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An brook so shallow you scarcely got your feet wet split a settlement for over four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by pine forests, meadows and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a partition. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own wall was opened, and before their country had unified again in 1990, a group of local people started commemorating their past. The project is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not completely prepared. Telling the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which ripped relatives asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Bygone Origins

Starting at its founding in 1810, the community cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a royal family best known for assigning all its male descendants the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the locals drinking in the very same pub, going to the identical religious building and sending their young ones to the identical educational institution.

After the War Division

Next arrived the second world war. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops put up timber poles by the creek. For a twelve months they occupied the complete hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the western side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a time, locals could still jump across, though as controls tightened they were obliged to show identity papers, despite the fact that everyone understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with explosives, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The locals could still view each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side signaling and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a Stasi monitoring list for replying “likewise” to a Bavarian local who said her “good new year”.

Museum Establishment

It was related to me accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his occupational time developing it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how how long a section wall they wanted to keep. They opted for a section on the west perimeter, close to where a villager succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, following which the border was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

Two watchtowers are preserved alongside a series of displays showing the most significant moments in the village’s chronicle. As we walk, the director lists the rules: no one could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers needed special permission to tend to their fields; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they tried to escape. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Context

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the East Germany stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most frequently, but over two times more persons (more than 300) lost their lives trying to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that almost all of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adapted to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They did not backed the East German authorities nor resisted it, the director states.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a kind of destination. About 15k visited every year, optical devices in possession, to stare – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up village like Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Present-Day Evolutions

The opening of the new museum – with a restaurant, shop, movie theater and large vehicle area – is probable to