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An creek so low you hardly got your ankles wet split a village for over four decades of time. Because of a chance of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was established first by a fence and then by a wall. US troops called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people started documenting their past. The work is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which tore relatives apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were observers of an brutal split, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Context

Starting at its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the way of the inhabitants gathering in the identical tavern, attending the same religious building and enrolling their kids to the same educational institution.

After the War Split

Subsequently occurred the second world war. Immediately after they appeared, the Soviet forces erected wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they occupied the complete community, establishing their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers convinced them to pull back back over the stream. For a period, locals could still jump across, though as limitations became stricter they were required to display identification, even though each person understood who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could continue to observe each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were forbidden. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “back at you” to a western resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time building it. Villagers were asked early on about how much wall they wanted to keep. They selected a portion on the west perimeter, close to where a local resident was able to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was substantially fortified.

Maintained Structures

Two observation towers are preserved alongside a series of exhibits showing the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern details the restrictions: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Farmers needed specific authorization to care for their produce; the partner could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, in case they sought to flee. Military personnel kept guard.

Larger Background

The border between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but over two times more people (exceeding 300) lost their lives attempting to traverse it in countryside regions than in the big city. Lebegern reminds me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or artisans, who adapted to residing in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They nor did they endorsed the socialist government nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a kind of destination. About 15k came to visit every year, binoculars in possession, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, led to fresh curiosity.

Current Changes

The opening of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, boutique, film screening area and sizable car park – is expected to