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A stream so low you barely got your feet wet separated a village for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by coniferous woods, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating History

A few months after their own wall was opened, and prior to their state had become one in 1990, a collection of local people set about documenting their heritage. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show wasn’t quite prepared. Addressing the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel division, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel division, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Background

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the oddity did not stand in the manner of the inhabitants socializing in the identical inn, going to the identical church and placing their young ones to the very same school.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the brook. For a year they seized the whole hamlet, creating their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to retreat across the brook. For a time, locals could continue to jump across, though as limitations increased they were required to show identity papers, despite the fact that everyone knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Escalation of Frontier Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could continue to view each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side gesturing and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “same to you” to a Bavarian local who greeted her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

It was related to me stories such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career creating it. Residents were asked at an early stage about how how long a section structure they desired to preserve. They selected a section on the western edge, near where one of their own was able to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, following which the border was significantly fortified.

Maintained Installations

2 observation towers are conserved alongside a set of tableaux depicting the most impactful events in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Farmers needed special permission to look after their produce; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but not the pair, in case they attempted to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Perspective

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the greatest, but over double the number individuals (well over 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between two political systems by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They neither supported the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Interest

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. About 15k came to see every year, optical devices in possession, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after unification, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, boutique, film screening area and big car park – is expected to