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A brook so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet split a settlement for more than four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by pine forests, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was established first by a barrier and then by a partition. United States military personnel nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Memorialising History

A few months after their own division was breached, and even before their country had unified again in 1990, a assembly of residents began documenting their history. The effort is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the collapse of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely prepared. Addressing the villagers who experienced the former times, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an inhuman division, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel division, which tore relatives into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Royal Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for bestowing all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity was never an obstacle in the way of the residents drinking in the very same inn, visiting the same church and enrolling their children to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Division

Next arrived the global conflict. The moment they appeared, the Russian troops erected wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they occupied the whole hamlet, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans convinced them to withdraw across the stream. For a while, residents could still jump across, though as restrictions became stricter they were forced to show identification, despite the fact that everyone was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Border Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with landmines, tank traps and watchtowers. The villagers could still observe each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were banned. One woman was added to a East German secret police monitoring list for responding “back at you” to a West German resident who greeted her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I was told stories such as these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a large part of his working life creating it. Locals were consulted in the initial phases about how much wall they wished to keep. They opted for a section on the west perimeter, near where one of their own succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, following which the border was significantly fortified.

Maintained Buildings

Two guard towers are conserved alongside a series of displays illustrating the most dramatic dates in the village’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: nobody could approach 5km of the border. Rural residents required particular approval to care for their produce; the partner could work the combine harvester but under no circumstances both, in case they sought to flee. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Background

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is commemorated and documented the greatest, but in excess of twice as many persons (more than 300) died trying to traverse it in countryside regions than in the urban center. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee failed.

Village Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adjusted to dwelling in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and tending to their farms. They neither supported the East German authorities nor fought it, the director states.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the village became a kind of destination. About fifteen thousand visited every year, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after merger, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, led to fresh attention.

Current Evolutions

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and sizable car park – is likely to