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A stream so shallow you barely got your feet wet divided a settlement for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of topography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by pine forests, fields and stunning vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was established first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own wall was breached, and before their country had unified again in 1990, a group of local people began documenting their past. The effort is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Telling the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which ripped households apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were observers of an brutal split, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Context

Even at its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for bestowing all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the way of the residents drinking in the identical tavern, going to the very same religious building and enrolling their young ones to the very same educational institution.

After the War Separation

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Soviet forces put up wooden posts by the creek. For a year they occupied the whole village, establishing their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a while, locals could still jump across, though as controls increased they were forced to show ID, even though each person knew who they were, and to return at night.

Intensification of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with landmines, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could still see each other by ascending slopes, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were banned. A female resident was put on a Stasi monitoring list for replying “likewise” to a western local who wished her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I heard accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a significant portion of his working life creating it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how how long a section structure they wished to maintain. They chose a portion on the west fringe, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was significantly strengthened.

Preserved Installations

2 guard towers are maintained together with a series of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic moments in the village’s past. As we stroll, the director details the rules: no one could come within 5km of the frontier. Farmers had to obtain particular approval to tend to their produce; the partner could use the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, lest they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Larger Background

The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the most, but more than twice as many people (more than 300) were killed seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the big city. the director informs me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Village Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between two political systems by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They did not backed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see annually, viewing tools in possession, to stare – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a fictional hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in new interest.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, cinema room and sizable car park – is likely to