3 October 1961 · Driving through
A Tatra crane lorry breaks through at Heinrich-Heine-Straße
Just before the checkpoint a building firm's crane lorry swung into Dresdner Straße, crashed through the border wall between two new blocks and raced into Kreuzberg under machine-pistol fire.
At about 5.53 a.m. on 3 October 1961 a Tatra crane lorry belonging to VEB Volksbau Berlin drove down Heinrich-Heine-Straße towards the control point. Before reaching the barriers it turned into Dresdner Straße, where the police guards could no longer see it.
From Dresdner Straße it drove onto the building site of new blocks of flats and broke through the border wall between the second and third block, about 50 metres from the border line. It then sped along Heinrich-Heine-Straße into West Berlin.
The Volkspolizei guards ran towards it and opened fire. One fired 19 rounds from his machine pistol before it jammed; a second fired five rounds and then had to stop so as not to hit his colleague. The cab windows were shattered, apparently by bullets, but the lorry got away. According to the Stasi, West Berlin police directed it into Oranienstraße, where three people got out; one of them was identified as a driver employed by VEB Volksbau.
Sources
Whose account is this? Drawn from a GDR record and a press report.
GDR records
- Jahrgang 1961: Grenzdurchbruch mit einem Autokran (Berlin-Mitte) – Einzel-Information Nr. 615/61, 3 October 1961Stasi-Unterlagen-Archiv (DDR im Blick)
Press
- Bei einer tollkühnen Flucht … (with dpa photo) (Honnefer Volkszeitung, 1961-10-04, p. 1)Honnefer Volkszeitung, via Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (Zeitungsportal)
Facts checked against the sources: November 2026
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Cite this page
Berlin Experiences, “A Tatra crane lorry breaks through at Heinrich-Heine-Straße”, Berlin Wall Escapes, 2026, https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/tatra-crane-heinrich-heine-strasse-1961/ (accessed [date]).
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