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A stream so shallow you barely got your feet wet divided a village for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of geography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by evergreen groves, fields and breathtaking views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of villagers started commemorating their past. The work is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the demolition of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which pulled families apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel division, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Past Background

Right from its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house best known for giving all its male members the name Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity never stood in the way of the residents gathering in the identical tavern, going to the identical religious building and enrolling their young ones to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops put up wood stakes by the stream. For a year they occupied the whole hamlet, setting up their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces convinced them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a period, locals could continue to jump across, though as limitations became stricter they were obliged to display identification, despite the fact that all knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Border Controls

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could still see each other by ascending slopes, but on the east side gesturing and shouting were prohibited. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a western resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told stories like these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how much barrier they wanted to maintain. They chose a stretch on the west perimeter, close to where a local resident succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, subsequently the boundary was substantially fortified.

Maintained Installations

2 observation towers are maintained in addition to a set of tableaux depicting the most impactful dates in the community’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the rules: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to care for their crops; the partner could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, in case they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but in excess of two times more persons (more than 300) lost their lives trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to residing in the grey zone between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their farms. They nor did they supported the East German authorities nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a kind of destination. About fifteen thousand visited each year, viewing tools in possession, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, Tannbach, a TV series about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh interest.

Current Evolutions

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and large parking lot – is probable to