Brothers Sass

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The Sass brothers were two Berlin burglars who achieved great fame during the Weimar Republic .

origin

Franz (born October 24, 1904) and Erich (born April 3, 1906) Sass (both † March 27, 1940) were two of the five sons of the tailor Andreas Sass and the laundress Marie Sass from Berlin-Moabit . They grew up in poor conditions, the family's apartment in the back building at Birkenstrasse 57 was just 40 m². In 1910 the family lived at Havelberger Strasse 16. Already in their youth they came into contact with the youth welfare office and the police because of minor offenses.

"Safe breaker"

In 1926 the brothers decided to turn to the criminal opening of safes . To do this, they used the most modern methods, which are now considered to be prototypical for their “trade” , but were a novelty at the time: opening bank vaults with cutting torches .

After purchasing a cutting torch from the Fernholtz company, they tried their hand at the deposit box of the Deutsche Bank in their native Moabit for the first time in March 1927 . The first attempt failed because the oxygen consumption of the cutting torch, which had not been taken into account, made it impossible for them to breathe in the narrow basement.

A number of further attempts at the Dresdner Bank on Budapester Strasse , the Reichsbahndirektion on Schöneberger Ufer and finally on May 20, 1928 at the state tax office in Moabit all failed. In the meantime, criminal secretary Max Fabich had been put on the trail of the unsuccessful intruders.

The drop in discounts

On January 27, 1929, the brothers broke into the steel chamber of the discount bank on Wittenbergplatz (Kleiststrasse 23). In weeks of work they had dug a tunnel from the neighboring house to the basement of the branch. They then got through an air shaft to the outer wall of the vault, which was broken into. There they opened 179 of the 181 lockers and cleared them out.

The break-in was only discovered after three days because the door was blocked from the inside. The cashier, who tried in vain to open the door on January 28, suspected a defective lock at first. Thereupon specialists from the Arnhem company were called , from whose production the safe came. Arnhem safes were world-famous at the time because of their stability, but even the company specialists could not open the door. It was not until Wednesday, January 30th, that two bricklayers managed to break through the concrete wall.

In the chaos of the looted vaults, the bank employees found two bottles of wine that had been emptied by the burglars. The damage was estimated at two to two and a half million Reichsmarks . The locker owners did not provide any further details, presumably because many values ​​had been hidden there from the tax authorities.

Celebrities

Criminal Secretary Fabich looked familiar with the way the break-in was made, so the brothers were observed, their Moabit apartment searched and finally both arrested. Shortly afterwards, on April 6, 1929, they had to be released again for lack of evidence, whereupon the brothers invited to the press conference in the luxury restaurant Lutter & Wegner on Gendarmenmarkt , where they could tell the journalists about film offers that had already been received. They did not hesitate to openly display their wealth. In addition to this openly shown chutzpah , the fact that they put banknotes into the mailboxes of needy Moabites in Robin Hood fashion also contributed to their fame .

Copenhagen

Until 1932 nothing could be proven against them in court. When the National Socialists came to power in January 1933, the Sasses thought it wiser to emigrate to Denmark . The Copenhagen police soon noticed a series of break-ins and cracked safes. In 1934, detective assistant Christian Bjerring, also known as Christian the Irritable , found evidence of burglaries and hidden foreign exchange during a search of her hotel room. For this they were sentenced to four years imprisonment in Denmark, which they served until 1938.

Extradition, verdict and murder

After their release from prison, Franz and Erich were extradited to Germany immediately. In the meantime, Fabich, informed by Bjerring, had discovered evidence of previous break-ins, but not of the one in the discount bank, in a thorough search of the Moabit apartment, in which this time the floorboards were also torn open. After two years of pre-trial detention, they were convicted of aggravated theft and foreign currency offenses committed jointly. Franz Sass became 13, Erich Sass to 11 years in prison convicted. Despite severe torture, neither of them had revealed the hiding place of the discount bank robbery. On March 27, 1940, they were killed while being transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp . The next day the Nazi press reported that they had been "shot in the face of resistance". The death certificate, however, said quite openly “shot at the orders of the Führer”.

Since the treasure has not yet been discovered (as of March 2018), amateur treasure hunters keep going. They suspect that the millions are somewhere in the Grunewald .

Allusions

In the first years of the Nazi dictatorship the following jokes made the rounds:

Question: "How do you spell Germany's most famous criminals?" - Answer: "SASS" ( SA  &  SS )

Question: "Who set the Reichstag on fire ?" - Answer: "The Sass brothers!" (SA & SS)

Film adaptations

  • Werner Klingler (Director): Bank Vault 713 . 1957.
  • Rainer Wolffhardt (director): Shot on command. The Sass brothers, once Berlin's great crooks . 1972.
  • Carlo Rola (Director): Sass . 2001.
  • Gabi Schlag: History in the First: Tatort Berlin - Bank Robber Sass .
  • Erik Schmitt (Director): Cleo (2019).

literature

Non-fiction
  • Klaus Schönberger (Ed.): Vabanque. Bank robbery, theory, practice, history . Edition Schwarze Risse, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-922611-83-4 .
  • Ekkehard Schwerk: The master thieves of Berlin. The " golden twenties " of the Sass brothers . Jaron Verlag, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89773-030-8 (reprint of the Berlin edition 1984).
Novels

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ In 1906 the tailor's address can NOT be found in the Berlin address book: neither under the name Andreas Sass nor under Birkenstr. 67 [1] ; Sass, Andreas, Schneider . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1910, I, p. 2393.
  2. ↑ Fabich, Max . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1928, part 1, p. 702. “Krim. Secretary ".
  3. ↑ Brothers sat at liberty again . In: Vossische Zeitung , April 7, 1929, p. 5.
  4. ↑ Treasure hunt in Grunewald , documentation on rbb , 2017.
  5. ↑ TV documentary and report , first broadcast in 2018. Accessed on March 31, 2019.