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An creek so shallow you barely got your feet wet split a community for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by evergreen groves, fields and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was established first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Months after their own wall was opened, and prior to their nation had unified again in 1990, a group of villagers started commemorating their past. The project is close to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Speaking to the residents who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which ripped households into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

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

Historical Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most famous for giving all its men the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the oddity never stood in the way of the residents drinking in the very same tavern, going to the very same church and enrolling their children to the very same educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the global conflict. Immediately after they came, the Russians installed wooden posts by the creek. For a year they seized the complete hamlet, establishing their headquarters in a dwelling on the western side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The Americans persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a while, villagers could still jump across, though as limitations increased they were required to show identification, despite the fact that all was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Frontier Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The residents could still view each other by scaling slopes, but on the eastern side gesturing and calling out were prohibited. A local woman was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “back at you” to a western resident who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

It was related to me stories including these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career developing it. Locals were consulted early on about how what length of structure they desired to preserve. They chose a section on the west edge, near where a villager managed to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Conserved Structures

A pair of watchtowers are preserved together with a set of tableaux illustrating the most impactful dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, the director lists the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to care for their produce; the partner could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the two, lest they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and documented the most, but over two times more people (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that almost all of escape attempts failed.

Village Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They nor did they supported the communist regime nor opposed it, the director explains.

Interest

For tourists, however, the village became a type of destination. About 15k came to see every year, binoculars in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

25 years after merger, the television series, a television program about a fictional hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Present-Day Evolutions

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and large parking lot – is expected to