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An brook so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet separated a village for more than four decades. By an accident of geography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. American soldiers called it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own wall was torn down, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of residents started commemorating their past. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Telling the locals who endured the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel division, which tore families asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an inhuman split, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Historical Context

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the locals drinking in the identical inn, going to the identical religious building and enrolling their children to the very same school.

After the War Division

Subsequently occurred the second world war. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the stream. For a year they occupied the entire village, establishing their command in a house on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw across the creek. For a time, locals could still cross over, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to present identification, although each person knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was built, with landmines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The residents could still see each other by climbing hills, but on the east side signaling and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “likewise” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Development

I was told narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his working life developing it. Residents were consulted early on about how what length of barrier they wanted to maintain. They opted for a section on the Bavarian perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own was able to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the boundary was substantially reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

Two guard towers are preserved together with a series of displays illustrating the most dramatic dates in the community’s history. As we move, the director enumerates the regulations: no one could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Farmers required special permission to look after their produce; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but never the two, for fear that they tried to flee. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but over twice as many people (exceeding 300) died trying to traverse it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern informs me that almost all of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who accommodated to dwelling in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by staying low-profile and looking after their land. They did not backed the socialist government nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Interest

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a sort of destination. About 15k came to see annually, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after merger, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, caused new interest.

Modern Developments

The opening of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and large vehicle area – is expected to