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A stream so low you scarcely got your feet wet divided a village for more than four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a barrier and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own wall was breached, and prior to their nation had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people started documenting their heritage. The effort is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely prepared. Telling the residents who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an cruel split, which tore households apart and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for giving all its male descendants the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier told the audience, the quirk did not stand in the manner of the locals gathering in the very same pub, attending the same religious building and sending their young ones to the identical school.

Post-War Separation

Next arrived the second world war. The moment they appeared, the Russians installed wood stakes by the brook. For a year they occupied the entire hamlet, establishing their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans urged them to withdraw back over the creek. For a period, locals could continue to cross over, though as limitations became stricter they were obliged to show identification, despite the fact that everyone understood who they were, and to go back at night.

Intensification of Frontier Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was erected, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The locals could still view each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and yelling were forbidden. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence monitoring list for replying “back at you” to a West German local who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center 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. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how much structure they desired to keep. They opted for a portion on the Bavarian edge, adjacent to where a villager was able to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Structures

Two observation towers are conserved alongside a collection of exhibits showing the most impactful events in the hamlet’s past. As we walk, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required specific authorization to care for their produce; the spouse could work the combine harvester but never both, lest they attempted to escape. Military personnel kept guard.

Larger Context

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the greatest, but over two times more individuals (exceeding 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who accommodated to dwelling in the grey zone between two belief systems by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a kind of pilgrimage. About 15k came to see each year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after unification, Tannbach, a broadcast production about a fictional community resembling Mödlareuth, caused new curiosity.

Modern Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, movie theater and sizable vehicle area – is expected to