Heinrich-Heine Straße

Time for another postcard from the divided Berlin. Today we'll take a trip back to Heinrich-Heine Straße. This street goes from U-Bahn-stations Moritzplatz and Heinrich-Heine Straße.

The Heinrich-Heine border crossing

Above you can see the photo of this brutal barrier between west and east Berlin. The photo was taken heading towards the eastern part. It must have been harsh and pretty strange to live in the houses on the picture, so close to the wall, the fences and all the barbed wire. 

The border crossing at Heinrich-Heine Straße was one of the largest ones. The reason was that this crossing was used for inspection of goods and postal transports between the two halves of Berlin. It was also possible for West German citizens to enter East Berlin through this crossing.

Below you can see the location of the border crossing. The red line is the stretch of the outer wall, the one towards West Berlin. The purple box shows the location of the Heinrich-Heine-Straße border crossing.

Visa Berlin Wall on a larger map

More about this crossing can be read at www.berlin.de. As you can read there three men tried to flee to West Berlin through this crossing on 18 April 1962. They tried to crash through the checkpoint barriers with a truck. The checkpoint guards opened fire and hit all three. The driver, Klaus Brüske, managed to steer the truck into western territory but died on site due to his injuries. The other two had serious injuries but survived.

Extra slalom barriers were added to the checkpoint to prevent this kind of escapes, but still two men from West Berlin and two women from East Berlin made a similar attempt on 26 December 1965. The women was found hidden in the car. The driver, the 27-year-old Heinz Schöneberger, tried to escape but was shot to death by the East German guards. The three others were arrested.

The back side of the card is unfortunately unwritten.

Below you can see the same place today. The tall trees effectively block the view of the houses that can be seen to the right on the postcard. If you navigate in the street-view-map, some distance further ahead on Heinrich-Heine Straße, you will see the same houses though, today with a little bit more discrete facade colors. The other side of the road, now used to sell cars, was part of the checkpoint. The construction site that can be seen on the right side of the postcard ended up as a large white complex.


Visa Berlin Wall on a larger map