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An brook so low you hardly got your ankles wet split a village for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was established first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own division was opened, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of villagers set about commemorating their history. The effort is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display was not entirely ready. Addressing the residents who experienced the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an cruel separation, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which pulled families asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

Historical Background

Right from its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the way of the locals drinking in the identical inn, going to the very same church and enrolling their young ones to the very same school.

After the War Split

Next arrived the global conflict. Immediately after they arrived, the Russians erected timber poles by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the whole community, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers urged them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a while, villagers could continue to jump across, though as limitations increased they were obliged to present identification, despite the fact that all was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The villagers could continue to see each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side signaling and shouting were forbidden. A female resident was put on a Stasi watch list for responding “same to you” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his professional career building it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how much wall they wanted to keep. They opted for a section on the west fringe, adjacent to where a villager managed to get away in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was significantly strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

A pair of guard towers are preserved alongside a collection of displays depicting the most dramatic events in the village’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern enumerates the restrictions: nobody could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to look after their fields; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but never both, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Larger Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but more than double the number persons (well over 300) died trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or skilled workers, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by avoiding attention and caring for their land. They neither endorsed the communist regime nor opposed it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of destination. Roughly 15k visited annually, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary village like Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Modern Evolutions

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