Tunnel über der Spree was a German literary society based in Berlin, founded on 3 December 1827 by Moritz Gottlieb Saphir.
He invited the actors Friedrich Wilhelm Lemm and Ludwig Schneider to his home and founded a "Sunday Society" to compete with it.
Theodor Fontane, an important source of information on the society, once remarked that Saphir's only real intention was to create a kind of personal bodyguard for himself.
Members met on Sunday afternoons in a cafe near St Hedwig's Cathedral in Unter den Linden, and presented their most recent unpublished creative efforts—usually poems, but occasionally music or even paintings.
Although the purpose of the pseudonym was to help erase class distinctions, its membership consisted almost entirely of officers, aristocrats, and professional men: no women were permitted at meetings, and its formalities made its atmosphere very different from that of the salons which had preceded it.