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An creek so narrow you barely got your ankles wet separated a community for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was marked first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of residents began documenting their heritage. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the demolition of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not completely finished. Speaking to the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal separation, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an brutal division, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Historical Background

Even at its creation in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the inhabitants socializing in the identical tavern, visiting the identical church and placing their children to the same learning center.

After the War Division

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they came, the Russian troops installed wood stakes by the brook. For a annual period they seized the whole village, setting up their command in a building on the western side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to withdraw back over the stream. For a time, locals could still hop over, though as controls became stricter they were required to show identification, even though each person knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could continue to see each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side waving and yelling were forbidden. A female resident was put on a East German secret police monitoring list for replying “likewise” to a West German villager who wished her “good new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard accounts including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted much of his occupational time developing it. Residents were asked early on about how much structure they wished to keep. They opted for a portion on the Bavarian fringe, close to where a local resident managed to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the border was substantially fortified.

Preserved Structures

A pair of guard towers are maintained alongside a series of tableaux depicting the most impactful moments in the community’s past. As we walk, Robert Lebegern lists the rules: no one could get closer than 5km of the border. Farmers had to obtain particular approval to tend to their produce; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but never both, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Military personnel were on duty.

Wider Context

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the East Germany stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the greatest, but over two times more persons (exceeding 300) died seeking to cross it in countryside regions than in the big city. Lebegern reminds me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or skilled workers, who adapted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They did not backed the socialist government nor opposed it, Lebegern states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 visited annually, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional village resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed curiosity.

Modern Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, cinema room and sizable car park – is expected to