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A stream so low you hardly got your ankles wet divided a village for over four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by pine forests, meadows and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was established first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers started documenting their past. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite ready. Speaking to the residents who endured the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal split, which pulled households asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

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

Historical Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most famous for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity did not stand in the way of the locals drinking in the very same inn, going to the very same church and enrolling their young ones to the same learning center.

After the War Split

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russians installed wooden posts by the creek. For a year they took over the entire hamlet, establishing their control center in a house on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to retreat back over the brook. For a time, villagers could continue to jump across, though as limitations became stricter they were forced to show identification, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to return at night.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The residents could continue to see each other by ascending hills, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were banned. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a western villager who wished her “good new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his professional career developing it. Residents were asked at an early stage about how much barrier they desired to maintain. They selected a section on the western edge, close to where a villager managed to get away in the darkest hours with a climbing device, following which the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Installations

Two observation towers are conserved alongside a set of displays depicting the most significant dates in the hamlet’s history. As we stroll, the director details the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required particular approval to care for their crops; the partner could work the harvesting machine but never the pair, lest they tried to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most frequently, but more than twice as many individuals (exceeding 300) were killed trying to pass over it in countryside regions than in the big city. the director informs me that 95% of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their land. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. Roughly 15k came to see annually, viewing tools in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, caused renewed curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and sizable parking lot – is likely to