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A brook so narrow you hardly got your feet wet divided a settlement for over four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement surrounded by pine forests, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Preserving History

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a assembly of local people began documenting their past. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the demolition of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not entirely finished. Speaking to the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which pulled families apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which tore families into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Past Context

Right from its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its men the title Heinrich and counting them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the quirk never stood in the path of the locals socializing in the identical tavern, going to the identical church and enrolling their children to the identical school.

Following WWII Split

Then came the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the brook. For a year they took over the complete village, setting up their command in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The Americans convinced them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a time, locals could continue to cross over, though as limitations tightened they were forced to show ID, despite the fact that all understood who they were, and to come back at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal shutting of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could continue to observe each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side gesturing and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was added to a Stasi surveillance list for responding “back at you” to a western villager who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

I heard narratives including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his occupational time creating it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how much barrier they desired to keep. They opted for a portion on the west edge, close to where one of their own managed to escape in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the border was significantly fortified.

Conserved Buildings

Two guard towers are conserved together with a collection of tableaux showing the most significant dates in the village’s history. As we move, the director details the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers had to obtain special permission to tend to their produce; the husband or wife could work the agricultural equipment but not both, lest they tried to flee. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Context

The boundary between Western Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but more than double the number people (well over 300) were killed attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the urban center. the director tells me that almost all of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adapted to living in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their farms. They neither backed the East German authorities nor fought it, the director clarifies.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of destination. Approximately 15,000 visited each year, optical devices in hand, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up community resembling Mödlareuth, led to new curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

The launch of the new museum – with a restaurant, boutique, movie theater and sizable car park – is likely to