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A brook so narrow you barely got your feet wet separated a settlement for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was marked first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating History

Months after their own division was torn down, and before their nation had unified again in 1990, a assembly of residents began memorialising their history. The project is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not completely ready. Speaking to the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an inhuman split, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal split, which pulled families apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Even at its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most famous for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the identical pub, attending the identical church and sending their children to the very same school.

After the War Division

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the brook. For a year they occupied the complete village, creating their headquarters in a building on the western side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a while, residents could still jump across, though as controls increased they were obliged to show ID, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was constructed, with mines, tank traps and guard posts. The villagers could still observe each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side waving and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was added to a Stasi watch list for responding “back at you” to a western resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

It was related to me accounts including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a significant portion of his occupational time developing it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how much barrier they wanted to preserve. They chose a stretch on the western edge, close to where one of their own was able to flee in the darkest hours with a ladder, following which the border was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Structures

Two guard towers are maintained in addition to a set of exhibits showing the most dramatic dates in the village’s history. As we move, the director enumerates the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to look after their fields; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but not both, in case they attempted to make a run for it. Military personnel were on duty.

Wider Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic extended nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most, but over two times more persons (exceeding 300) were killed trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that almost all of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They nor did they backed the East German authorities nor resisted it, the director states.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. Roughly 15,000 came to see each year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a television program about a imaginary hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to renewed interest.

Modern Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, store, cinema room and large parking lot – is expected to