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An brook so low you barely got your ankles wet split a village for more than four decades of time. By an accident of topography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

A few months after their own wall was opened, and before their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of residents started memorialising their past. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite ready. Telling the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an cruel split, which ripped households apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

“You were observers of an inhuman division, which tore relatives asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

Bygone Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the quirk was never an obstacle in the path of the residents drinking in the same pub, going to the very same place of worship and enrolling their kids to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Next arrived the World War II. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the stream. For a twelve months they seized the complete village, creating their control center in a house on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers persuaded them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a while, residents could still jump across, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to display identity papers, even though all understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Frontier Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The villagers could still view each other by ascending hills, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were forbidden. A female resident was put on a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a western local who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I heard stories such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a significant portion of his working life developing it. Villagers were consulted early on about how what length of barrier they wanted to maintain. They selected a section on the Bavarian fringe, near where a local resident was able to escape in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was significantly fortified.

Preserved Structures

Two observation towers are preserved in addition to a collection of tableaux illustrating the most significant dates in the community’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen details the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to care for their fields; the husband or wife could operate the harvesting machine but not the pair, in case they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers were on duty.

Wider Context

The border between Western Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most frequently, but more than twice as many individuals (more than 300) were killed trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. the director informs me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their fields. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor fought it, the director states.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a sort of site of interest. About 15,000 came to see every year, optical devices in their hands, to look – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Current Developments

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and sizable parking lot – is likely to