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A brook so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet split a settlement for over four decades. By an accident of geography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, fields and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

A few months after their own division was breached, and prior to their nation had unified again in 1990, a collection of residents began commemorating their heritage. The work is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not completely finished. Telling the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which pulled families apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the quirk never stood in the path of the residents socializing in the identical pub, going to the very same place of worship and sending their children to the very same learning center.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Russians installed timber poles by the creek. For a year they occupied the whole village, creating their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw back over the stream. For a while, locals could still hop over, though as limitations tightened they were forced to present ID, although everyone understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, tank traps and observation points. The locals could still observe each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were forbidden. One woman was added to a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a western villager who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I was told accounts like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his working life building it. Villagers were consulted early on about how what length of wall they wished to keep. They opted for a portion on the west perimeter, near where one of their own was able to escape in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Installations

A pair of watchtowers are preserved alongside a set of exhibits depicting the most impactful dates in the community’s history. As we walk, Lebergen details the rules: no one could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to tend to their crops; the spouse could work the combine harvester but never both, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Perspective

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the greatest, but over double the number people (well over 300) died trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the grey zone between two political systems by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They did not supported the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Interest

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 came to visit each year, binoculars in possession, to stare – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary community similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Current Developments

The opening of the new museum – with a cafe, store, cinema room and sizable parking lot – is likely to