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A brook so narrow you barely got your feet wet split a settlement for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was established first by a fence and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

Months after their own wall was opened, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a group of local people set about commemorating their past. The effort is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Telling the locals who endured the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which tore relatives apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

Bygone Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the residents socializing in the identical inn, visiting the very same church and enrolling their kids to the very same learning center.

Post-War Split

Then came the global conflict. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops installed wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they took over the entire village, establishing their headquarters in a building on the western side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces convinced them to retreat to the other side of the brook. For a time, locals could still cross over, though as limitations increased they were forced to show identity papers, even though all knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Increase of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, tank traps and observation points. The locals could continue to view each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was added to a GDR intelligence watch list for replying “same to you” to a Bavarian resident who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I was told accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a significant portion of his working life creating it. Residents were asked early on about how how long a section structure they desired to keep. They opted for a portion on the west edge, adjacent to where a villager managed to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was substantially fortified.

Maintained Structures

Two guard towers are maintained together with a collection of exhibits depicting the most impactful events in the village’s chronicle. As we move, Robert Lebegern details the restrictions: no one could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required special permission to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but never both, in case they sought to escape. Military personnel stood watch.

Wider Background

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but more than twice as many persons (well over 300) died attempting to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of attempts to flee failed.

Hamlet Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adapted to living in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They nor did they backed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a sort of destination. Roughly 15k came to see every year, optical devices in possession, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, the television series, a TV series about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, led to new curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and big vehicle area – is likely to