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An stream so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet split a village for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Little Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

A few months after their own wall was breached, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a assembly of residents began documenting their heritage. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not entirely ready. Telling the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which tore families apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal division, which ripped households into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

Historical Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the community spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house best known for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity did not stand in the manner of the inhabitants socializing in the identical inn, visiting the same religious building and sending their children to the very same educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russians installed timber poles by the brook. For a year they seized the whole hamlet, creating their command in a house on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The US forces convinced them to withdraw across the creek. For a period, locals could still cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were obliged to display ID, despite the fact that each person was aware who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could still view each other by climbing elevations, but on the eastern side waving and yelling were forbidden. One woman was put on a East German secret police watch list for responding “back at you” to a Bavarian local who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I was told narratives such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his working life building it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how how long a section structure they wanted to preserve. They selected a section on the Bavarian fringe, near where one of their own managed to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Installations

A pair of watchtowers are maintained together with a collection of exhibits showing the most significant events in the village’s chronicle. As we walk, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain particular approval to look after their fields; the partner could use the combine harvester but never both, for fear that they sought to escape. Military personnel kept guard.

Broader Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but more than double the number individuals (more than 300) died attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts failed.

Community Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They neither backed the East German authorities nor opposed it, the director explains.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of destination. About 15,000 visited each year, viewing tools in hand, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a made-up hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed attention.

Current Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and large vehicle area – is likely to