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A creek so shallow you barely got your feet wet divided a settlement for in excess of four decades. By an accident of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, meadows and breathtaking views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Several months after their own division was breached, and before their country had become one in 1990, a assembly of villagers began memorialising their history. The project is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not entirely prepared. Addressing the villagers who experienced the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were observers of an brutal division, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Past Background

Right from its creation in 1810, the community spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the way of the residents drinking in the same tavern, going to the identical church and placing their kids to the very same learning center.

After the War Separation

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Soviet forces erected timber poles by the creek. For a twelve months they occupied the whole hamlet, establishing their control center in a dwelling on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to withdraw across the creek. For a time, villagers could continue to jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were obliged to display identification, although each person was aware who they were, and to return at night.

Escalation of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was erected, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could still view each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were banned. A local woman was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a western local who wished her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I was told narratives such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent much of his working life creating it. Residents were polled early on about how what length of barrier they wished to keep. They chose a stretch on the western fringe, adjacent to where a local resident was able to flee in the darkest hours with a ladder, after which the frontier was significantly fortified.

Conserved Installations

2 observation towers are maintained alongside a series of exhibits illustrating the most significant events in the hamlet’s history. As we stroll, the director details the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Farmers had to obtain special permission to look after their fields; the spouse could operate the harvesting machine but not the pair, for fear that they attempted to escape. Military personnel kept guard.

Broader Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the greatest, but in excess of twice as many people (well over 300) were killed trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or artisans, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They nor did they endorsed the socialist government nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a sort of pilgrimage. About 15k visited annually, viewing tools in their hands, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Current Changes

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and big parking lot – is probable to