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An stream so low you barely got your ankles wet separated a settlement for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by evergreen groves, fields and stunning views, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was established first by a fence and then by a partition. American soldiers called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising History

A few months after their own division was breached, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers set about commemorating their history. The project is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the locals who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were observers of an inhuman split, which pulled households into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Even at its creation in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the oddity did not stand in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the identical pub, going to the identical church and sending their children to the very same learning center.

Post-War Split

Subsequently occurred the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russians installed timber poles by the creek. For a twelve months they seized the whole community, setting up their command in a building on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to withdraw across the creek. For a while, residents could still hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were obliged to present ID, even though all was aware who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Escalation of Boundary Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was built, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The locals could still view each other by climbing slopes, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. One woman was placed on a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who said her “good new year”.

Museum Establishment

I was told accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent much of his occupational time creating it. Locals were consulted at an early stage about how how long a section wall they wanted to keep. They opted for a section on the west perimeter, near where a local resident managed to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was significantly reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

2 watchtowers are preserved in addition to a set of displays depicting the most impactful moments in the hamlet’s past. As we move, the director enumerates the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required particular approval to tend to their crops; the partner could use the harvesting machine but not the two, lest they attempted to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Context

The border between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the greatest, but in excess of double the number people (exceeding 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95% of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They did not endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. About fifteen thousand came to see annually, viewing tools in hand, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Modern Developments

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, boutique, movie theater and large parking lot – is likely to