Bernauer Straße became famous for escapes from windows of apartment blocks in the eastern part of the city, down to the street, which was in the West.

The Bernauer Straße existed early on as a commercial and military connection road between Berlin and locations in the Margraviate of Brandenburg.

The road itself belonged entirely to Wedding, and later to the French sector; this would set the stage for escapes during the Berlin Wall era.

[1] Since the street itself belonged to the French sector of West Berlin, the entrances and windows of the houses on the southern side were successively bricked up by the East German border guards and access to the roof was blocked.

Egon Schultz, a border guard, was killed and thereafter stylised by East German authorities as a martyr murdered on duty by western smugglers.

The access to the files after the 1989 Wende revealed that he was killed in an exchange of fire and was hit by bullets from both friend and foe.

Heavy goods vehicles belonging to the transport squadron were provided to carry sections of the concrete wall away to an area near Potsdam.

In 1999, part of it was turned into a memorial park, the Gedenkstätte Berliner Mauer, with a recreation of actual border fortifications.