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A brook so narrow you hardly got your feet wet divided a community for more than four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of geography, the fifty locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by pine forests, meadows and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to span Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Thuringia in the Eastern part, a frontier that was established first by a barrier and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Small Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Several months after their own barrier was torn down, and prior to their nation had unified again in 1990, a group of villagers set about documenting their past. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th annual remembrance of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not entirely ready. Addressing the locals who lived through the former times, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal division, which pulled families into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an inhuman separation, which pulled families asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Even at its founding in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and labeling them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier related to the audience, the oddity was never an obstacle in the manner of the residents drinking in the very same inn, visiting the same church and placing their young ones to the same learning center.

Following WWII Separation

Then came the global conflict. The moment they came, the Russian troops put up timber poles by the creek. For a twelve months they took over the complete community, setting up their command in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The Americans persuaded them to pull back back over the brook. For a period, locals could continue to jump across, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to display ID, even though each person was aware who they were, and to go back at evening.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official sealing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was erected, with mines, anti-tank obstacles and guard posts. The villagers could still see each other by climbing slopes, but on the eastern side waving and shouting were banned. One woman was put on a East German secret police watch list for replying “same to you” to a western villager who said her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Establishment

It was related to me accounts such as these by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has spent a significant portion of his professional career building it. Locals were asked early on about how what length of wall they wanted to preserve. They chose a section on the western perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to flee in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was heavily strengthened.

Conserved Buildings

2 watchtowers are conserved together with a collection of displays showing the most impactful dates in the village’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: not a single person could approach 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required special permission to look after their produce; the spouse could work the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the pair, lest they attempted to flee. Armed guards kept guard.

Wider Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the East Germany stretched nearly 900 miles, from the northern sea in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is remembered and honored the greatest, but over two times more persons (exceeding 300) were killed trying to traverse it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or artisans, who adapted to living in the uncertain territory between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They did not supported the communist regime nor fought it, Robert Lebegern states.

Visitors

For tourists, however, the village became a sort of pilgrimage. About 15k came to see each year, viewing tools in possession, to gawp – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after merger, the television series, a broadcast production about a made-up village resembling Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Modern Developments

The launch of the new museum – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and large car park – is expected to