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An creek so narrow you hardly got your feet wet split a settlement for over four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the fifty inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. United States military personnel dubbed it Small Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

A few months after their own barrier was torn down, and before their country had become one in 1990, a collection of villagers set about commemorating their history. The project is close to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth remembrance of the fall of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was formally opened by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the display was not completely prepared. Speaking to the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal split, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were observers of an cruel separation, which ripped relatives asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Historical Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most famous for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the manner of the inhabitants gathering in the same pub, visiting the same religious building and enrolling their children to the very same learning center.

Post-War Separation

Subsequently occurred the second world war. As soon as they arrived, the Russian troops erected wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they seized the complete hamlet, setting up their control center in a house on the western side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The US forces convinced them to withdraw back over the creek. For a while, villagers could still cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were forced to display identity papers, even though each person knew who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Frontier Measures

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a barrier was built, with mines, tank traps and watchtowers. The locals could still observe each other by ascending hills, but on the eastern side signaling and calling out were forbidden. One woman was placed on a East German secret police monitoring list for replying “back at you” to a West German resident who wished her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I was told stories such as these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a significant portion of his working life building it. Residents were consulted early on about how what length of wall they wanted to keep. They selected a section on the west fringe, close to where a local resident was able to get away in the dead of night with a climbing device, following which the boundary was significantly reinforced.

Maintained Structures

2 guard towers are maintained in addition to a series of exhibits depicting the most impactful events in the hamlet’s past. As we move, the director lists the rules: no one could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers had to obtain specific authorization to care for their produce; the husband or wife could operate the harvesting machine but never the pair, for fear that they tried to flee. Soldiers kept guard.

Wider Context

The boundary between the Federal Republic and the GDR extended 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and documented the most, but in excess of double the number people (well over 300) lost their lives trying to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of attempts to flee did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who adjusted to residing in the grey zone between a pair of political systems by keeping their heads down and looking after their fields. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the settlement became a kind of destination. About 15k came to see each year, binoculars in hand, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after unification, the television series, a television program about a made-up village similar to Mödlareuth, caused new attention.

Current Changes

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, shop, film screening area and big parking lot – is probable to