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A stream so low you scarcely got your feet wet split a settlement for over four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, fields and breathtaking views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. US troops called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own wall was opened, and before their state had unified again in 1990, a group of villagers started documenting their history. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Speaking to the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal division, which tore families asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were observers of an brutal split, which tore households asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for bestowing all its male members the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity did not stand in the way of the locals drinking in the same tavern, visiting the identical religious building and placing their young ones to the identical educational institution.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. The moment they appeared, the Soviet forces put up wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they took over the whole hamlet, establishing their headquarters in a building on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to withdraw back over the creek. For a period, residents could still hop over, though as restrictions tightened they were required to display identity papers, although each person was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Escalation of Boundary Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was built, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could still observe each other by climbing slopes, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were prohibited. A local woman was put on a East German secret police watch list for responding “back at you” to a western resident who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I was told stories like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life creating it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how what length of barrier they wished to maintain. They selected a portion on the western edge, adjacent to where one of their own was able to flee in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

2 watchtowers are conserved alongside a collection of tableaux illustrating the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s history. As we move, Lebergen lists the regulations: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers had to obtain specific authorization to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but not both, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel were on duty.

Wider Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but more than twice as many people (exceeding 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the big city. Lebegern informs me that 95% of escape attempts did not succeed.

Village Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to residing in the grey zone between a pair of political systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their farms. They did not endorsed the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly 15k came to see annually, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a TV series about a fictional village like Mödlareuth, caused new attention.

Present-Day Evolutions

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and large vehicle area – is expected to