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An brook so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a settlement for over four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

A few months after their own division was torn down, and before their country had become one in 1990, a collection of local people set about documenting their history. The effort is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Telling the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which ripped families apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were observers of an brutal split, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Even at its creation in 1810, the community straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house best known for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the way of the residents drinking in the identical tavern, going to the identical place of worship and placing their children to the same school.

After the War Division

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Soviet forces installed timber poles by the stream. For a year they seized the complete hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces convinced them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a while, residents could still cross over, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to present identity papers, although all understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was built, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The locals could still view each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side gesturing and calling out were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “back at you” to a western local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career developing it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how how long a section wall they desired to preserve. They selected a section on the west perimeter, near where a villager was able to flee in the middle of the night with a climbing device, after which the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Installations

2 guard towers are maintained in addition to a set of tableaux illustrating the most significant dates in the community’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen details the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Rural residents required special permission to care for their crops; the partner could operate the harvesting machine but never the pair, for fear that they attempted to escape. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but more than double the number people (exceeding 300) lost their lives attempting to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the grey zone between two belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their fields. They did not endorsed the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern states.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of site of interest. About 15k came to see annually, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.

Present-Day Changes

The opening of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and sizable parking lot – is expected to