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An stream so narrow you hardly got your feet wet separated a settlement for over four decades of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own division was torn down, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people started documenting their past. The effort is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not completely ready. Telling the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which tore households apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Starting at its creation in 1810, the community straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house best known for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity did not stand in the way of the locals gathering in the identical tavern, going to the identical church and placing their children to the very same educational institution.

After the War Separation

Then came the World War II. The moment they appeared, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the entire village, creating their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a period, locals could still cross over, though as controls became stricter they were required to present identity papers, even though everyone was aware who they were, and to return at night.

Increase of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was built, with explosives, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The residents could still see each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were forbidden. A local woman was added to a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “likewise” to a western local who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

I heard accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his working life creating it. Locals were consulted early on about how what length of structure they desired to keep. They chose a portion on the western edge, near where one of their own was able to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, following which the frontier was heavily strengthened.

Maintained Structures

A pair of watchtowers are maintained alongside a set of tableaux showing the most dramatic events in the village’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director details the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain particular approval to look after their fields; the spouse could use the combine harvester but not the pair, for fear that they sought to flee. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but more than two times more individuals (well over 300) were killed attempting to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adapted to dwelling in the grey zone between a pair of political systems by staying low-profile and tending to their fields. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor resisted it, the director states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of destination. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit every year, viewing tools in hand, to gawp – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a television program about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Present-Day Changes

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, store, cinema room and sizable parking lot – is likely to