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A stream so narrow you hardly got your feet wet split a village for more than four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, meadows and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Months after their own wall was breached, and before their state had reunified in 1990, a group of local people began memorialising their past. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not entirely ready. Addressing the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman split, which pulled relatives apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which tore relatives asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

Past Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals drinking in the same pub, attending the same place of worship and enrolling their children to the identical school.

After the War Division

Next arrived the World War II. As soon as they came, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the stream. For a year they seized the entire hamlet, creating their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers urged them to pull back across the stream. For a time, villagers could still jump across, though as controls became stricter they were forced to present ID, even though everyone knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was built, with mines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could still observe each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were forbidden. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard stories such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a significant portion of his working life developing it. Villagers were asked early on about how what length of structure they wanted to preserve. They opted for a section on the west fringe, near where a villager was able to get away in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the frontier was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Structures

2 guard towers are preserved alongside a set of tableaux illustrating the most dramatic dates in the community’s history. As we stroll, the director lists the regulations: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers had to obtain particular approval to look after their crops; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but never both, lest they sought to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Broader Background

The frontier between West Germany and the GDR ran 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but in excess of twice as many people (exceeding 300) lost their lives trying to pass over it in provincial zones than in the urban center. the director tells me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adapted to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They nor did they supported the East German authorities nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the village became a type of site of interest. Approximately 15k visited annually, viewing tools in their hands, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a fictional community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed attention.

Modern Changes

The launch of the recently established museum – with a cafe, shop, movie theater and sizable vehicle area – is probable to