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A brook so low you barely got your feet wet separated a community for over four decades. By an accident of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own barrier was opened, and prior to their country had become one in 1990, a group of residents began documenting their past. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not completely ready. Telling the residents who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which ripped households apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which ripped families into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its male members the designation Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the quirk never stood in the manner of the locals drinking in the very same tavern, visiting the same place of worship and placing their kids to the same educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Russians put up wooden posts by the creek. For a year they occupied the whole community, establishing their control center in a house on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back across the stream. For a period, villagers could still jump across, though as limitations increased they were forced to present ID, even though all understood who they were, and to go back at night.

Escalation of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could still observe each other by scaling hills, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a western villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Establishment

It was related to me narratives including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his working life developing it. Locals were consulted at an early stage about how what length of barrier they wanted to maintain. They opted for a portion on the western fringe, adjacent to where a villager managed to get away in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Structures

A pair of guard towers are conserved alongside a series of displays depicting the most dramatic dates in the community’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern lists the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the border. Rural residents needed particular approval to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but not both, in case they attempted to flee. Military personnel kept guard.

Broader Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most, but over double the number persons (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to living in the uncertain territory between 2 ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their land. They neither backed the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. About fifteen thousand came to see every year, optical devices in possession, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary community similar to Mödlareuth, led to new attention.

Modern Changes

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, shop, cinema room and big parking lot – is likely to