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A brook so shallow you barely got your feet wet divided a settlement for more than four decades. By an accident of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own wall was breached, and prior to their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of villagers began documenting their history. The work is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not entirely ready. Speaking to the locals who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel division, which ripped relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Starting at its creation in 1810, the village cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for giving all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the way of the locals socializing in the identical pub, visiting the very same religious building and enrolling their children to the very same educational institution.

Following WWII Separation

Then came the World War II. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops put up wood stakes by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the whole village, creating their control center in a dwelling on the western side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw back over the creek. For a while, villagers could still jump across, though as controls increased they were required to show identity papers, despite the fact that everyone was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The residents could continue to see each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for replying “back at you” to a western resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Establishment

It was related to me narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his working life creating it. Villagers were consulted early on about how what length of wall they wanted to maintain. They selected a section on the west perimeter, adjacent to where a villager was able to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, following which the border was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Buildings

Two guard towers are maintained together with a collection of displays illustrating the most dramatic events in the community’s past. As we stroll, the director enumerates the regulations: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to tend to their produce; the spouse could use the harvesting machine but not the two, in case they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR extended nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the greatest, but over double the number individuals (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of escape attempts failed.

Village Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and caring for their land. They did not backed the communist regime nor fought it, the director explains.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. Roughly fifteen thousand came to see each year, optical devices in possession, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a television program about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh interest.

Present-Day Developments

The opening of the new museum – with a cafe, shop, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is likely to