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An brook so shallow you barely got your ankles wet separated a settlement for in excess of four decades. By an accident of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by coniferous woods, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Mini Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own barrier was opened, and before their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people set about documenting their history. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Museum of German Division Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not completely finished. Addressing the residents who lived through the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which tore families apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Bygone Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk never stood in the manner of the residents gathering in the identical tavern, attending the same religious building and placing their kids to the identical learning center.

Post-War Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops installed wooden posts by the creek. For a twelve months they occupied the complete community, establishing their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans persuaded them to retreat back over the stream. For a while, residents could continue to jump across, though as limitations became stricter they were forced to display identification, even though each person understood who they were, and to return at evening.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was constructed, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The villagers could still see each other by ascending hills, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a East German secret police watch list for responding “back at you” to a West German resident who said her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

It was related to me narratives such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his working life developing it. Villagers were consulted at an early stage about how much barrier they wanted to keep. They chose a section on the west fringe, near where a local resident managed to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, after which the border was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Installations

Two guard towers are preserved alongside a set of exhibits showing the most significant moments in the village’s chronicle. As we move, Lebergen enumerates the rules: nobody could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required special permission to tend to their produce; the partner could work the combine harvester but not both, lest they attempted to escape. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Background

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the most, but more than twice as many individuals (more than 300) lost their lives seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that 95% of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Community Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or craftsmen, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their farms. They did not endorsed the communist regime nor fought it, the director explains.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 came to visit each year, viewing tools in their hands, to stare – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a imaginary village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Current Changes

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