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A stream so shallow you barely got your ankles wet split a village for over four decades of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by pine forests, meadows and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a barricade. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating History

Months after their own wall was opened, and before their country had unified again in 1990, a collection of villagers started documenting their past. The project is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the show was not completely ready. Telling the villagers who lived through the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an brutal split, which ripped relatives apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Historical Origins

Even at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the inhabitants drinking in the very same pub, visiting the very same religious building and enrolling their children to the same learning center.

Post-War Division

Next arrived the global conflict. As soon as they came, the Russians erected timber poles by the brook. For a annual period they seized the whole community, creating their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces persuaded them to withdraw back over the brook. For a while, villagers could still cross over, though as controls became stricter they were forced to display identification, although each person was aware who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Frontier Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and observation points. The villagers could still see each other by ascending hills, but on the east side waving and calling out were banned. One woman was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for responding “likewise” to a western villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

It was related to me accounts such as these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Villagers were consulted in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they wished to preserve. They selected a section on the Bavarian fringe, near where a villager managed to get away in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, following which the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Maintained Buildings

A pair of guard towers are preserved alongside a series of displays illustrating the most dramatic dates in the community’s history. As we walk, the director lists the restrictions: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Farmers required specific authorization to look after their produce; the partner could use the harvesting machine but never both, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Background

The border between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the greatest, but more than double the number persons (more than 300) were killed seeking to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between a pair of belief systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They did not supported the socialist government nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the settlement became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see annually, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a fictional hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and large car park – is likely to