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A brook so low you barely got your feet wet split a settlement for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by coniferous woods, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was established first by a fence and then by a barricade. American soldiers dubbed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising History

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a assembly of villagers set about memorialising their history. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the fall of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely ready. Telling the locals who endured the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were observers of an brutal division, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

Past Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the community spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity did not stand in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the very same pub, visiting the identical religious building and sending their children to the identical educational institution.

After the War Division

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the stream. For a year they seized the complete hamlet, establishing their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The US forces convinced them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a while, villagers could still jump across, though as controls tightened they were required to show ID, although all knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Controls

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was built, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could continue to view each other by ascending slopes, but on the Soviet side signaling and calling out were forbidden. One woman was placed on a East German secret police watch list for replying “same to you” to a western villager who wished her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I heard accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated much of his occupational time building it. Locals were consulted at an early stage about how much structure they desired to maintain. They chose a stretch on the Bavarian edge, close to where one of their own succeeded to flee in the dead of night with a climbing device, after which the border was heavily fortified.

Conserved Buildings

Two observation towers are conserved in addition to a series of exhibits depicting the most significant moments in the village’s past. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: no one could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required special permission to tend to their fields; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, for fear that they sought to escape. Soldiers kept guard.

Broader Background

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most, but more than double the number persons (well over 300) were killed seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the grey zone between a pair of political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They did not supported the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern states.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of pilgrimage. About 15k visited annually, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in new interest.

Current Developments

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, store, cinema room and sizable parking lot – is expected to