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An brook so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a settlement for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, pastures and stunning views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and before their nation had unified again in 1990, a group of local people began memorialising their history. The project is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Telling the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which ripped households apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which pulled households apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Even at its establishment in 1810, the community spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most famous for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity did not stand in the path of the residents socializing in the same tavern, going to the same religious building and sending their children to the same educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Russians installed wooden posts by the brook. For a twelve months they occupied the whole hamlet, setting up their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The Americans urged them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a time, villagers could continue to hop over, though as controls increased they were required to display identification, even though all knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Boundary Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The locals could continue to view each other by ascending hills, but on the Soviet side signaling and calling out were forbidden. One woman was added to a Stasi monitoring list for answering “same to you” to a West German villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

I was told stories including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted much of his working life developing it. Villagers were polled early on about how much barrier they wanted to maintain. They chose a stretch on the western perimeter, close to where a villager was able to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, following which the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Installations

A pair of watchtowers are maintained alongside a set of displays illustrating the most impactful moments in the community’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen details the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the border. Farmers had to obtain special permission to care for their fields; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the two, in case they tried to flee. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but in excess of twice as many people (exceeding 300) were killed seeking to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They neither supported the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. Approximately 15k visited annually, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Current Developments

The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, store, movie theater and sizable car park – is probable to