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An creek so shallow you hardly got your ankles wet separated a settlement for in excess of four decades of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and spectacular views, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a barricade. American soldiers called it Little Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

A few months after their own barrier was breached, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of villagers began memorialising their heritage. The project is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which ripped families into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which pulled relatives apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

Bygone Context

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for bestowing all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the oddity never stood in the path of the inhabitants drinking in the same tavern, attending the same church and enrolling their young ones to the very same educational institution.

Post-War Split

Next arrived the global conflict. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces installed timber poles by the creek. For a year they took over the entire village, setting up their control center in a building on the Bavarian territory side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces convinced them to withdraw across the brook. For a while, locals could still hop over, though as restrictions increased they were forced to show identification, even though all was aware who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Frontier Controls

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was erected, with explosives, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The locals could still see each other by climbing slopes, but on the Soviet side waving and yelling were banned. A local woman was added to a Stasi watch list for responding “likewise” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Exhibition Center Creation

It was related to me narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his occupational time creating it. Villagers were asked early on about how much barrier they wanted to maintain. They chose a section on the western fringe, near where one of their own was able to get away in the darkest hours with a climbing device, subsequently the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Preserved Installations

A pair of watchtowers are preserved together with a series of tableaux showing the most impactful moments in the hamlet’s history. As we stroll, the director details the rules: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required specific authorization to care for their crops; the husband or wife could use the agricultural equipment but never both, in case they sought to escape. Soldiers were on duty.

Broader Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched 1,400km, from the northern sea in the northern part to this location in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but over two times more people (exceeding 300) died attempting to traverse it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. the director tells me that 95% of escape attempts failed.

Village Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between two belief systems by avoiding attention and caring for their fields. They neither supported the East German authorities nor fought it, the director explains.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. About fifteen thousand came to see annually, optical devices in their hands, to gawp – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after reunification, the TV show, a TV series about a fictional community resembling Mödlareuth, led to fresh interest.

Present-Day Changes

The opening of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, movie theater and large car park – is probable to