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An brook so narrow you hardly got your feet wet split a community for over four decades of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own division was opened, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a group of local people set about memorialising their past. The work is close to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Telling the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which tore families asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an cruel split, which tore households asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its creation in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most famous for bestowing all its male members the name Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the quirk did not stand in the path of the locals gathering in the identical tavern, visiting the identical place of worship and sending their young ones to the very same school.

Following WWII Separation

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Russians put up timber poles by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the whole village, setting up their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a while, residents could continue to hop over, though as restrictions increased they were obliged to present identity papers, despite the fact that everyone was aware who they were, and to return at night.

Escalation of Border Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was built, with mines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The villagers could still view each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were banned. One woman was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a western villager who wished her “good new year”.

Museum Establishment

I heard stories including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a large part of his working life creating it. Villagers were consulted in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they desired to keep. They opted for a stretch on the western perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own managed to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the border was significantly strengthened.

Preserved Structures

Two guard towers are maintained alongside a collection of displays showing the most impactful moments in the village’s history. As we move, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to look after their fields; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but never both, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Context

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most frequently, but more than two times more persons (exceeding 300) were killed attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. the director reminds me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to living in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a kind of destination. Approximately 15,000 came to see annually, optical devices in their hands, to stare – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a imaginary village similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in new curiosity.

Current Developments

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, store, movie theater and big car park – is likely to