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An brook so low you barely got your ankles wet separated a village for over four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Months after their own barrier was opened, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a collection of residents began commemorating their past. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the demolition of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not completely finished. Addressing the locals who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an cruel split, which tore families apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Historical Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the village cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk never stood in the path of the locals socializing in the same inn, visiting the very same church and placing their young ones to the same learning center.

Post-War Division

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces installed wooden posts by the creek. For a twelve months they occupied the complete village, creating their control center in a house on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers urged them to retreat across the brook. For a while, villagers could still jump across, though as controls became stricter they were required to present identity papers, despite the fact that each person was aware who they were, and to come back at evening.

Escalation of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was built, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could still view each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were banned. A female resident was put on a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “likewise” to a Bavarian resident who said her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated much of his occupational time building it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how much structure they wanted to preserve. They selected a section on the west fringe, close to where a villager managed to escape in the darkest hours with a ladder, after which the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Preserved Installations

A pair of guard towers are maintained in addition to a set of tableaux depicting the most impactful moments in the village’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern lists the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required special permission to look after their produce; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but not the two, for fear that they attempted to escape. Military personnel stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but over twice as many people (more than 300) lost their lives trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand came to visit annually, binoculars in hand, to look – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a made-up village like Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Current Changes

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and large car park – is probable to