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An stream so low you barely got your feet wet divided a village for more than four decades. Because of a chance of landscape, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and stunning views, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. American soldiers nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating History

Months after their own wall was opened, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a assembly of local people started memorialising their past. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Speaking to the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which tore families asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which pulled relatives asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most renowned for assigning all its male members the name Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the path of the locals socializing in the same inn, visiting the same church and enrolling their children to the same educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Then came the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the stream. For a annual period they took over the entire village, establishing their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to pull back to the other side of the brook. For a period, villagers could continue to hop over, though as controls became stricter they were forced to display identity papers, although each person knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Border Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The locals could still see each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side waving and calling out were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a western villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I heard accounts like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time creating it. Villagers were consulted at an early stage about how what length of barrier they wanted to preserve. They opted for a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, close to where a local resident succeeded to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, after which the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

Two observation towers are conserved together with a collection of tableaux showing the most impactful events in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Farmers required specific authorization to tend to their crops; the spouse could use the combine harvester but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they attempted to escape. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Background

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the most, but more than double the number individuals (well over 300) died attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their land. They neither supported the communist regime nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. About fifteen thousand came to see annually, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

25 years after merger, the television series, a television program about a fictional village resembling Mödlareuth, led to new attention.

Current Changes

The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is likely to