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An creek so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet divided a settlement for over four decades of time. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Months after their own barrier was breached, and before their state had reunified in 1990, a group of local people set about documenting their history. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not entirely prepared. Speaking to the villagers who lived through the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an brutal split, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

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

Historical Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most famous for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the quirk was never an obstacle in the manner of the locals socializing in the identical tavern, attending the identical place of worship and sending their children to the same educational institution.

After the War Separation

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. The moment they appeared, the Russians erected wooden posts by the brook. For a year they occupied the entire hamlet, establishing their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a while, villagers could continue to jump across, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to present identification, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Escalation of Boundary Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was erected, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could continue to view each other by ascending hills, but on the east side waving and calling out were banned. A local woman was put on a Stasi monitoring list for replying “likewise” to a western local who said her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me narratives including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his professional career developing it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how much barrier they desired to preserve. They selected a portion on the western edge, close to where one of their own was able to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, subsequently the boundary was heavily fortified.

Conserved Structures

A pair of guard towers are preserved together with a collection of exhibits showing the most impactful events in the village’s history. As we walk, the director details the rules: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to care for their produce; the husband or wife could operate the combine harvester but never both, lest they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Context

The boundary between West Germany and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the most frequently, but more than double the number persons (exceeding 300) died seeking to pass over it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the ambiguous area between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They nor did they backed the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a kind of destination. About 15k came to visit every year, binoculars in possession, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a television program about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, caused fresh attention.

Current Developments

The opening of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and big vehicle area – is likely to