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An brook so shallow you barely got your feet wet separated a community for over four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a boundary that was established first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own division was breached, and prior to their state had become one in 1990, a collection of villagers started commemorating their history. The project is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not completely prepared. Speaking to the locals who endured the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an cruel split, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which tore households asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Historical Background

Starting at its creation in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage best known for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the quirk did not stand in the way of the locals gathering in the identical pub, going to the same religious building and sending their kids to the very same learning center.

Post-War Split

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they arrived, the Russian troops put up wood stakes by the creek. For a twelve months they took over the complete community, creating their control center in a building on the western side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans persuaded them to withdraw back over the stream. For a while, locals could still cross over, though as limitations became stricter they were required to display identification, although all understood who they were, and to return at night.

Escalation of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, vehicle barriers and observation points. The residents could continue to view each other by scaling hills, but on the east side waving and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for replying “same to you” to a Bavarian villager who wished her “good new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard stories such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a significant portion of his professional career building it. Villagers were asked in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they wanted to maintain. They selected a section on the west edge, near where one of their own was able to escape in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, following which the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

A pair of guard towers are conserved alongside a collection of exhibits depicting the most impactful dates in the hamlet’s past. As we stroll, the director lists the restrictions: not a single person could approach 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to care for their produce; the husband or wife could work the harvesting machine but not the two, in case they tried to flee. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Background

The boundary between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the most frequently, but more than twice as many individuals (more than 300) lost their lives attempting to pass over it in rural areas than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Village Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They did not endorsed the socialist government nor resisted it, the director states.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a type of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 came to visit annually, optical devices in possession, to stare – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

25 years after merger, the TV show, a TV series about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, led to renewed curiosity.

Modern Changes

The launch of the recently established museum – with a cafe, boutique, film screening area and large car park – is probable to