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An stream so low you scarcely got your ankles wet split a village for over four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular views, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

Months after their own wall was breached, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a group of local people set about memorialising their heritage. The work is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite prepared. Speaking to the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an cruel division, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an brutal division, which ripped families apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Past Origins

Starting at its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage best known for bestowing all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the quirk was never an obstacle in the way of the inhabitants gathering in the very same tavern, attending the very same church and sending their kids to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Division

Next arrived the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Russians erected wooden posts by the creek. For a year they took over the entire hamlet, creating their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The Americans persuaded them to withdraw back over the brook. For a time, residents could still cross over, though as restrictions increased they were forced to display identification, despite the fact that each person knew who they were, and to come back at evening.

Increase of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was erected, with landmines, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could still observe each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a western resident who wished her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told stories such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life creating it. Villagers were polled in the initial phases about how much structure they desired to maintain. They selected a stretch on the west edge, close to where a local resident succeeded to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, following which the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Preserved Installations

Two observation towers are preserved together with a collection of tableaux depicting the most significant moments in the community’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the regulations: no one could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required special permission to tend to their crops; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but never the two, lest they sought to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but more than two times more people (well over 300) were killed trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who adapted to residing in the ambiguous area between a pair of political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their fields. They neither backed the socialist government nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. About 15,000 came to see every year, viewing tools in hand, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after merger, the television series, a television program about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, led to fresh attention.

Current Changes

The opening of the recently established museum – with a cafe, store, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is expected to