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An brook so low you hardly got your ankles wet separated a community for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and spectacular views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own division was opened, and before their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of villagers began documenting their past. The effort is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Telling the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an inhuman split, which tore relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman split, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its men the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the manner of the inhabitants socializing in the identical inn, attending the same place of worship and placing their young ones to the identical school.

After the War Split

Then came the second world war. As soon as they came, the Russian troops put up wood stakes by the stream. For a annual period they seized the complete community, setting up their headquarters in a building on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to withdraw to the other side of the creek. For a period, villagers could still cross over, though as restrictions increased they were required to present identification, although each person understood who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Border Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The residents could still observe each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side waving and yelling were forbidden. A local woman was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for responding “back at you” to a West German villager who wished her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I was told stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his working life creating it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how how long a section barrier they wished to maintain. They selected a portion on the Bavarian edge, close to where a villager was able to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

A pair of guard towers are conserved alongside a collection of displays illustrating the most impactful moments in the community’s chronicle. As we move, the director enumerates the regulations: no one could come within 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to care for their crops; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but never the pair, lest they tried to flee. Soldiers stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the most, but more than two times more individuals (more than 300) were killed trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the big city. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of efforts to cross failed.

Village Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They neither supported the East German authorities nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the settlement became a type of site of interest. About 15k came to see each year, viewing tools in their hands, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a fictional hamlet like Mödlareuth, led to fresh attention.

Present-Day Evolutions

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and sizable vehicle area – is expected to