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A creek so low you barely got your ankles wet divided a settlement for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of topography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was marked first by a fence and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

Several months after their own division was opened, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a collection of local people set about commemorating their past. The project is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely prepared. Telling the residents who endured the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel split, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel separation, which ripped families apart and turned local residents into aliens.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the community cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for bestowing all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and counting them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the way of the locals gathering in the identical tavern, going to the same religious building and sending their kids to the identical learning center.

Post-War Separation

Subsequently occurred the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the creek. For a twelve months they seized the entire village, establishing their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to pull back to the other side of the creek. For a while, villagers could still cross over, though as controls became stricter they were forced to present identity papers, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side waving and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was added to a East German secret police monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a West German local who wished her “happy new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career creating it. Residents were asked in the initial phases about how what length of wall they wanted to keep. They selected a portion on the Bavarian edge, near where a local resident succeeded to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the border was heavily fortified.

Maintained Buildings

Two observation towers are maintained in addition to a collection of displays showing the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: no one could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Farmers needed special permission to care for their fields; the husband or wife could use the agricultural equipment but not both, in case they attempted to escape. Military personnel stood watch.

Broader Context

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the greatest, but over double the number persons (more than 300) died trying to cross it in countryside regions than in the big city. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts were unsuccessful.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They neither backed the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Interest

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a kind of pilgrimage. About 15k visited every year, viewing tools in hand, to gawp – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after merger, the TV show, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed curiosity.

Current Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and large vehicle area – is expected to