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A stream so low you barely got your feet wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was established first by a barrier and then by a partition. American soldiers dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving History

Months after their own barrier was breached, and prior to their state had become one in 1990, a collection of local people started memorialising their past. The effort is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Addressing the locals who endured the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which ripped families into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which ripped relatives apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

Historical Context

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the name Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the manner of the inhabitants drinking in the very same tavern, attending the very same place of worship and sending their children to the same school.

After the War Separation

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops installed wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they seized the whole village, creating their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The Americans urged them to withdraw back over the brook. For a period, locals could continue to jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were required to display ID, despite the fact that each person knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Increase of Boundary Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was erected, with explosives, vehicle barriers and observation points. The residents could continue to view each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side waving and shouting were banned. A female resident was put on a East German secret police watch list for responding “back at you” to a western local who wished her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I heard accounts like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his working life developing it. Villagers were polled in the initial phases about how much structure they wanted to maintain. They selected a section on the western edge, near where a local resident managed to get away in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the frontier was significantly fortified.

Conserved Buildings

Two watchtowers are conserved alongside a series of tableaux showing the most significant dates in the hamlet’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required specific authorization to look after their crops; the spouse could work the agricultural equipment but not the pair, in case they attempted to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but over twice as many persons (exceeding 300) lost their lives trying to pass over it in provincial zones than in the big city. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or artisans, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of political systems by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Interest

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of destination. Roughly 15k came to visit annually, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, caused new attention.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a cafe, shop, movie theater and large car park – is expected to