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A brook so low you barely got your ankles wet divided a village for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement bordered by coniferous woods, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own wall was breached, and even before their country had become one in 1990, a group of local people started documenting their heritage. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Telling the locals who endured the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which ripped relatives asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which tore families asunder and turned local residents into strangers.”

Bygone Context

Right from its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the same tavern, visiting the very same church and placing their kids to the same learning center.

After the War Separation

Then came the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Soviet forces erected timber poles by the brook. For a year they took over the entire village, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces urged them to withdraw to the other side of the brook. For a while, locals could continue to jump across, though as controls tightened they were obliged to display ID, even though each person was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was built, with mines, tank traps and observation points. The locals could still see each other by climbing hills, but on the east side waving and calling out were forbidden. One woman was placed on a Stasi watch list for replying “same to you” to a West German villager who wished her “good new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me narratives like these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has dedicated a significant portion of his working life creating it. Villagers were consulted at an early stage about how much barrier they wished to keep. They opted for a stretch on the western fringe, near where one of their own managed to get away in the dead of night with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was heavily strengthened.

Preserved Structures

A pair of watchtowers are conserved together with a collection of tableaux illustrating the most significant moments in the community’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director details the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Farmers required particular approval to look after their fields; the partner could use the combine harvester but never the two, lest they sought to escape. Military personnel were on duty.

Broader Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but more than twice as many persons (exceeding 300) lost their lives trying to pass over it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. the director informs me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or artisans, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between 2 belief systems by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, the director clarifies.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. About 15,000 visited each year, binoculars in hand, to gawp – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, the television series, a TV series about a made-up community like Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a cafe, shop, film screening area and large vehicle area – is likely to