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A creek so low you hardly got your ankles wet split a village for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and before their state had become one in 1990, a group of local people began commemorating their history. The project is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not entirely ready. Addressing the locals who experienced the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Context

Even at its founding in 1810, the village straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the inhabitants drinking in the very same inn, going to the same religious building and sending their children to the very same school.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. As soon as they appeared, the Soviet forces installed timber poles by the brook. For a annual period they took over the complete community, establishing their command in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the brook. For a while, villagers could continue to jump across, though as limitations increased they were obliged to display identification, although all was aware who they were, and to go back at night.

Escalation of Boundary Controls

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could continue to observe each other by ascending slopes, but on the east side signaling and yelling were forbidden. One woman was added to a East German secret police watch list for replying “same to you” to a Bavarian local who wished her “good new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard stories such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career building it. Villagers were polled in the initial phases about how much structure they wished to maintain. They chose a section on the Bavarian edge, adjacent to where a villager succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a ladder, following which the border was substantially fortified.

Conserved Installations

Two observation towers are conserved in addition to a series of tableaux illustrating the most significant events in the hamlet’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers had to obtain particular approval to care for their fields; the partner could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, for fear that they tried to flee. Military personnel kept guard.

Larger Context

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but over double the number people (exceeding 300) were killed seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director tells me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They nor did they endorsed the socialist government nor resisted it, Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. About 15k visited every year, binoculars in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Modern Evolutions

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