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An stream so narrow you hardly got your feet wet divided a village for more than four decades. By an accident of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, fields and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Several months after their own division was breached, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a assembly of residents set about memorialising their heritage. The project is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the villagers who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

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

Past Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity did not stand in the way of the residents socializing in the very same tavern, visiting the identical church and enrolling their children to the very same learning center.

Following WWII Separation

Next arrived the World War II. The moment they came, the Russians installed timber poles by the brook. For a twelve months they occupied the entire community, creating their command in a house on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans persuaded them to retreat across the stream. For a while, locals could still cross over, though as limitations tightened they were forced to present identification, even though all knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The locals could continue to view each other by scaling elevations, but on the east side signaling and shouting were forbidden. One woman was added to a Stasi surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a western villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me narratives including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life developing it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how much barrier they wished to maintain. They selected a portion on the western fringe, near where one of their own was able to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the frontier was substantially fortified.

Preserved Structures

2 observation towers are maintained in addition to a set of displays depicting the most dramatic dates in the village’s history. As we walk, Lebergen details the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to look after their produce; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but never the two, in case they tried to escape. Military personnel were on duty.

Broader Background

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but in excess of double the number persons (more than 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or artisans, who adapted to residing in the uncertain territory between two political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They did not endorsed the socialist government nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a kind of destination. Roughly 15k visited every year, binoculars in hand, to gawp – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after unification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention.

Present-Day Evolutions

The opening of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and big vehicle area – is likely to