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An stream so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet separated a community for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of topography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own division was torn down, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a group of villagers began memorialising their history. The effort is close to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite ready. Speaking to the residents who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel separation, which pulled households apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most famous for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and counting them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity did not stand in the path of the residents drinking in the identical tavern, visiting the same religious building and sending their children to the very same educational institution.

Following WWII Split

Then came the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Russians erected timber poles by the brook. For a twelve months they occupied the whole hamlet, setting up their control center in a dwelling on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers convinced them to pull back across the stream. For a time, villagers could still cross over, though as controls increased they were forced to display identification, despite the fact that everyone understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Border Measures

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with landmines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The residents could continue to see each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were banned. One woman was added to a Stasi watch list for responding “same to you” to a West German local who said her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I heard accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted much of his working life developing it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how how long a section structure they wanted to preserve. They opted for a section on the west perimeter, close to where a local resident managed to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the border was significantly fortified.

Preserved Buildings

A pair of observation towers are maintained alongside a collection of tableaux showing the most significant events in the hamlet’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Farmers required particular approval to tend to their produce; the husband or wife could operate the harvesting machine but never both, in case they sought to make a run for it. Military personnel were on duty.

Larger Perspective

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the GDR extended 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the most, but over two times more individuals (more than 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the big city. Lebegern informs me that 95% of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Community Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adapted to residing in the uncertain territory between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They did not backed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. About 15k came to see each year, optical devices in possession, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Current Developments

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, film screening area and big car park – is likely to