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An brook so narrow you barely got your feet wet separated a community for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, fields and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

A few months after their own wall was breached, and before their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of residents started commemorating their past. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not completely prepared. Addressing the residents who endured the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an cruel separation, which ripped families apart and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which ripped households asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the village cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the very same inn, going to the identical place of worship and sending their kids to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Division

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they appeared, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the stream. For a year they occupied the whole community, establishing their command in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The US forces persuaded them to withdraw back over the brook. For a period, locals could still jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were obliged to show ID, although each person was aware who they were, and to go back at night.

Intensification of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was constructed, with landmines, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could still see each other by ascending hills, but on the east side signaling and calling out were banned. A local woman was put on a Stasi surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a western villager who said her “happy new year”.

Museum Establishment

I heard narratives including these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent much of his occupational time creating it. Villagers were asked at an early stage about how how long a section barrier they wished to keep. They opted for a portion on the west fringe, near where a villager was able to escape in the darkest hours with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Preserved Buildings

2 guard towers are maintained together with a set of exhibits showing the most significant dates in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, Lebergen lists the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Farmers needed special permission to look after their produce; the husband or wife could operate the harvesting machine but not both, for fear that they attempted to flee. Military personnel stood watch.

Wider Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the East Germany extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but over double the number persons (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that almost all of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They did not supported the socialist government nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand came to visit every year, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after unification, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed curiosity.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, store, movie theater and sizable vehicle area – is expected to