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A stream so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet split a community for in excess of four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of topography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by pine forests, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a wall. American soldiers dubbed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Months after their own division was breached, and even before their country had become one in 1990, a group of villagers started memorialising their heritage. The project is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Speaking to the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an brutal separation, which pulled relatives asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were observers of an brutal split, which pulled families into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Bygone Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage best known for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the audience, the peculiarity never stood in the manner of the locals socializing in the same tavern, going to the identical religious building and enrolling their young ones to the same school.

Post-War Division

Next arrived the World War II. As soon as they arrived, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the brook. For a year they seized the whole hamlet, establishing their headquarters in a house on the western side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to retreat back over the creek. For a while, residents could continue to cross over, though as controls became stricter they were required to present ID, although each person understood who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Measures

Then, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with landmines, tank traps and guard posts. The locals could still observe each other by scaling hills, but on the east side signaling and calling out were banned. A female resident was put on a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “good new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard stories including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a significant portion of his occupational time creating it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how how long a section wall they desired to preserve. They opted for a portion on the Bavarian fringe, close to where a local resident succeeded to get away in the dead of night with a ladder, following which the border was significantly strengthened.

Conserved Installations

Two watchtowers are conserved in addition to a collection of tableaux depicting the most significant moments in the community’s chronicle. As we move, the director lists the restrictions: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to tend to their produce; the spouse could work the agricultural equipment but never the pair, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Military personnel were on duty.

Larger Context

The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is remembered and memorialised the most, but in excess of twice as many individuals (well over 300) were killed trying to traverse it in countryside regions than in the big city. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between 2 belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor fought it, the director explains.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the settlement became a type of site of interest. Roughly 15,000 visited every year, optical devices in possession, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a broadcast production about a fictional community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed curiosity.

Current Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and large parking lot – is likely to