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An stream so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet split a community for more than four decades of time. Because of a chance of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of local people started documenting their heritage. The effort is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely ready. Speaking to the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal split, which tore households apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the oddity never stood in the way of the residents gathering in the same inn, attending the identical place of worship and placing their kids to the same learning center.

After the War Separation

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they appeared, the Russian troops put up wooden posts by the creek. For a twelve months they occupied the entire hamlet, setting up their command in a building on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers persuaded them to retreat across the brook. For a period, locals could still jump across, though as controls became stricter they were forced to show ID, even though each person understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could continue to view each other by scaling elevations, but on the east side signaling and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was put on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “back at you” to a western local who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Development

I heard narratives such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a large part of his working life developing it. Villagers were polled early on about how much wall they wanted to preserve. They opted for a portion on the western edge, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to get away in the dead of night with a ladder, following which the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Installations

A pair of watchtowers are preserved alongside a series of displays showing the most impactful events in the community’s past. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the rules: no one could approach 5km of the border. Rural residents required special permission to tend to their produce; the spouse could work the agricultural equipment but never the two, lest they tried to escape. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Background

The border between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but in excess of double the number persons (more than 300) lost their lives trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Village Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their farms. They nor did they backed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see every year, optical devices in hand, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, caused new attention.

Current Changes

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, film screening area and big vehicle area – is likely to