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A brook so shallow you barely got your ankles wet split a settlement for over four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by coniferous woods, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving History

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a group of residents set about commemorating their past. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not entirely finished. Speaking to the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were observers of an inhuman split, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Past Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage best known for giving all its men the name Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the locals gathering in the same tavern, going to the identical religious building and enrolling their young ones to the same educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they came, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the stream. For a year they occupied the whole village, creating their control center in a house on the western side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to retreat back over the creek. For a while, locals could still jump across, though as controls tightened they were required to present ID, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, vehicle barriers and observation points. The residents could still see each other by climbing elevations, but on the east side gesturing and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was put on a Stasi monitoring list for replying “likewise” to a western resident who wished her “happy new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me stories like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time creating it. Locals were asked early on about how what length of structure they desired to preserve. They chose a portion on the Bavarian fringe, near where a villager was able to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, following which the border was significantly strengthened.

Conserved Installations

2 observation towers are conserved together with a collection of tableaux illustrating the most impactful events in the hamlet’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could use the agricultural equipment but never both, lest they attempted to flee. Soldiers were on duty.

Larger Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the East Germany stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but in excess of two times more people (more than 300) lost their lives trying to traverse it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of attempts to flee failed.

Village Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They neither backed the East German authorities nor resisted it, the director explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. Approximately 15k visited each year, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a TV series about a fictional hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed attention.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and sizable vehicle area – is expected to