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A brook so low you scarcely got your feet wet divided a settlement for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by coniferous woods, fields and breathtaking views, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops called it Mini Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their state had reunified in 1990, a collection of villagers began memorialising their past. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the collapse of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the locals who endured the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

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

Past Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the quirk never stood in the manner of the residents gathering in the same tavern, attending the same place of worship and enrolling their children to the same learning center.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they came, the Russians erected wood stakes by the brook. For a twelve months they seized the entire hamlet, establishing their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw back over the stream. For a time, locals could still cross over, though as controls increased they were forced to show identity papers, although all was aware who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Border Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with explosives, tank traps and observation points. The locals could continue to view each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was added to a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “back at you” to a West German local who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Establishment

I was told stories such as these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life developing it. Locals were consulted in the initial phases about how what length of wall they wanted to maintain. They opted for a portion on the west fringe, close to where a villager managed to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, following which the frontier was heavily strengthened.

Preserved Structures

A pair of observation towers are conserved together with a set of tableaux showing the most dramatic dates in the village’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the border. Rural residents needed specific authorization to look after their crops; the partner could use the harvesting machine but not the two, for fear that they tried to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Context

The border between West Germany and the East Germany stretched nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but in excess of double the number people (well over 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adjusted to living in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They did not supported the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a type of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see each year, optical devices in possession, to look – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, led to fresh interest.

Modern Changes

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, movie theater and large car park – is probable to