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An brook so low you hardly got your ankles wet divided a community for in excess of four decades. By an accident of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by pine forests, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a barrier and then by a wall. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating History

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their country had reunified in 1990, a assembly of villagers started memorialising their past. The work is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely finished. Telling the villagers who lived through the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which ripped families apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Context

Right from its creation in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for bestowing all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the same inn, visiting the same religious building and sending their kids to the very same school.

After the War Division

Then came the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops put up timber poles by the creek. For a year they occupied the complete hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw back over the brook. For a time, locals could continue to cross over, though as limitations increased they were forced to show ID, even though each person knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Escalation of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was constructed, with explosives, tank traps and guard posts. The residents could still see each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side waving and calling out were prohibited. One woman was put on a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “same to you” to a West German villager who greeted her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I heard stories such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a large part of his occupational time creating it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how what length of structure they wanted to preserve. They chose a portion on the Bavarian fringe, adjacent to where one of their own was able to flee in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was significantly fortified.

Maintained Structures

2 guard towers are maintained alongside a set of tableaux showing the most dramatic dates in the community’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director details the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed special permission to look after their crops; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they tried to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Context

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the greatest, but over double the number individuals (well over 300) were killed seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the big city. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to living in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and caring for their fields. They neither supported the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. About 15,000 came to see each year, viewing tools in hand, to look – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional community similar to Mödlareuth, led to new curiosity.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, film screening area and big vehicle area – is expected to