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An brook so narrow you barely got your ankles wet divided a settlement for over four decades of time. Because of a chance of topography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by coniferous woods, pastures and stunning views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own division was breached, and even before their nation had unified again in 1990, a group of villagers started memorialising their history. The project is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show wasn’t quite ready. Speaking to the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which ripped relatives asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

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

Bygone Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the identical pub, going to the very same religious building and placing their children to the identical educational institution.

After the War Split

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they came, the Russians installed wooden posts by the brook. For a year they took over the complete hamlet, establishing their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a while, residents could continue to jump across, though as limitations became stricter they were obliged to show ID, even though each person knew who they were, and to return at evening.

Increase of Boundary Measures

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could still view each other by scaling elevations, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were banned. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “same to you” to a western resident who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told stories such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career building it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how much barrier they wanted to maintain. They opted for a portion on the west fringe, adjacent to where a local resident succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Installations

2 guard towers are conserved in addition to a set of displays illustrating the most significant dates in the hamlet’s past. As we move, the director lists the restrictions: nobody could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers had to obtain specific authorization to tend to their fields; the partner could use the combine harvester but under no circumstances the pair, in case they sought to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Broader Background

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but over double the number persons (well over 300) lost their lives trying to traverse it in provincial zones than in the big city. Lebegern reminds me that almost all of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by staying low-profile and caring for their farms. They neither supported the communist regime nor fought it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a kind of destination. Roughly 15k came to see annually, binoculars in possession, to gawp – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after merger, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, boutique, film screening area and sizable vehicle area – is likely to