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An stream so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet separated a village for over four decades of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by coniferous woods, fields and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops called it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own division was breached, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people started documenting their heritage. The effort is close to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not completely finished. Telling the residents who experienced the former times, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an cruel split, which pulled families into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman separation, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbours into foreigners.”

Historical Context

Starting at its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most famous for assigning all its men the name Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the quirk did not stand in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the identical inn, attending the same church and enrolling their young ones to the very same educational institution.

Following WWII Division

Then came the global conflict. As soon as they appeared, the Russian troops put up wood stakes by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the entire village, setting up their control center in a building on the western side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans urged them to withdraw across the brook. For a while, villagers could still hop over, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to display identity papers, despite the fact that everyone was aware who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Boundary Restrictions

Subsequently, in 1952, came metal barriers and the legal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was constructed, with mines, tank traps and observation points. The villagers could still see each other by ascending elevations, but on the east side signaling and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for answering “same to you” to a West German resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Museum Creation

I was told stories like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent much of his working life building it. Locals were polled at an early stage about how much wall they wanted to maintain. They opted for a portion on the west perimeter, close to where a villager managed to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the boundary was substantially fortified.

Preserved Buildings

A pair of watchtowers are maintained in addition to a set of tableaux illustrating the most significant moments in the hamlet’s past. As we move, the director enumerates the regulations: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers needed specific authorization to look after their fields; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but never the two, in case they tried to flee. Soldiers kept guard.

Broader Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and honored the most frequently, but over two times more people (exceeding 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that almost all of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Existence

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adapted to residing in the grey zone between two ideological spheres by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. Roughly 15k came to visit annually, binoculars in their hands, to stare – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a TV series about a fictional village similar to Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Current Evolutions

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and sizable vehicle area – is likely to