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A brook so narrow you barely got your feet wet split a village for over four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by coniferous woods, pastures and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the misfortune to straddle the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was established first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Preserving the Past

A few months after their own barrier was opened, and prior to their country had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers began documenting their past. The effort is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the display wasn’t quite prepared. Telling the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an brutal split, which pulled households into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel split, which ripped households apart and turned local residents into foreigners.”

Historical Context

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for assigning all its male members the title Heinrich and counting them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the quirk did not stand in the manner of the locals socializing in the same tavern, going to the same religious building and placing their children to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Split

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces put up wooden posts by the stream. For a year they took over the whole hamlet, setting up their command in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to retreat to the other side of the brook. For a period, residents could still hop over, though as controls increased they were obliged to display identification, although each person understood who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Escalation of Boundary Controls

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a concrete structure was constructed, with explosives, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could still view each other by climbing slopes, but on the east side waving and shouting were prohibited. A local woman was put on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a West German local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

I heard accounts including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent much of his working life developing it. Locals were polled in the initial phases about how what length of structure they wished to maintain. They selected a portion on the Bavarian edge, near where one of their own managed to escape in the dead of night with a climbing device, subsequently the border was heavily reinforced.

Maintained Installations

Two guard towers are preserved in addition to a series of exhibits illustrating the most significant moments in the village’s chronicle. As we move, Lebergen details the restrictions: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain particular approval to look after their crops; the spouse could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, for fear that they tried to make a run for it. Soldiers stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The border between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic extended nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most frequently, but more than twice as many persons (more than 300) were killed seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the big city. Robert Lebegern informs me that almost all of escape attempts did not succeed.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or skilled workers, who accommodated to residing in the ambiguous area between 2 political systems by staying low-profile and looking after their farms. They did not backed the socialist government nor opposed it, the director explains.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the settlement became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately 15k came to visit each year, optical devices in their hands, to stare – and then swiftly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty five years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed interest.

Current Developments

The opening of the recently established museum – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and large parking lot – is probable to