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An stream so shallow you barely got your ankles wet divided a settlement for over four decades. By an accident of landscape, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, fields and breathtaking views, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a boundary that was demarcated first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and before their state had unified again in 1990, a group of local people started memorialising their past. The project is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display wasn’t quite prepared. Addressing the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an inhuman division, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal split, which tore families into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Bygone Context

Starting at its establishment in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage best known for assigning all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the oddity did not stand in the way of the residents drinking in the same pub, going to the identical religious building and sending their children to the very same educational institution.

Post-War Split

Subsequently occurred the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces erected wood stakes by the stream. For a year they occupied the complete hamlet, establishing their headquarters in a dwelling on the western side, adorning it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers persuaded them to withdraw to the other side of the stream. For a period, locals could still cross over, though as limitations increased they were forced to show identification, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to return at evening.

Intensification of Boundary Measures

After that, in 1952, came metal barriers and the formal sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was built, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The locals could still see each other by climbing hills, but on the east side waving and yelling were banned. One woman was put on a East German secret police watch list for answering “back at you” to a western local who said her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard stories like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his occupational time building it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how how long a section wall they desired to preserve. They chose a stretch on the western edge, near where a local resident managed to flee in the dead of night with a scaling tool, subsequently the border was significantly reinforced.

Preserved Buildings

2 guard towers are conserved together with a series of displays showing the most dramatic dates in the hamlet’s past. As we move, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Agricultural workers needed particular approval to tend to their produce; the partner could operate the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the two, for fear that they sought to escape. Military personnel were on duty.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the GDR stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most, but more than two times more individuals (more than 300) were killed seeking to cross it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that almost all of efforts to cross failed.

Hamlet Life

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were agricultural workers or craftsmen, who adjusted to living in the uncertain territory between 2 belief systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their land. They neither supported the East German authorities nor opposed it, the director explains.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a type of pilgrimage. Approximately 15k visited every year, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, the TV show, a broadcast production about a imaginary community like Mödlareuth, resulted in fresh attention.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, shop, cinema room and large vehicle area – is likely to