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An brook so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

A few months after their own wall was breached, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers started commemorating their history. The effort is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the demolition of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an brutal separation, which ripped families apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which pulled households asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Historical Context

Starting at its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the oddity never stood in the way of the residents drinking in the same tavern, attending the same place of worship and placing their children to the identical educational institution.

After the War Division

Then came the World War II. The moment they appeared, the Soviet forces installed wooden posts by the creek. For a year they took over the complete village, establishing their control center in a house on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The Americans urged them to withdraw back over the stream. For a while, residents could still hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were obliged to display ID, even though all knew who they were, and to return at night.

Intensification of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was built, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The residents could continue to see each other by ascending hills, but on the Soviet side waving and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was placed on a Stasi surveillance list for replying “likewise” to a western villager who wished her “good new year”.

Museum Creation

It was related to me accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his professional career creating it. Villagers were asked at an early stage about how much structure they wanted to preserve. They opted for a portion on the Bavarian edge, close to where one of their own managed to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was heavily fortified.

Preserved Installations

Two observation towers are conserved in addition to a collection of tableaux illustrating the most impactful moments in the village’s chronicle. As we move, the director details the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers required special permission to care for their produce; the partner could work the agricultural equipment but not the pair, lest they tried to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but more than two times more people (exceeding 300) lost their lives attempting to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their land. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 came to see every year, binoculars in hand, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, caused new attention.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, store, film screening area and sizable vehicle area – is expected to