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A stream so narrow you barely got your ankles wet separated a village for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, fields and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was marked first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own division was opened, and before their state had become one in 1990, a collection of villagers started documenting their heritage. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not entirely ready. Addressing the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which ripped households asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal split, which ripped households apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Past Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the way of the locals gathering in the same pub, visiting the identical religious building and enrolling their kids to the identical educational institution.

Post-War Split

Subsequently occurred the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops put up wooden posts by the stream. For a year they seized the complete community, creating their command in a house on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans persuaded them to retreat across the creek. For a while, residents could still jump across, though as controls increased they were forced to present identification, despite the fact that each person knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Boundary Controls

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was erected, with landmines, tank traps and observation points. The locals could still view each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side gesturing and calling out were banned. A female resident was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a West German resident who said her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard accounts including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a significant portion of his professional career building it. Villagers were polled early on about how much barrier they wanted to maintain. They chose a section on the western edge, near where a local resident was able to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, following which the boundary was substantially fortified.

Preserved Structures

2 guard towers are preserved in addition to a collection of displays depicting the most significant moments in the village’s history. As we move, Lebergen details the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Farmers needed specific authorization to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they tried to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Background

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but in excess of twice as many persons (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adapted to living in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their fields. They nor did they endorsed the socialist government nor fought it, the director states.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. About 15k came to see every year, optical devices in hand, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed attention.

Modern Evolutions

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