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A stream so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a village for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, meadows and stunning views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was marked first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a group of villagers started commemorating their history. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely finished. Addressing the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which tore households apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which tore families apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its male members the name Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the quirk never stood in the way of the locals drinking in the same tavern, attending the very same place of worship and sending their children to the same educational institution.

Post-War Division

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Russians erected wooden posts by the brook. For a twelve months they occupied the entire hamlet, establishing their headquarters in a dwelling on the western side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back across the stream. For a period, villagers could still hop over, though as limitations became stricter they were forced to display ID, although all understood who they were, and to come back at evening.

Increase of Boundary Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was built, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could still see each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were forbidden. A female resident was put on a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a Bavarian local who said her “happy new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me accounts including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career creating it. Locals were consulted at an early stage about how much wall they wanted to keep. They chose a stretch on the west perimeter, close to where one of their own was able to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was heavily fortified.

Preserved Buildings

Two guard towers are conserved together with a series of displays depicting the most dramatic dates in the community’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: nobody could come within 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers required particular approval to look after their crops; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but under no circumstances both, for fear that they attempted to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Context

The border between Western Germany and the East Germany ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most, but more than two times more persons (well over 300) were killed attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the big city. Lebegern reminds me that almost all of escape attempts failed.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the grey zone between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They did not endorsed the communist regime nor fought it, the director clarifies.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. About 15,000 came to visit each year, optical devices in hand, to look – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a fictional village resembling Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and large car park – is expected to