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An stream so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet split a settlement for more than four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, meadows and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was established first by a fence and then by a partition. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own barrier was opened, and before their country had become one in 1990, a assembly of residents began memorialising their past. The effort is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not completely ready. Telling the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its men the name Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the quirk was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals socializing in the very same pub, attending the very same religious building and placing their young ones to the very same learning center.

After the War Separation

Next arrived the World War II. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the entire hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The US forces persuaded them to retreat back over the stream. For a time, villagers could still hop over, though as controls became stricter they were forced to present ID, despite the fact that everyone was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The residents could still observe each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and yelling were forbidden. One woman was put on a Stasi surveillance list for responding “back at you” to a Bavarian local who wished her “happy new year”.

Museum Establishment

I heard accounts like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his occupational time creating it. Residents were polled at an early stage about how much barrier they desired to keep. They chose a section on the west perimeter, near where a villager succeeded to escape in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Preserved Structures

2 observation towers are conserved together with a set of displays showing the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s past. As we move, the director details the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Farmers required particular approval to care for their fields; the husband or wife could operate the harvesting machine but not the two, for fear that they attempted to flee. Soldiers were on duty.

Wider Background

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the most, but over twice as many persons (well over 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of destination. Approximately 15,000 came to visit annually, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, Tannbach, a TV series about a imaginary village similar to Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Modern Evolutions

The opening of the recently established museum – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and big parking lot – is likely to