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A creek so low you barely got your ankles wet split a village for in excess of four decades. By an accident of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by pine forests, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and before their nation had unified again in 1990, a group of local people started memorialising their history. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely finished. Telling the locals who experienced the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman split, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which tore households into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Context

Even at its establishment in 1810, the community spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity never stood in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the identical tavern, visiting the very same place of worship and placing their children to the same educational institution.

After the War Split

Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they came, the Soviet forces installed timber poles by the brook. For a twelve months they took over the entire village, setting up their command in a building on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The US forces convinced them to pull back across the creek. For a while, locals could still jump across, though as controls became stricter they were required to show ID, even though each person was aware who they were, and to return at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was erected, with mines, tank traps and observation points. The locals could continue to view each other by scaling elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was put on a Stasi monitoring list for responding “back at you” to a West German local who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated much of his professional career developing it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how much structure they wished to keep. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, close to where one of their own succeeded to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, after which the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Structures

A pair of watchtowers are maintained alongside a collection of displays illustrating the most significant events in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director enumerates the restrictions: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Farmers needed particular approval to tend to their fields; the partner could use the combine harvester but not both, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.

Larger Context

The border between West Germany and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but over twice as many individuals (exceeding 300) died trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They neither supported the communist regime nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of destination. About 15,000 visited every year, viewing tools in hand, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a television program about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, cinema room and big car park – is likely to