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An brook so shallow you barely got your ankles wet divided a village for more than four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of geography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own division was opened, and before their nation had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people began memorialising their past. The effort is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Telling the residents who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal split, which ripped families apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which ripped families apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the village straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the manner of the inhabitants gathering in the same inn, going to the very same religious building and placing their young ones to the very same school.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the World War II. As soon as they came, the Russian troops put up wooden posts by the stream. For a year they seized the whole community, setting up their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat back over the stream. For a while, locals could still jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to present identity papers, even though each person understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was erected, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could still see each other by scaling elevations, but on the east side waving and shouting were banned. A local woman was added to a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “back at you” to a western local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I heard accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated much of his professional career building it. Villagers were polled early on about how what length of structure they wanted to preserve. They chose a stretch on the western edge, adjacent to where a local resident managed to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, following which the frontier was significantly fortified.

Maintained Buildings

Two watchtowers are maintained together with a collection of tableaux illustrating the most impactful dates in the community’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director details the restrictions: nobody could come within 5km of the boundary. Rural residents needed specific authorization to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, lest they tried to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but in excess of twice as many persons (more than 300) lost their lives attempting to traverse it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that 95% of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between two political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They nor did they backed the East German authorities nor fought it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a kind of pilgrimage. About 15,000 visited every year, optical devices in possession, to look – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after unification, the television series, a TV series about a imaginary village similar to Mödlareuth, caused new curiosity.

Modern Developments

The opening of the new museum – with a cafe, boutique, movie theater and big parking lot – is probable to