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A brook so shallow you barely got your ankles wet separated a village for more than four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by coniferous woods, pastures and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a frontier that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a wall. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

Several months after their own wall was torn down, and before their country had unified again in 1990, a group of local people started memorialising their past. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not entirely ready. Telling the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an cruel division, which pulled families apart and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most renowned for bestowing all its male descendants the title Heinrich and labeling them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the very same inn, visiting the identical place of worship and placing their young ones to the same learning center.

Post-War Division

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Russians erected timber poles by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the complete hamlet, setting up their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back back over the brook. For a while, locals could still cross over, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to present identification, despite the fact that everyone understood who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The locals could continue to view each other by climbing elevations, but on the eastern side gesturing and yelling were banned. One woman was placed on a East German secret police watch list for replying “likewise” to a West German villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I heard narratives including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a significant portion of his working life developing it. Residents were consulted at an early stage about how much structure they desired to maintain. They opted for a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, close to where a local resident managed to flee in the middle of the night with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Installations

A pair of observation towers are conserved in addition to a series of displays depicting the most significant events in the community’s history. As we walk, the director details the rules: nobody could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers required special permission to care for their produce; the husband or wife could use the harvesting machine but not the pair, for fear that they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Wider Background

The border between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most, but in excess of double the number people (well over 300) were killed seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of escape attempts did not succeed.

Village Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who accommodated to living in the uncertain territory between a pair of political systems by keeping their heads down and tending to their farms. They neither supported the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately fifteen thousand came to visit annually, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty five years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, resulted in new interest.

Present-Day Evolutions

The opening of the new museum – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and big car park – is probable to