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An creek so low you barely got your ankles wet divided a village for more than four decades of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was established first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own wall was opened, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a collection of villagers began memorialising their history. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely ready. Addressing the locals who endured the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an brutal separation, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which ripped households apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

Past Background

Even at its founding in 1810, the village straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the quirk never stood in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the same tavern, attending the very same religious building and enrolling their young ones to the same educational institution.

Post-War Division

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the brook. For a year they seized the entire community, creating their command in a dwelling on the western side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a while, residents could still jump across, though as controls tightened they were required to present identification, even though all was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Boundary Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was built, with landmines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The locals could still see each other by climbing slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and yelling were prohibited. A local woman was put on a Stasi watch list for answering “back at you” to a western villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Development

I was told accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how what length of structure they desired to preserve. They chose a stretch on the west perimeter, adjacent to where a villager was able to get away in the dead of night with a ladder, following which the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Structures

Two observation towers are maintained in addition to a set of displays showing the most significant events in the village’s chronicle. As we walk, Lebergen lists the regulations: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed special permission to look after their produce; the husband or wife could operate the combine harvester but never the pair, in case they sought to flee. Military personnel kept guard.

Larger Context

The border between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but in excess of double the number persons (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Village Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to living in the uncertain territory between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their farms. They neither supported the socialist government nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a sort of site of interest. Approximately 15k came to visit annually, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in new curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, boutique, movie theater and big parking lot – is probable to