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An brook so narrow you hardly got your feet wet divided a settlement for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by evergreen groves, fields and breathtaking views, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. United States military personnel dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own wall was opened, and prior to their country had reunified in 1990, a collection of villagers began documenting their history. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the demolition of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the residents who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which ripped relatives apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which tore households apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Past Origins

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for giving all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the quirk was never an obstacle in the way of the inhabitants gathering in the same pub, visiting the identical religious building and enrolling their young ones to the very same school.

After the War Split

Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they appeared, the Soviet forces erected timber poles by the brook. For a twelve months they seized the complete hamlet, setting up their command in a building on the western side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat across the stream. For a period, locals could continue to jump across, though as limitations increased they were obliged to display identity papers, even though each person understood who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The villagers could still see each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side waving and yelling were forbidden. One woman was put on a GDR intelligence watch list for replying “back at you” to a western local who greeted her “happy new year”.

Museum Development

I heard narratives including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent much of his professional career developing it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section structure they desired to maintain. They opted for a stretch on the west perimeter, near where a villager managed to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, following which the border was significantly fortified.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of guard towers are maintained alongside a collection of tableaux illustrating the most significant dates in the community’s history. As we walk, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Farmers required particular approval to tend to their fields; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but never both, in case they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most frequently, but in excess of double the number people (more than 300) were killed trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that almost all of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adapted to residing in the ambiguous area between two political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of destination. Roughly 15k came to visit annually, optical devices in hand, to stare – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, the television series, a TV series about a made-up hamlet resembling Mödlareuth, led to new attention.

Current Changes

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a restaurant, boutique, cinema room and large car park – is probable to