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An brook so shallow you hardly got your feet wet split a village for in excess of four decades. By an accident of geography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by coniferous woods, fields and spectacular scenery, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a border that was established first by a enclosure and then by a wall. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a group of residents began commemorating their history. The work is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Telling the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which tore households asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were observers of an inhuman split, which tore families into pieces and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Bygone Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its male members the designation Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the peculiarity did not stand in the path of the residents socializing in the very same tavern, attending the very same place of worship and placing their kids to the identical learning center.

After the War Split

Then came the World War II. As soon as they arrived, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the brook. For a year they occupied the entire hamlet, establishing their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back to the other side of the stream. For a time, villagers could still hop over, though as restrictions increased they were obliged to present ID, although each person was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the legal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with mines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The residents could continue to see each other by scaling slopes, but on the east side gesturing and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “likewise” to a western local who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Establishment

I heard accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a significant portion of his occupational time developing it. Residents were consulted early on about how much structure they wanted to preserve. They opted for a section on the western edge, near where a local resident succeeded to escape in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was substantially fortified.

Conserved Structures

A pair of guard towers are conserved together with a collection of tableaux showing the most significant moments in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we move, the director lists the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed special permission to look after their crops; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but never the two, in case they attempted to escape. Military personnel kept guard.

Larger Context

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the East Germany extended 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most frequently, but more than two times more persons (well over 300) were killed attempting to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Village Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adapted to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of political systems by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They neither backed the communist regime nor fought it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the settlement became a sort of site of interest. Roughly fifteen thousand visited each year, optical devices in their hands, to look – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional village resembling Mödlareuth, caused new attention.

Modern Evolutions

The opening of the recently established museum – with a cafe, shop, movie theater and large vehicle area – is probable to