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A creek so narrow you scarcely got your feet wet split a village for in excess of four decades of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a hamlet bordered by evergreen groves, meadows and breathtaking scenery, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to cross the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a barrier and then by a partition. American soldiers called it Little Berlin.

Memorialising Historical Events

A few months after their own division was breached, and even before their country had become one in 1990, a group of residents started commemorating their heritage. The work is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the 36th remembrance of the collapse of the Wall in Berlin, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the show was not entirely ready. Speaking to the villagers who experienced the past era, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an brutal separation, which ripped families into pieces and turned local residents into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal split, which tore relatives into pieces and turned neighbours into aliens.”

Past Background

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a noble lineage best known for bestowing all its men the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the gathering, the quirk did not stand in the way of the locals drinking in the very same tavern, attending the same church and placing their children to the very same school.

After the War Split

Next arrived the World War II. The moment they arrived, the Russians put up timber poles by the creek. For a twelve months they took over the complete hamlet, setting up their command in a building on the Bavarian side, embellishing it with a picture of Stalin and a communist symbol. The American soldiers convinced them to withdraw back over the brook. For a time, residents could still hop over, though as controls became stricter they were forced to show identification, although all knew who they were, and to return at after dark.

Intensification of Boundary Controls

Subsequently, in 1952, came wire fencing and the formal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was erected, with mines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The villagers could continue to observe each other by ascending slopes, but on the eastern side signaling and yelling were prohibited. A female resident was added to a GDR intelligence surveillance list for answering “likewise” to a West German villager who greeted her “happy new year”.

Exhibition Center Establishment

I heard narratives including these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a significant portion of his occupational time creating it. Locals were asked at an early stage about how how long a section wall they desired to preserve. They selected a stretch on the Bavarian edge, adjacent to where a villager managed to get away in the middle of the night with a ladder, after which the border was significantly fortified.

Preserved Installations

Two observation towers are conserved in addition to a series of displays showing the most impactful moments in the community’s past. As we walk, Robert Lebegern enumerates the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the border. Rural residents had to obtain particular approval to look after their crops; the spouse could operate the agricultural equipment but not the pair, lest they attempted to flee. Armed guards stood watch.

Larger Context

The frontier between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but more than twice as many individuals (well over 300) lost their lives attempting to traverse it in provincial zones than in the metropolis. Lebegern tells me that 95 percent of escape attempts did not succeed.

Community Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s locals were agricultural workers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the uncertain territory between 2 belief systems by staying low-profile and tending to their farms. They nor did they supported the socialist government nor fought it, Robert Lebegern explains.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a sort of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand came to visit annually, viewing tools in their hands, to stare – and then rapidly leave. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the national security head.

Twenty-five years after merger, the TV show, a TV series about a imaginary village like Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Modern Evolutions

The inauguration of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and sizable vehicle area – is likely to