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An brook so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a community for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops called it Little Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own barrier was breached, and prior to their country had reunified in 1990, a assembly of residents began memorialising their history. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely prepared. Addressing the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which ripped families apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel division, which pulled households apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Context

Right from its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the path of the locals socializing in the identical tavern, going to the same religious building and sending their kids to the very same school.

After the War Split

Then came the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russians installed wooden posts by the creek. For a twelve months they occupied the complete community, creating their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a time, residents could continue to hop over, though as limitations increased they were required to show ID, although everyone knew who they were, and to return at night.

Intensification of Border Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was erected, with landmines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The locals could continue to observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side waving and yelling were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “back at you” to a West German villager who said her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career developing it. Villagers were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section wall they wanted to maintain. They opted for a section on the west perimeter, close to where a local resident managed to escape in the dead of night with a scaling tool, following which the frontier was heavily reinforced.

Preserved Buildings

2 guard towers are preserved alongside a set of exhibits depicting the most significant dates in the community’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern lists the rules: no one could come within 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required special permission to care for their crops; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the pair, in case they attempted to escape. Armed guards were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most, but over double the number individuals (well over 300) lost their lives trying to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of escape attempts failed.

Community Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between 2 belief systems by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. Roughly 15k came to visit annually, optical devices in hand, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, store, cinema room and sizable car park – is expected to