visitors, a mixture of random tourists, history buffs and professionally equipped bunker tour guides, were able to enjoy the bunker’s history.
