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An brook so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a village for over four decades of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by coniferous woods, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own barrier was breached, and prior to their country had reunified in 1990, a group of local people started commemorating their heritage. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not completely finished. Addressing the residents who experienced the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an cruel separation, which tore households apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which ripped families apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its founding in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the same tavern, visiting the very same place of worship and placing their kids to the very same educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they arrived, the Soviet forces installed wooden posts by the creek. For a year they took over the complete village, creating their command in a dwelling on the western side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to pull back to the other side of the brook. For a period, locals could still hop over, though as limitations became stricter they were obliged to display ID, even though everyone understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was erected, with explosives, vehicle barriers and observation points. The residents could still observe each other by climbing hills, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were forbidden. One woman was added to a GDR intelligence monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me stories like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career creating it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how much structure they wanted to preserve. They chose a section on the western edge, near where one of their own was able to escape in the dead of night with a climbing device, after which the boundary was significantly strengthened.

Conserved Structures

Two watchtowers are conserved together with a collection of exhibits showing the most dramatic moments in the community’s past. As we move, the director lists the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents required specific authorization to tend to their crops; the spouse could use the agricultural equipment but never the pair, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but over twice as many people (well over 300) died attempting to traverse it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their farms. They neither endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. About fifteen thousand visited each year, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after merger, the TV show, a television program about a fictional community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.

Present-Day Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, film screening area and sizable vehicle area – is likely to