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An stream so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet split a village for in excess of four decades. By an accident of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was marked first by a barrier and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

Months after their own division was torn down, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a group of villagers started documenting their past. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not entirely prepared. Telling the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an cruel division, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were observers of an inhuman split, which pulled households apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

Historical Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most famous for bestowing all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity did not stand in the manner of the residents socializing in the very same pub, visiting the identical place of worship and sending their young ones to the identical learning center.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they came, the Russians put up wooden posts by the brook. For a twelve months they took over the entire hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans persuaded them to withdraw across the creek. For a time, locals could continue to hop over, though as controls tightened they were forced to display ID, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Boundary Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The locals could still observe each other by ascending slopes, but on the east side waving and yelling were prohibited. One woman was added to a East German secret police watch list for answering “same to you” to a western local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me stories such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his working life creating it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how what length of wall they wished to maintain. They chose a stretch on the western perimeter, near where a villager succeeded to escape in the darkest hours with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Maintained Installations

2 guard towers are conserved alongside a series of tableaux showing the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the regulations: nobody could come within 5km of the boundary. Farmers had to obtain special permission to care for their produce; the spouse could use the combine harvester but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic extended nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but over twice as many persons (well over 300) were killed attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their land. They did not backed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a type of destination. About 15,000 visited annually, binoculars in hand, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Current Developments

The opening of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is expected to