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An brook so shallow you hardly got your feet wet split a community for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was marked first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own division was breached, and before their country had become one in 1990, a group of residents started memorialising their heritage. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the residents who lived through the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel separation, which tore households into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were observers of an brutal split, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Past Background

Right from its creation in 1810, the village straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a royal family most famous for assigning all its male descendants the name Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the path of the locals drinking in the same pub, going to the same religious building and enrolling their children to the same school.

Post-War Split

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the creek. For a year they occupied the entire village, creating their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers convinced them to retreat back over the brook. For a period, villagers could still hop over, though as controls tightened they were forced to present identification, although everyone was aware who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could still view each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side waving and yelling were banned. One woman was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “same to you” to a Bavarian villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

I heard narratives including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has dedicated a large part of his professional career building it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section structure they wished to keep. They selected a stretch on the Bavarian perimeter, close to where a local resident managed to escape in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, after which the border was significantly fortified.

Conserved Structures

Two guard towers are maintained together with a set of exhibits showing the most significant dates in the hamlet’s past. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the rules: no one could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they tried to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Larger Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the most, but more than double the number individuals (well over 300) died seeking to cross it in provincial zones than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of attempts to flee failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The majority of Mödlareuth’s villagers were farmers or craftsmen, who adapted to dwelling in the grey zone between 2 political systems by staying low-profile and caring for their land. They did not backed the socialist government nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 visited every year, optical devices in possession, to stare – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty five years after unification, the television series, a television program about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, led to new interest.

Present-Day Evolutions

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and large vehicle area – is expected to