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A brook so low you hardly got your feet wet divided a village for in excess of four decades of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops called it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

Months after their own wall was torn down, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a group of local people began documenting their past. The effort is close to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Telling the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal division, which tore families apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Historical Background

Even at its creation in 1810, the community spanned the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most renowned for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the gathering, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the locals drinking in the same pub, going to the same religious building and placing their kids to the very same learning center.

Following WWII Separation

Next arrived the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Russians put up wooden posts by the stream. For a year they occupied the entire community, creating their headquarters in a building on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces urged them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a while, residents could continue to jump across, though as controls became stricter they were forced to present identity papers, even though all understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with mines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The locals could still see each other by climbing hills, but on the Soviet side signaling and shouting were banned. A female resident was added to a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “same to you” to a western villager who said her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I was told narratives like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his working life building it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they wished to preserve. They opted for a section on the west perimeter, near where one of their own was able to flee in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was significantly strengthened.

Preserved Structures

A pair of watchtowers are conserved alongside a collection of displays showing the most dramatic dates in the village’s history. As we move, the director details the restrictions: nobody could come within 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to tend to their crops; the spouse could use the combine harvester but not the pair, lest they attempted to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Background

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most frequently, but more than double the number people (more than 300) lost their lives trying to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. the director reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor opposed it, the director explains.

Interest

For tourists, however, the village became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 came to visit each year, optical devices in their hands, to stare – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after reunification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Current Changes

The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and big car park – is likely to