Prüm explosion

On 15 July 1949 an ammunition depot exploded on the hill of Kalvarienberg in the Eifel mountains, in western Germany near the border with Luxembourg.

When the Siegfried Line (in German the Westwall) was built in 1939, a standby bunker was constructed for the Wehrmacht inside the Kalvarienberg.

After the Second World War, French troops dumped 500 tons of ammunition there, which was supposed to be used to blow up the fortifications of the Siegfried Line.

At the end of the 1990s, the Minister of Defence Rudolf Scharping and the French National Archives worked jointly to try to find an explanation, but without success.

In 1979, a seven-metre-high commemorative cross, made of basalt and created by artist, Johann Baptist Lenz from Oberkail, was erected on the Kalvarienberg in remembrance of the explosion.