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An creek so shallow you hardly got your feet wet divided a settlement for more than four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by pine forests, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own division was opened, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a group of residents set about documenting their history. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Telling the locals who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an brutal split, which tore families asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Historical Origins

Right from its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most famous for bestowing all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the residents drinking in the identical tavern, going to the very same religious building and placing their kids to the very same educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Then came the World War II. As soon as they arrived, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the creek. For a twelve months they took over the complete community, establishing their control center in a house on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers urged them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a period, locals could continue to hop over, though as limitations became stricter they were required to show identification, although everyone was aware who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with mines, tank traps and observation points. The residents could still observe each other by climbing hills, but on the Soviet side waving and shouting were banned. A female resident was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a western resident who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me narratives like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career building it. Residents were asked in the initial phases about how much wall they wanted to maintain. They chose a stretch on the west fringe, near where a villager managed to get away in the darkest hours with a climbing device, following which the boundary was significantly reinforced.

Preserved Structures

A pair of watchtowers are conserved alongside a series of tableaux depicting the most significant events in the community’s past. As we move, Lebergen lists the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Farmers required particular approval to look after their crops; the partner could work the combine harvester but not the two, lest they sought to escape. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Context

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the greatest, but in excess of double the number persons (well over 300) were killed attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They neither supported the East German authorities nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a kind of destination. About 15k came to see every year, optical devices in their hands, to stare – 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 reunification, the TV show, a television program about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, led to new attention.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, film screening area and sizable vehicle area – is expected to