The Wall Jumper - Berlin, Germany - Monuments of the Eastern Freedomfights on Waymarking.com

But have you heard of somebody actually jumping over it and earning the nick name "The Wall Jumper"?

It helped, that at the time, the "Wall" was only two and a half feet high.

Schumann volunteered for East Germany's police forces in 1960, believing by doing so, he would serve his people. Then, in August 1961, he was ordered to Berlin to safeguard the building of the Berlin Wall - not something he had signed up for.

The construction of the Wall started on August 13, 1961. Two days later, on August 15, the area Schumann guarded was still not a wall but just a single coil of barbed wire, about two and a half feet high.

When police officers on the western side noticed that Schumann kept coming back to the same area, where he had pushed down the wire a few inches, they encouraged him, shouting, "Come over!"

In one courageous moment, Schumann jumped, dropped his gun and ran towards a West-Berlin police car, that quickly took him out of reach of any other border guards.

West German photographer Peter Leibing was at the scene and shot the best picture of his life, right when Schumann jumped the barbed wire. The photo became one of the most iconic images of the Cold War and won many awards. A 15x25 ft copy of it is at the house next to the place where Schumann's famous "border Jump" took place.

In 2009, artists Florian Brauer, Michael Brauer and Edward Anders created a life-size sculpture of Schumann's jump. (One interesting trivia: the statue is made completely out of recycled tin cans.)

Originally, it was placed at the precise location of the jump. As it was interfering with other Cold War displays in that location, it was later moved to the last building on the eastern side (the house in the background of the famous picture.