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An brook so shallow you hardly got your feet wet divided a village for in excess of four decades. Because of a chance of geography, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross Bavaria, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a barricade. United States military personnel nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Several months after their own wall was breached, and prior to their country had unified again in 1990, a group of residents started commemorating their heritage. The effort is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show wasn’t quite ready. Speaking to the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were bystanders of an brutal split, which ripped households asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel split, which tore households asunder and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Historical Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the community straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for assigning all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the oddity did not stand in the manner of the locals gathering in the identical tavern, going to the identical church and enrolling their kids to the identical educational institution.

Post-War Separation

Then came the second world war. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the creek. For a twelve months they occupied the complete hamlet, establishing their control center in a building on the western side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The American soldiers persuaded them to pull back back over the brook. For a time, villagers could still hop over, though as restrictions became stricter they were obliged to show ID, even though everyone knew who they were, and to come back at night.

Increase of Border Measures

Then, in 1952, came metal barriers and the official sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a wall was built, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could continue to view each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were banned. One woman was placed on a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I heard narratives including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a large part of his working life building it. Residents were asked at an early stage about how how long a section barrier they wished to keep. They chose a section on the Bavarian perimeter, near where a local resident managed to escape in the darkest hours with a ladder, subsequently the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Conserved Buildings

A pair of observation towers are maintained alongside a collection of displays depicting the most dramatic events in the community’s history. As we stroll, the director enumerates the restrictions: nobody could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to care for their fields; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Armed guards kept guard.

Larger Perspective

The frontier between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the north to here in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and honored the most, but over twice as many people (more than 300) died trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. Lebegern reminds me that almost all of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Life

Most of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who adapted to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of ideological spheres by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They neither endorsed the East German authorities nor resisted it, the director states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the settlement became a type of destination. Approximately 15k came to see annually, viewing tools in hand, to look – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty-five years after reunification, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional village like Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.

Modern Developments

The inauguration of the recently established museum – with a cafe, boutique, film screening area and big car park – is expected to