As equally diverse as the construction of the border fortifications are the surviving remains of its past infrastructure. The structures relating to the everyday operations of the ‘Berlin Wall’ lay behind the actual border and barrier devices and in addition to housing the permanent staff of the border regiments they were also required to stock space-intensive material relating to infrastructure and logistics.

Large-scale barracks with additional homes for officers’ families and individuals as well as military training areas for two training regiments that were organised analogously to the operational areas of the six border regiments that surrounded West Berlin were part of ‘Wall system’ which also included border crossing and the administrative and command centre in Pätz to the south of Berlin. For that reason there were holiday homes and guest houses for the border troops, training facilities for border dogs, radio stations, as well as storage and accommodation for propaganda departments.

The development of the structural works for the border troops is closely related and in direct proportion to their constantly changing structure and organisation until the early seventies. The creation of consistent regiment and command structure with clearly defined geographic responsibilities in the early 1970s was reflected in both the border service and the housing and training facilities.

For example, after the completion of all restructuring, to the new border command for Berlin Mitte, so called Grenzkommando Mitte, belonged six border regiments, two training regiments, an immigration office, artillery battalion, and also a reporting battalion. The totals strength of all of the commands units was approximately 13,000 members. The armament came with heavy weaponry: 567 armoured personnel carriers, 48 mortars and tank guns and 156 armoured vehicles and other heavy engineering innovations. This magnitude of force remained in essence until the end of the GDR although some structural changes were made.

In 1989 there were around eighty border troop locations around West-Berlin. At present about half of these sites are documented by denkmallandschaft-berliner-mauer.de. In the second project phase 2010 the documentation of these locations will be fully completed.

These sites contributed in different ways towards the logistics of the border by ensuring its smooth running and supply. The vast majority of all these areas and buildings built during the time of the GDR, more precisely, in the mid 1960s belongs to often repeated serial building types (Typenbauten). Examples of buildings at these sites have been tested elsewhere, then copied and then adapted to specific needs and space requirements.

One can, however, generally distinguish between three types of border guard barracks in relation to their time of origin: the imperial period, the NS period and those of the GDR period. Almost always the border troops were placed in recent military barracks and therefore largely accomodated the quarters of the 1960s and the prefabricated buildings of the 1970s, the older (structurally sounder, larger and longer lasting) systems, due to the political influence of the soviets and because access to them was sought comparatively late, were already occupied.

The predecessors of these since 1964 built serial buildings were quickly created as temporary wooden barracks and stone or prefabricated buildings, which were totally inadequate. Structural evidence from this early period is extremely rare, but the catastrophic state of accommodation and working conditions of the border troops at this time is demonstrated by the troop accommodation in Teltow-Seehof and Sacrow.

As these constructions were unacceptable in the long-term and militarily untenable, investment was begun in 1964 to develop a sustainable site concept which would lower capacity in favour of considerably distinguished constructions. Primarily established for the border regiments separate regiment locations and decentralised troop accommodation provided all requirements from housing to vehicle repair, from ammunition and equipment storage to combat training.

From the large regiment sites of the mid-sixties, the facilities at Blankenfelde, in addition to the site at Hennigsdorf survive. The vast majority of all of the border’s operational facilities were in 1989 in a poor structural condition. At that time the buildings that were approximately 25 years old, constructed of poor materials, in persistent high use, subject to numerous defects due to their rapid construction, and in need of renovation. Where they stood idle, they increasingly decayed.