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An creek so narrow you hardly got your feet wet divided a village for in excess of four decades. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and stunning vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own barrier was torn down, and before their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of residents started memorialising their heritage. The project is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely finished. Telling the residents who lived through the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which tore families asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal division, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Context

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the manner of the residents socializing in the same inn, visiting the very same church and enrolling their young ones to the very same school.

Following WWII Separation

Then came the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Russians put up wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the complete community, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to pull back across the stream. For a time, villagers could continue to hop over, though as restrictions tightened they were required to display identity papers, even though each person was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, tank traps and observation points. The locals could continue to see each other by ascending hills, but on the east side waving and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was put on a Stasi monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a western villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his professional career developing it. Villagers were polled early on about how how long a section barrier they wanted to preserve. They selected a section on the Bavarian perimeter, close to where a villager was able to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, following which the border was substantially strengthened.

Preserved Structures

Two guard towers are maintained alongside a series of displays depicting the most impactful dates in the village’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required special permission to care for their fields; the husband or wife could operate the harvesting machine but not the pair, lest they sought to escape. Soldiers stood watch.

Larger Background

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR ran 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the most, but more than double the number individuals (exceeding 300) were killed attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the uncertain territory between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their fields. They neither backed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 came to see annually, binoculars in possession, to stare – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a imaginary village resembling Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Current Developments

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and large vehicle area – is likely to