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An creek so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet split a settlement for more than four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their nation had become one in 1990, a assembly of local people set about memorialising their history. The work is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not completely prepared. Telling the villagers who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were observers of an inhuman separation, which ripped households asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

Past Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the way of the locals gathering in the same pub, attending the identical place of worship and placing their young ones to the very same learning center.

After the War Division

Subsequently occurred the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Russian troops put up wooden posts by the brook. For a annual period they occupied the entire hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a house on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the creek. For a time, villagers could continue to jump across, though as controls tightened they were obliged to display identification, although everyone understood who they were, and to return at evening.

Increase of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was erected, with mines, tank traps and guard posts. The residents could still see each other by scaling hills, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were prohibited. One woman was put on a Stasi surveillance list for answering “same to you” to a Bavarian villager who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard stories such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his occupational time building it. Residents were asked at an early stage about how much structure they wished to keep. They opted for a portion on the west edge, close to where a local resident managed to escape in the darkest hours with a ladder, subsequently the border was substantially reinforced.

Conserved Structures

A pair of guard towers are conserved together with a collection of exhibits illustrating the most dramatic moments in the hamlet’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to tend to their fields; the partner could use the combine harvester but never the pair, in case they tried to flee. Military personnel were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most frequently, but over twice as many persons (more than 300) died trying to pass over it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that almost all of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to residing in the ambiguous area between two political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their farms. They neither supported the socialist government nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. Roughly 15k visited each year, viewing tools in their hands, to gawp – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty five years after unification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a cafe, boutique, cinema room and large vehicle area – is expected to