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An brook so narrow you hardly got your feet wet divided a settlement for over four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by pine forests, fields and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. United States military personnel nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating History

Months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of local people set about memorialising their history. The project is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the demolition of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the show was not entirely finished. Speaking to the locals who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Bygone Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the peculiarity never stood in the way of the inhabitants drinking in the same tavern, going to the identical religious building and sending their young ones to the identical educational institution.

Post-War Division

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the stream. For a year they seized the whole village, setting up their headquarters in a house on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces convinced them to pull back to the other side of the creek. For a time, residents could continue to cross over, though as controls tightened they were forced to present identity papers, despite the fact that all understood who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Boundary Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was erected, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The locals could still observe each other by scaling elevations, but on the Soviet side signaling and calling out were forbidden. One woman was placed on a Stasi surveillance list for responding “same to you” to a Bavarian local who said her “happy new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told accounts including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted a large part of his occupational time creating it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how much barrier they desired to maintain. They selected a stretch on the west edge, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to escape in the darkest hours with a climbing device, after which the border was substantially strengthened.

Conserved Structures

2 guard towers are preserved together with a series of exhibits depicting the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we walk, Lebergen lists the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required special permission to care for their produce; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but not the two, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Context

The border between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most frequently, but in excess of double the number persons (well over 300) were killed seeking to traverse it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95% of attempts to flee failed.

Village Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They neither backed the socialist government nor fought it, the director states.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. About 15,000 came to see every year, optical devices in possession, to gawp – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

25 years after unification, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Current Developments

The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is likely to