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A stream so low you barely got your feet wet divided a village for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, meadows and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was established first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Mini Berlin.

Commemorating History

A few months after their own division was breached, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of residents started memorialising their past. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely prepared. Speaking to the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were observers of an inhuman split, which tore relatives apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

Historical Origins

Even at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the quirk did not stand in the way of the residents socializing in the very same pub, visiting the very same church and sending their kids to the identical educational institution.

After the War Division

Next arrived the World War II. The moment they came, the Russians installed wood stakes by the creek. For a year they seized the whole village, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the creek. For a while, residents could still jump across, though as restrictions tightened they were obliged to show identification, even though everyone was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Boundary Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was erected, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could still see each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were banned. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence watch list for answering “same to you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Establishment

I heard narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career creating it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how how long a section wall they wished to preserve. They opted for a portion on the western perimeter, adjacent to where a local resident was able to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, after which the boundary was significantly fortified.

Conserved Structures

A pair of observation towers are maintained together with a series of exhibits showing the most impactful events in the village’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required particular approval to care for their fields; the spouse could work the combine harvester but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they attempted to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Context

The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most, but over double the number people (well over 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the big city. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their farms. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 came to visit every year, optical devices in hand, to gawp – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional hamlet like Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, store, movie theater and large parking lot – is expected to