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An stream so low you barely got your feet wet separated a community for more than four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by pine forests, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. 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 marked first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a group of local people set about documenting their history. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Addressing the residents who endured the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which pulled families apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for bestowing all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the inhabitants gathering in the very same pub, going to the very same place of worship and enrolling their young ones to the identical educational institution.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces erected wooden posts by the stream. For a year they occupied the whole hamlet, establishing their command in a building on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to withdraw across the stream. For a time, locals could continue to cross over, though as restrictions increased they were obliged to display identity papers, despite the fact that everyone was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Boundary Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was built, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The residents could continue to see each other by scaling hills, but on the east side waving and shouting were banned. One woman was put on a East German secret police monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a Bavarian resident who wished her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I was told narratives including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent much of his occupational time creating it. Locals were asked at an early stage about how much barrier they desired to keep. They selected a stretch on the west fringe, adjacent to where a villager succeeded to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Preserved Buildings

A pair of observation towers are conserved together with a series of displays showing the most impactful events in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director lists the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Rural residents needed special permission to look after their crops; the spouse could operate the harvesting machine but never the pair, in case they attempted to flee. Military personnel were on duty.

Broader Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the most frequently, but in excess of double the number individuals (more than 300) lost their lives attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their fields. They neither supported the socialist government nor fought it, the director explains.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of destination. About 15,000 came to see each year, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, caused new interest.

Present-Day Evolutions

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and sizable parking lot – is likely to