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An brook so narrow you barely got your feet wet divided a settlement for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was marked first by a barrier and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Several months after their own wall was opened, and prior to their state had become one in 1990, a group of local people started memorialising their history. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display wasn’t quite prepared. Telling the villagers who endured the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which tore families asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which pulled relatives apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Past Context

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a princely house most famous for giving all its men the designation Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the residents gathering in the very same tavern, going to the same place of worship and sending their young ones to the very same learning center.

Following WWII Division

Then came the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Soviet forces installed timber poles by the brook. For a year they seized the whole hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a house on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw back over the brook. For a period, residents could still cross over, though as controls tightened they were obliged to show ID, even though everyone was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Escalation of Border Measures

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was erected, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The locals could still view each other by climbing slopes, but on the eastern side signaling and calling out were banned. One woman was added to a East German secret police surveillance list for responding “back at you” to a western resident who said her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a significant portion of his occupational time creating it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how what length of barrier they wanted to keep. They chose a portion on the west perimeter, close to where a local resident managed to get away in the dead of night with a ladder, after which the boundary was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Structures

Two watchtowers are conserved in addition to a collection of tableaux depicting the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s history. As we move, Lebergen details the rules: nobody could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents had to obtain particular approval to care for their crops; the partner could operate the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, in case they attempted to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Broader Background

The border between West Germany and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but more than double the number persons (more than 300) died attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or craftsmen, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between 2 ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They did not endorsed the socialist government nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.

Interest

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a type of site of interest. Roughly 15k visited annually, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a television program about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed attention.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is likely to