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An brook so shallow you hardly got your feet wet separated a community for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a assembly of local people set about documenting their past. The work is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite prepared. Addressing the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman split, which ripped households apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel split, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Past Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the village straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity never stood in the manner of the inhabitants gathering in the same pub, going to the very same church and enrolling their kids to the very same educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they appeared, the Russians put up wooden posts by the brook. For a year they took over the entire village, establishing their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The Americans convinced them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a while, villagers could still hop over, though as restrictions tightened they were obliged to display identity papers, even though each person was aware who they were, and to come back at evening.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could continue to observe each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were banned. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “back at you” to a western villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I was told stories including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his professional career building it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how what length of structure they wanted to maintain. They chose a stretch on the west fringe, adjacent to where a local resident managed to flee in the darkest hours with a climbing device, following which the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Structures

A pair of guard towers are conserved alongside a set of tableaux depicting the most dramatic dates in the community’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director lists the regulations: no one could come within 5km of the border. Farmers had to obtain special permission to care for their crops; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but not the pair, lest they tried to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Background

The border between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the most frequently, but more than double the number individuals (more than 300) lost their lives trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their fields. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the village became a type of destination. About fifteen thousand came to see each year, viewing tools in their hands, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Current Developments

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and large vehicle area – is expected to