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An creek so narrow you barely got your ankles wet divided a community for more than four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of geography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was established first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people set about documenting their past. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the locals who lived through the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which ripped households asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal split, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Origins

Even at its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity did not stand in the way of the inhabitants gathering in the very same tavern, attending the very same religious building and placing their young ones to the very same educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the World War II. The moment they came, the Russian troops installed wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the complete village, setting up their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The US forces convinced them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a time, residents could still hop over, though as restrictions increased they were required to show identity papers, although all knew who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The residents could still observe each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were prohibited. A local woman was added to a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “same to you” to a Bavarian villager who said her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I heard stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time developing it. Locals were asked at an early stage about how how long a section wall they desired to maintain. They opted for a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, near where a villager succeeded to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the border was significantly strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

2 watchtowers are preserved in addition to a series of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s history. As we walk, the director enumerates the restrictions: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to look after their produce; the partner could work the agricultural equipment but not both, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Broader Background

The frontier between West Germany and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but more than twice as many individuals (more than 300) were killed trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or artisans, who adapted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between 2 ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They nor did they supported the East German authorities nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly 15,000 visited each year, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after unification, the TV show, a television program about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to fresh curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and big car park – is probable to