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An stream so shallow you barely got your feet wet divided a settlement for in excess of four decades. By an accident of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was established first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops called it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own division was opened, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of villagers began memorialising their past. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Addressing the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel division, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which ripped households apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Historical Context

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its men the name Heinrich and counting them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the inhabitants gathering in the identical inn, attending the very same religious building and enrolling their children to the identical school.

Post-War Division

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the brook. For a twelve months they occupied the entire community, creating their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to withdraw back over the creek. For a period, residents could continue to cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were forced to present identity papers, even though each person understood who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The locals could continue to observe each other by ascending elevations, but on the east side waving and calling out were banned. One woman was placed on a Stasi watch list for answering “back at you” to a West German villager who greeted her “happy new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his occupational time creating it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how much structure they wanted to keep. They opted for a portion on the western fringe, close to where a villager was able to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the border was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Installations

Two observation towers are conserved alongside a set of exhibits depicting the most impactful moments in the village’s chronicle. As we stroll, Lebergen lists the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Farmers had to obtain particular approval to care for their fields; the spouse could operate the combine harvester but not both, lest they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Background

The frontier between West Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the greatest, but over twice as many persons (exceeding 300) lost their lives trying to pass over it in countryside regions than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adapted to residing in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by staying low-profile and caring for their farms. They neither backed the East German authorities nor fought it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of pilgrimage. Roughly 15k came to visit every year, optical devices in their hands, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a fictional hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused new interest.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and sizable car park – is probable to