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A stream so narrow you hardly got your ankles wet split a settlement for in excess of four decades worth of time. Due to a quirk of topography, the 50 inhabitants of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by coniferous woods, meadows and stunning views, found themselves at the center of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Eastern part, a border that was demarcated first by a enclosure and then by a partition. American soldiers called it Little Berlin.

Commemorating Historical Events

Months after their own barrier was opened, and even before their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of residents started commemorating their past. The project is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the demolition of the German barrier, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite finished. Speaking to the residents who experienced the past era, Steinmeier said: “You were observers of an brutal split, which tore families asunder and turned local residents into foreigners.”

“You were bystanders of an brutal separation, which pulled families asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

Bygone Origins

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for giving all its male members the designation Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the oddity did not stand in the way of the locals socializing in the identical inn, attending the identical religious building and placing their young ones to the identical learning center.

Following WWII Division

Then came the global conflict. As soon as they arrived, the Soviet forces erected timber poles by the creek. For a twelve months they took over the whole community, setting up their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The Americans convinced them to pull back across the brook. For a while, residents could continue to jump across, though as restrictions increased they were forced to show ID, despite the fact that all understood who they were, and to go back at night.

Increase of Frontier Controls

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a barrier was erected, with mines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The residents could still observe each other by ascending elevations, but on the east side signaling and calling out were prohibited. A local woman was put on a Stasi watch list for answering “likewise” to a western local who said her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Development

It was related to me stories including these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has spent a significant portion of his occupational time creating it. Residents were polled in the initial phases about how what length of wall they wanted to maintain. They selected a section on the western perimeter, close to where one of their own was able to flee in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, following which the border was significantly strengthened.

Maintained Buildings

Two watchtowers are preserved alongside a set of tableaux showing the most significant moments in the village’s chronicle. As we stroll, the director enumerates the regulations: not a single person could get closer than 5km of the frontier. Rural residents required special permission to care for their crops; the spouse could operate the harvesting machine but under no circumstances both, for fear that they attempted to make a run for it. Armed guards stood watch.

Broader Background

The boundary between Western Germany and the GDR stretched nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to this location in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but more than two times more people (well over 300) died seeking to traverse it in provincial zones than in the urban center. the director tells me that almost all of escape attempts failed.

Hamlet Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to living in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by staying low-profile and caring for their farms. They nor did they endorsed the communist regime nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For visitors, however, the hamlet became a sort of pilgrimage. Approximately 15k came to see each year, optical devices in their hands, to look – and then swiftly leave. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was given a tour by the national security head.

Twenty five years after unification, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional hamlet like Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Current Evolutions

The opening of the new museum – with a cafe, boutique, cinema room and large car park – is probable to