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A creek so shallow you barely got your feet wet divided a village for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was established first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Several months after their own division was breached, and prior to their country had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers started memorialising their past. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite prepared. Speaking to the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an cruel split, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal split, which pulled households apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Historical Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most famous for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them in order by birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the manner of the locals socializing in the identical pub, visiting the identical religious building and enrolling their young ones to the same school.

Post-War Split

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces erected timber poles by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the complete hamlet, creating their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The Americans convinced them to pull back across the brook. For a while, villagers could still cross over, though as limitations became stricter they were obliged to display ID, even though each person knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was built, with explosives, vehicle barriers and observation points. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side waving and yelling were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a western resident who said her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard stories such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a significant portion of his working life developing it. Residents were consulted early on about how much barrier they wanted to maintain. They selected a section on the western edge, close to where a villager was able to flee in the middle of the night with a climbing device, following which the border was heavily strengthened.

Preserved Structures

Two watchtowers are preserved alongside a set of tableaux illustrating the most impactful dates in the village’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the regulations: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Agricultural workers had to obtain special permission to care for their fields; the partner could work the harvesting machine but not the pair, for fear that they attempted to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Context

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the greatest, but more than two times more people (exceeding 300) died seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their fields. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, the director explains.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a type of destination. Approximately 15,000 came to see each year, optical devices in hand, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional community similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Modern Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, store, movie theater and large car park – is likely to