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A creek so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet divided a village for over four decades of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by pine forests, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own division was torn down, and before their state had become one in 1990, a assembly of local people started commemorating their history. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely finished. Addressing the residents who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an cruel division, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Historical Background

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most renowned for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the residents gathering in the very same inn, going to the very same religious building and placing their young ones to the very same educational institution.

After the War Division

Then came the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the creek. For a year they took over the complete hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The Americans convinced them to retreat back over the creek. For a period, residents could continue to jump across, though as limitations increased they were required to present identification, even though each person understood who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Increase of Boundary Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could still see each other by ascending hills, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “back at you” to a West German villager who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I heard accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his working life developing it. Villagers were asked early on about how how long a section barrier they desired to maintain. They selected a portion on the west perimeter, adjacent to where a villager managed to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Installations

Two guard towers are maintained alongside a set of tableaux showing the most dramatic moments in the village’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director details the rules: nobody could come within 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to look after their produce; the partner could operate the combine harvester but never both, in case they tried to flee. Armed guards stood watch.

Broader Background

The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most frequently, but more than twice as many people (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or craftsmen, who adjusted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between two political systems by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They nor did they backed the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern states.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a kind of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 came to visit each year, binoculars in possession, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, led to fresh interest.

Modern Changes

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