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An stream so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet split a village for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a frontier that was established first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and before their state had unified again in 1990, a group of residents set about memorialising their history. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not completely finished. Addressing the villagers who endured the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel split, which pulled relatives asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were observers of an cruel split, which tore households apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Past Background

Even at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for giving all its male members the title Heinrich and counting them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the inhabitants drinking in the identical pub, going to the identical church and sending their kids to the very same school.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the complete community, setting up their control center in a house on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a period, villagers could still cross over, though as restrictions increased they were forced to show ID, even though all knew who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was built, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could still see each other by scaling elevations, but on the Soviet side waving and shouting were forbidden. One woman was added to a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a West German villager who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his occupational time developing it. Villagers were asked early on about how what length of barrier they desired to maintain. They selected a section on the western edge, near where one of their own was able to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was significantly reinforced.

Maintained Structures

Two guard towers are maintained in addition to a collection of exhibits illustrating the most impactful events in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the regulations: nobody could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could operate the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the two, lest they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Broader Perspective

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the greatest, but more than two times more persons (more than 300) were killed attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Village Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to residing in the grey zone between two political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their farms. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, the director states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of destination. Roughly 15,000 came to see each year, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed attention.

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a cafe, store, film screening area and large car park – is expected to