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A brook so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet split a settlement for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by evergreen groves, fields and stunning views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Months after their own barrier was opened, and prior to their nation had reunified in 1990, a collection of residents set about memorialising their heritage. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Telling the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an cruel division, which tore households asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Context

Even at its creation in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house best known for bestowing all its male descendants the name Heinrich and counting them in order by birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the oddity did not stand in the path of the inhabitants socializing in the same tavern, visiting the identical place of worship and enrolling their young ones to the identical school.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. The moment they came, the Russians erected wood stakes by the stream. For a annual period they seized the whole village, setting up their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to withdraw across the stream. For a while, villagers could continue to cross over, though as limitations tightened they were required to display identification, even though each person knew who they were, and to go back at evening.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was built, with landmines, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could continue to see each other by climbing elevations, but on the east side signaling and shouting were prohibited. One woman was added to a East German secret police watch list for replying “same to you” to a West German resident who said her “good new year”.

Museum Development

I was told stories like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted much of his occupational time building it. Residents were asked at an early stage about how much structure they wished to maintain. They chose a stretch on the western perimeter, near where a villager succeeded to flee in the darkest hours with a climbing device, following which the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Maintained Buildings

Two watchtowers are conserved alongside a collection of exhibits depicting the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s past. As we stroll, the director details the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to care for their fields; the partner could use the harvesting machine but never the pair, in case they tried to flee. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The border between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and documented the greatest, but more than two times more persons (more than 300) died attempting to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. the director informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who adapted to residing in the uncertain territory between two political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their fields. They neither backed the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. Roughly fifteen thousand came to see annually, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the TV show, a television program about a made-up community like Mödlareuth, led to fresh interest.

Modern Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, boutique, movie theater and big car park – is likely to