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An stream so low you barely got your ankles wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of topography, the half a hundred residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by pine forests, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own wall was torn down, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of local people began documenting their heritage. The project is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not completely finished. Speaking to the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which tore relatives asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

Historical Origins

Even at its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the path of the residents drinking in the very same inn, attending the same religious building and sending their young ones to the very same educational institution.

Following WWII Division

Next arrived the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the brook. For a twelve months they occupied the whole community, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces urged them to retreat across the creek. For a time, villagers could continue to jump across, though as limitations increased they were required to display identification, although everyone knew who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was built, with mines, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could still observe each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were banned. A local woman was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “likewise” to a West German villager who said her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard stories like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated much of his working life developing it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how much structure they wished to maintain. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own managed to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the border was heavily fortified.

Preserved Structures

A pair of observation towers are conserved together with a set of exhibits depicting the most dramatic moments in the village’s history. As we walk, Lebergen lists the restrictions: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to tend to their produce; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, in case they sought to flee. Military personnel were on duty.

Broader Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most frequently, but over twice as many individuals (well over 300) were killed attempting to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that almost all of attempts to flee failed.

Community Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between two belief systems by staying low-profile and caring for their land. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor fought it, the director explains.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the village became a type of destination. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see annually, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed attention.

Present-Day Evolutions

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and large vehicle area – is likely to