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An stream so narrow you hardly got your feet wet divided a village for in excess of four decades. By an accident of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by pine forests, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own division was breached, and prior to their nation had reunified in 1990, a assembly of residents started documenting their past. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not entirely prepared. Addressing the residents who endured the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal separation, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal split, which pulled families apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Context

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most famous for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity never stood in the path of the residents drinking in the identical tavern, going to the very same religious building and enrolling their young ones to the identical school.

After the War Division

Next arrived the global conflict. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces installed timber poles by the brook. For a annual period they seized the complete hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a building on the western side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to retreat back over the brook. For a period, villagers could continue to cross over, though as controls increased they were required to display identification, although each person understood who they were, and to come back at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The locals could continue to see each other by scaling elevations, but on the east side signaling and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for answering “likewise” to a West German resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me narratives including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his working life building it. Villagers were polled at an early stage about how how long a section barrier they wished to keep. They opted for a portion on the west fringe, close to where one of their own managed to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, after which the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Conserved Structures

Two observation towers are maintained alongside a series of exhibits depicting the most dramatic dates in the village’s past. As we walk, Robert Lebegern details the regulations: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to care for their produce; the partner could work the agricultural equipment but not both, lest they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Larger Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the most, but more than twice as many people (more than 300) died attempting to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern tells me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to living in the grey zone between two political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their land. They neither endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the settlement became a kind of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 visited each year, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Current Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and sizable car park – is likely to