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A brook so narrow you barely got your feet wet split a community for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by pine forests, pastures and breathtaking views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier 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 before their nation had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people set about commemorating their history. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely ready. Addressing the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an cruel division, which ripped households asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

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

Past Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the residents gathering in the very same pub, going to the same religious building and sending their children to the same educational institution.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russians erected wood stakes by the stream. For a annual period they took over the whole hamlet, creating their control center in a dwelling on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The US forces persuaded them to retreat to the other side of the brook. For a while, residents could continue to cross over, though as restrictions increased they were required to display identification, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Frontier Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could still see each other by ascending elevations, but on the east side waving and yelling were prohibited. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “back at you” to a West German resident who said her “good new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told accounts including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a large part of his professional career developing it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how what length of barrier they desired to preserve. They opted for a portion on the Bavarian fringe, close to where a villager was able to flee in the darkest hours with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was heavily fortified.

Preserved Buildings

A pair of observation towers are preserved together with a series of displays illustrating the most dramatic events in the community’s past. As we walk, Lebergen lists the rules: not a single person could come within 5km of the boundary. Rural residents needed special permission to care for their produce; the spouse could operate the harvesting machine but not the two, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.

Broader Context

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the East Germany extended 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but more than two times more persons (more than 300) were killed trying to pass over it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Village Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between a pair of political systems by staying low-profile and looking after their land. They neither backed the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a sort of destination. Roughly fifteen thousand came to visit every year, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Current Changes

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and large parking lot – is expected to