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An stream so low you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a settlement for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was established first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating History

Several months after their own division was breached, and prior to their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of residents started documenting their past. The project is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Addressing the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which tore households asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which pulled households apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Context

Even at its founding in 1810, the community spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house best known for giving all its men the designation Heinrich and counting them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the way of the inhabitants drinking in the very same tavern, attending the identical church and placing their children to the same learning center.

Post-War Division

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the creek. For a twelve months they occupied the entire village, creating their headquarters in a building on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces persuaded them to pull back across the stream. For a while, locals could continue to jump across, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to present identity papers, despite the fact that each person was aware who they were, and to return at night.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with mines, tank traps and observation points. The locals could still observe each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were prohibited. One woman was added to a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “same to you” to a West German local who greeted her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I heard narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his working life developing it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how what length of wall they wished to preserve. They chose a stretch on the western fringe, adjacent to where a villager managed to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was substantially fortified.

Conserved Buildings

A pair of observation towers are maintained together with a collection of exhibits illustrating the most significant events in the village’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: no one could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain particular approval to care for their crops; the spouse could operate the harvesting machine but not the pair, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Larger Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the East Germany ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but over double the number persons (more than 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or artisans, who adapted to residing in the grey zone between 2 belief systems by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor fought it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. About fifteen thousand came to visit annually, optical devices in hand, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after merger, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.

Modern Developments

The opening of the new museum – with a cafe, shop, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is expected to