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A brook so low you barely got your feet wet split a settlement for over four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was established first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

A few months after their own wall was opened, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a group of villagers started commemorating their history. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not entirely prepared. Telling the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which pulled relatives apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which pulled households apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Past Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for giving all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the oddity did not stand in the way of the locals socializing in the very same pub, visiting the very same place of worship and placing their kids to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Division

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Soviet forces put up timber poles by the stream. For a annual period they took over the whole community, establishing their headquarters in a house on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans persuaded them to withdraw across the stream. For a time, villagers could continue to cross over, though as controls tightened they were forced to present identity papers, although each person was aware who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Frontier Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could still see each other by ascending slopes, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was put on a Stasi monitoring list for answering “same to you” to a West German villager who greeted her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I was told accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his occupational time creating it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how what length of structure they wished to preserve. They chose a portion on the Bavarian perimeter, close to where a villager was able to get away in the dead of night with a ladder, following which the border was heavily fortified.

Maintained Structures

2 watchtowers are conserved together with a set of tableaux depicting the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s past. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to care for their crops; the spouse could work the agricultural equipment but never the two, in case they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.

Wider Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but over double the number people (more than 300) were killed seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the grey zone between two belief systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They neither backed the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a type of site of interest. Approximately 15k came to see every year, viewing tools in their hands, to look – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after unification, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, caused new interest.

Current Evolutions

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and sizable car park – is expected to