In the GDR it replaced the route of today's B96 running through West Berlin.

For this reason, a new route was designated in the GDR, which starts at Mahlow and turns east towards Schönefeld, from there it crosses the Adlergestell in the former East Berlin district of Treptow and crosses the Spree on the Elsenbrücke bridge.

Until the construction of the bridge over the Berlin outer ring two kilometers west of Waßmannsdorf in the 1980s, today's B96a did not begin in Mahlow, but in the Glasow district, led via Selchow to Waßmannsdorf and from there—since the early 1990s in four lanes—to the airport in Schönefeld.

In 2002 the four-lane link from the northern bypass of Mahlow to the bridge with the Berlin outer ring was expanded.

From the Treptow junction on the A 117 motorway, the route continues as a motor road without intersections and ends at the broad Adlergestell, which leads into the city of Berlin.