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A creek so low you barely got your feet wet separated a community for more than four decades. By an accident of landscape, the half a hundred locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and stunning scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the East, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a wall. American soldiers nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Commemorating History

A few months after their own wall was breached, and even before their state had become one in 1990, a collection of villagers started documenting their heritage. The work is about to reach completion: on 9 November, the 36th annual anniversary of the fall of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly launched by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in early October, but the exhibition was not completely finished. Telling the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier remarked: “You were observers of an inhuman division, which ripped relatives apart and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were observers of an brutal separation, which ripped households into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Past Origins

Right from its establishment in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Princely State of Reuss, a princely house most renowned for bestowing all its male members the name Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by date of birth. As Steinmeier related to the crowd, the oddity was never an obstacle in the path of the residents socializing in the identical inn, visiting the very same place of worship and placing their children to the identical learning center.

After the War Division

Then came the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Soviet forces put up wooden posts by the creek. For a annual period they took over the entire community, creating their control center in a building on the Bavarian side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to pull back to the other side of the creek. For a period, villagers could still hop over, though as limitations increased they were obliged to show identification, although all knew who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Increase of Frontier Controls

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was erected, with explosives, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The locals could still view each other by ascending elevations, but on the eastern side signaling and shouting were forbidden. A local woman was added to a Stasi surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a western villager who said her “good new year”.

Museum Establishment

I was told narratives including these by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a significant portion of his working life developing it. Locals were consulted early on about how much wall they desired to keep. They chose a stretch on the western edge, close to where one of their own managed to escape in the dead of night with a ladder, following which the border was substantially strengthened.

Maintained Structures

Two watchtowers are conserved in addition to a series of displays depicting the most impactful moments in the community’s past. As we walk, the director details the regulations: nobody could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents had to obtain specific authorization to care for their produce; the spouse could use the agricultural equipment but under no circumstances the pair, lest they sought to make a run for it. Military personnel kept guard.

Wider Perspective

The frontier between West Germany and the East Germany stretched 1,400 kilometers, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to the south in the southern region. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most frequently, but in excess of two times more persons (well over 300) died seeking to pass over it in rural areas than in the urban center. the director tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were farmers or skilled workers, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between two ideological spheres by staying low-profile and caring for their land. They neither backed the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a kind of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 came to visit every year, viewing tools in their hands, to stare – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defence minister.

Twenty five years after reunification, Tannbach, a TV series about a imaginary village like Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Current Evolutions

The opening of the modern exhibition center – with a cafe, store, film screening area and big car park – is expected to