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An brook so low you barely got your ankles wet split a settlement for more than four decades. By an accident of geography, the half a hundred inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by coniferous woods, fields and stunning views, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a boundary that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a barricade. American soldiers nicknamed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating the Past

Months after their own division was breached, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a assembly of villagers started memorialising their history. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally launched by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not completely finished. Speaking to the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an inhuman split, which tore households into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

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

Historical Context

Starting at its creation in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most famous for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the locals socializing in the same pub, attending the identical religious building and placing their kids to the identical school.

After the War Separation

Next arrived the second world war. Immediately after they appeared, the Soviet forces put up wood stakes by the brook. For a twelve months they took over the entire village, setting up their headquarters in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans convinced them to retreat to the other side of the stream. For a period, locals could still jump across, though as restrictions increased they were forced to show ID, even though all knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Intensification of Boundary Measures

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was erected, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by scaling hills, but on the east side signaling and shouting were banned. A local woman was put on a Stasi watch list for replying “back at you” to a Bavarian villager who said her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Development

I was told accounts like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted a large part of his working life building it. Residents were polled early on about how how long a section structure they wanted to maintain. They selected a stretch on the west edge, near where a villager managed to flee in the dead of night with a climbing device, following which the frontier was heavily fortified.

Conserved Installations

Two watchtowers are maintained alongside a series of tableaux showing the most significant events in the community’s history. As we stroll, Lebergen enumerates the restrictions: nobody could come within 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required particular approval to look after their crops; the husband or wife could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, in case they sought to make a run for it. Armed guards were on duty.

Wider Context

The frontier between West Germany and the GDR ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most, but in excess of double the number people (well over 300) died attempting to cross it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Lebegern reminds me that 95% of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Village Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between two political systems by avoiding attention and looking after their land. They did not supported the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern states.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a type of destination. Roughly 15k visited annually, binoculars in hand, to gawp – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

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

Modern Evolutions

The launch of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is likely to