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A creek so narrow you barely got your ankles wet separated a village for over four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by pine forests, pastures and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own wall was breached, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a collection of villagers began commemorating their past. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display wasn’t quite prepared. Telling the residents who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel division, which pulled families asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Even at its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage best known for bestowing all its male members the name Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the inhabitants gathering in the same pub, attending the very same church and placing their children to the identical school.

Post-War Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they seized the complete village, creating their command in a house on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a while, villagers could still jump across, though as limitations increased they were obliged to display identity papers, although everyone knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could still view each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “likewise” to a western local who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I heard stories such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his professional career building it. Villagers were polled in the initial phases about how much structure they wanted to keep. They opted for a stretch on the western edge, close to where one of their own managed to get away in the darkest hours with a ladder, following which the border was significantly fortified.

Conserved Installations

2 observation towers are conserved alongside a collection of tableaux showing the most impactful moments in the village’s past. As we stroll, the director lists the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Farmers had to obtain special permission to tend to their fields; the partner could use the combine harvester but never the two, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but more than twice as many individuals (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between 2 ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their fields. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the village became a kind of destination. Approximately 15,000 visited each year, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after merger, the television series, a TV series about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to fresh attention.

Current Changes

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, store, film screening area and big vehicle area – is probable to