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An creek so low you barely got your ankles wet separated a settlement for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. US troops called it Little Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own wall was breached, and prior to their state had unified again in 1990, a group of residents began memorialising their heritage. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not entirely prepared. Telling the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel split, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal split, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Past Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk never stood in the path of the locals gathering in the very same tavern, attending the identical church and sending their children to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the complete community, setting up their control center in a house on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the brook. For a while, residents could continue to jump across, though as limitations tightened they were forced to present identification, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Border Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was erected, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The villagers could still view each other by climbing hills, but on the east side signaling and shouting were forbidden. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “back at you” to a western resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me accounts such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated much of his working life building it. Residents were consulted early on about how what length of structure they wanted to maintain. They selected a stretch on the Bavarian fringe, close to where a villager succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the border was significantly fortified.

Preserved Structures

Two watchtowers are maintained in addition to a series of exhibits showing the most significant events in the village’s past. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: nobody could come within 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed special permission to care for their produce; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but not both, lest they sought to escape. Soldiers stood watch.

Larger Context

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the most frequently, but over two times more people (well over 300) died attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or skilled workers, who adapted to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by staying low-profile and looking after their fields. They neither supported the socialist government nor resisted it, the director explains.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a sort of destination. About 15k came to see every year, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in new interest.

Modern Developments

The launch of the new museum – with a cafe, boutique, cinema room and large parking lot – is probable to