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An creek so low you scarcely got your ankles wet split a village for in excess of four decades of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the fifty residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning views, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to straddle the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. American soldiers dubbed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising History

Months after their own barrier was breached, and prior to their state had reunified in 1990, a collection of local people began documenting their past. The project is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was formally inaugurated by the federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display was not entirely ready. Telling the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an inhuman separation, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an cruel split, which ripped families asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Even at its founding in 1810, the community straddled the Royal Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for bestowing all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them in order by birth. As Steinmeier told the gathering, the oddity never stood in the way of the residents socializing in the very same pub, going to the same church and sending their kids to the identical learning center.

After the War Split

Next arrived the global conflict. The moment they arrived, the Russians installed timber poles by the stream. For a twelve months they occupied the entire community, creating their headquarters in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The Americans urged them to withdraw back over the creek. For a period, locals could still hop over, though as controls became stricter they were obliged to show identity papers, even though everyone understood who they were, and to return at after dark.

Escalation of Frontier Controls

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official closing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a barrier was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The locals could still see each other by scaling hills, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were forbidden. A female resident was added to a Stasi watch list for answering “likewise” to a western villager who said her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Creation

I heard narratives including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a significant portion of his working life developing it. Residents were consulted early on about how much structure they desired to preserve. They opted for a section on the western edge, close to where a villager was able to flee in the dead of night with a climbing device, after which the boundary was substantially strengthened.

Maintained Installations

Two watchtowers are preserved alongside a set of exhibits showing the most significant events in the community’s history. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the restrictions: not a single person could approach 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers had to obtain special permission to tend to their crops; the husband or wife could operate the combine harvester but not the two, lest they sought to flee. Military personnel stood watch.

Broader Perspective

The boundary between West Germany and the East Germany ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is remembered and honored the most, but more than double the number persons (more than 300) died seeking to traverse it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95 percent of attempts to flee were unsuccessful.

Hamlet Life

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were agricultural workers or skilled workers, who accommodated to living in the uncertain territory between two political systems by avoiding attention and tending to their farms. They did not backed the communist regime nor resisted it, the director states.

Interest

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a kind of destination. Approximately fifteen thousand visited each year, binoculars in possession, to gawp – and then quickly leave. In 1983, the United States leader, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after merger, Tannbach, a television program about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, resulted in renewed attention.

Present-Day Evolutions

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, shop, movie theater and large car park – is likely to