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A brook so low you hardly got your ankles wet separated a settlement for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by pine forests, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was marked first by a barrier and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own division was opened, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a collection of residents started memorialising their heritage. The project is close to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not completely ready. Addressing the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal split, which pulled families apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which tore relatives into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

Historical Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house best known for bestowing all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the locals drinking in the very same pub, going to the very same place of worship and placing their young ones to the same school.

Following WWII Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the creek. For a annual period they took over the complete village, creating their control center in a dwelling on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a while, residents could still hop over, though as controls increased they were obliged to display identity papers, even though all understood who they were, and to return at evening.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could still observe each other by ascending slopes, but on the east side signaling and yelling were banned. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “likewise” to a West German resident who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I heard narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his professional career developing it. Locals were asked early on about how how long a section structure they wanted to keep. They selected a portion on the Bavarian fringe, close to where a local resident managed to get away in the darkest hours with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Preserved Structures

2 guard towers are maintained in addition to a set of displays depicting the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s history. As we stroll, the director enumerates the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Farmers had to obtain particular approval to care for their crops; the partner could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they sought to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Wider Context

The frontier between West Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most, but in excess of double the number individuals (more than 300) were killed attempting to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the grey zone between two political systems by staying low-profile and looking after their land. They neither backed the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. Roughly fifteen thousand came to see annually, optical devices in possession, to look – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a made-up hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and big parking lot – is expected to