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An creek so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a community for over four decades of time. By an accident of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking views, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops called it Small Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own wall was breached, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers set about commemorating their heritage. The project is close to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the demolition of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Addressing the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

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

Bygone Background

Right from its founding in 1810, the village straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most famous for bestowing all its male members the name Heinrich and counting them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the quirk never stood in the manner of the residents gathering in the same inn, visiting the very same place of worship and enrolling their young ones to the very same school.

After the War Division

Next arrived the global conflict. The moment they came, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the stream. For a year they seized the whole village, creating their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a period, villagers could continue to cross over, though as limitations tightened they were forced to present ID, even though all knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could still view each other by ascending slopes, but on the east side waving and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for responding “same to you” to a West German resident who said her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

It was related to me accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his professional career developing it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how how long a section barrier they desired to keep. They chose a section on the western fringe, near where a local resident succeeded to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, after which the boundary was significantly reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

Two observation towers are maintained in addition to a series of tableaux depicting the most significant moments in the village’s history. As we stroll, the director lists the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to care for their crops; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but not the two, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most, but more than twice as many individuals (well over 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern tells me that almost all of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their land. They did not backed the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a type of pilgrimage. About fifteen thousand came to visit each year, optical devices in hand, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

25 years after unification, the TV show, a television program about a imaginary hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and big car park – is likely to