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A creek so narrow you hardly got your feet wet divided a village for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by pine forests, fields and stunning vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a wall. American soldiers dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own wall was opened, and prior to their state had unified again in 1990, a group of local people started memorialising their history. The project is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the demolition of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the villagers who lived through the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an cruel split, which pulled households apart and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

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

Bygone Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most famous for bestowing all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity did not stand in the way of the residents gathering in the same inn, visiting the very same church and sending their children to the very same school.

After the War Separation

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russians put up wood stakes by the creek. For a year they took over the complete village, setting up their command in a house on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to retreat across the brook. For a while, locals could still cross over, though as limitations tightened they were forced to show identity papers, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to return at evening.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was built, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could still observe each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were banned. A local woman was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a western resident who said her “happy new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated much of his professional career creating it. Residents were consulted early on about how what length of wall they wanted to preserve. They chose a portion on the Bavarian perimeter, near where one of their own was able to get away in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the boundary was significantly fortified.

Conserved Installations

2 guard towers are maintained alongside a collection of exhibits showing the most dramatic dates in the village’s chronicle. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern details the restrictions: no one could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents needed specific authorization to tend to their fields; the partner could operate the agricultural equipment but never the pair, in case they attempted to flee. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Context

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but over twice as many persons (exceeding 300) died trying to pass over it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that almost all of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They did not supported the East German authorities nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a type of site of interest. Roughly fifteen thousand visited annually, binoculars in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, store, movie theater and big vehicle area – is expected to