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An brook so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet divided a settlement for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span 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 barricade. US troops called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising History

A few months after their own wall was opened, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a assembly of villagers began documenting their heritage. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not completely finished. Speaking to the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an brutal split, which tore families asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which ripped households apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Starting at its creation in 1810, the community straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for giving all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the manner of the residents socializing in the same pub, attending the very same church and sending their children to the very same learning center.

After the War Division

Next arrived the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Russians erected timber poles by the stream. For a year they took over the whole hamlet, creating their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a time, villagers could still hop over, though as limitations became stricter they were obliged to show identity papers, even though everyone knew who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could continue to see each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told narratives including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated much of his professional career creating it. Locals were consulted early on about how much structure they wished to keep. They selected a stretch on the west fringe, adjacent to where a villager managed to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was substantially fortified.

Conserved Installations

A pair of guard towers are maintained alongside a series of displays depicting the most significant dates in the hamlet’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen details the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to look after their produce; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but under no circumstances the two, in case they sought to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Larger Context

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but in excess of two times more individuals (more than 300) died trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts failed.

Village Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adjusted to dwelling in the uncertain territory between 2 belief systems by avoiding attention and looking after their farms. They neither backed the East German authorities nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand visited annually, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a TV series about a made-up village like Mödlareuth, caused new interest.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and big parking lot – is expected to