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A stream so narrow you barely got your ankles wet split a community for more than four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a hamlet encircled by evergreen groves, fields and breathtaking views, found themselves at the core of the Cold War tensions. They had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a partition. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Preserving History

Months after their own division was breached, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of villagers started documenting their heritage. The effort is soon to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th annual commemoration of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was officially inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Addressing the villagers who lived through the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were observers of an cruel split, which ripped families asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which ripped relatives apart and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family best known for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the peculiarity did not stand in the way of the inhabitants socializing in the same pub, visiting the same religious building and sending their kids to the identical school.

Following WWII Split

Then came the global conflict. Immediately after they appeared, the Soviet forces put up wood stakes by the creek. For a annual period they seized the complete community, setting up their command in a house on the Bavarian territory side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The US forces convinced them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a period, residents could still hop over, though as limitations became stricter they were required to show identification, even though everyone knew who they were, and to go back at evening.

Increase of Boundary Controls

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal closing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was erected, with landmines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The locals could continue to observe each other by ascending elevations, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were banned. A local woman was placed on a GDR intelligence monitoring list for responding “likewise” to a West German villager who greeted her “happy new year”.

Museum Creation

I heard stories like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has devoted much of his working life developing it. Locals were consulted in the initial phases about how how long a section barrier they wished to maintain. They opted for a section on the west perimeter, near where a villager succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, subsequently the border was heavily fortified.

Maintained Installations

A pair of guard towers are maintained in addition to a set of displays illustrating the most dramatic events in the community’s history. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the rules: no one could approach 5km of the frontier. Farmers needed specific authorization to tend to their produce; the husband or wife could operate the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances both, for fear that they sought to escape. Armed guards were on duty.

Wider Background

The frontier between West Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the greatest, but in excess of double the number people (more than 300) died attempting to pass over it in provincial zones than in the big city. the director tells me that 95% of attempts to flee failed.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s villagers were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adapted to living in the grey zone between two belief systems by avoiding attention and looking after their fields. They neither endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, the director states.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the village became a kind of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 came to visit every year, binoculars in possession, to stare – and then rapidly go away. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after unification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a made-up community similar to Mödlareuth, resulted in new attention.

Present-Day Developments

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, cinema room and big vehicle area – is likely to