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An creek so narrow you barely got your ankles wet divided a village for in excess of four decades of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was established first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops called it Little Berlin.

Commemorating History

Several months after their own division was opened, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a assembly of residents set about commemorating their heritage. The effort is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an cruel division, which ripped families into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were observers of an brutal division, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Right from 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 men the title Heinrich and counting them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity did not stand in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the very same inn, attending the very same place of worship and enrolling their children to the identical learning center.

After the War Division

Subsequently occurred the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the brook. For a twelve months they occupied the entire village, establishing 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 pull back to the other side of the stream. For a while, villagers could still hop over, though as restrictions increased they were forced to display identity papers, despite the fact that each person was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Boundary Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was built, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The residents could still see each other by scaling elevations, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “same to you” to a Bavarian local who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

I heard stories including these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his working life developing it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how much structure they desired to keep. They chose a section on the western edge, adjacent to where a villager managed to get away in the darkest hours with a ladder, after which the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

2 watchtowers are maintained in addition to a set of displays showing the most dramatic moments in the village’s history. As we walk, the director details the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents required specific authorization to look after their crops; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but never the pair, lest they tried to escape. Military personnel were on duty.

Broader Background

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but in excess of two times more individuals (exceeding 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of escape attempts failed.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or artisans, who adapted to living in the grey zone between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They neither backed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a type of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand visited every year, optical devices in possession, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after merger, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Current Developments

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, film screening area and large car park – is expected to