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A creek so low you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a community for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by coniferous woods, fields and breathtaking views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a group of villagers started documenting their history. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not completely ready. Addressing the residents who lived through the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

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

Past Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage best known for giving all its men the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the locals socializing in the same tavern, visiting the same religious building and placing their kids to the very same school.

Post-War Division

Then came the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the brook. For a annual period they seized the complete community, creating their command in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces convinced them to retreat back over the creek. For a while, locals could continue to jump across, though as controls increased they were forced to display identity papers, despite the fact that each person was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Boundary Measures

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was erected, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The locals could continue to observe each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side signaling and calling out were forbidden. One woman was placed on a Stasi surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a West German villager who said her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his working life developing it. Locals were polled early on about how much structure they wanted to maintain. They opted for a section on the Bavarian edge, close to where a local resident managed to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, subsequently the border was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

2 guard towers are maintained together with a collection of tableaux illustrating the most significant moments in the community’s past. As we move, Lebergen details the rules: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Farmers required specific authorization to care for their produce; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but never both, for fear that they attempted to flee. Armed guards were on duty.

Broader Context

The border between West Germany and the GDR extended 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but in excess of twice as many people (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to residing in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their farms. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. Roughly fifteen thousand came to see annually, optical devices in hand, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, the television series, a TV series about a fictional village resembling Mödlareuth, caused new attention.

Modern Evolutions

The opening of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is expected to