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An brook so shallow you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a community for in excess of four decades. Due to a quirk of geography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village encircled by coniferous woods, pastures and stunning views, found themselves at the core of the cold war. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a frontier that was marked first by a barrier and then by a barricade. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Several months after their own wall was opened, and even before their state had unified again in 1990, a collection of local people set about commemorating their heritage. The project is soon to reach completion: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth anniversary of the collapse of the German barrier, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will begin operations. It was formally inaugurated by the head of state, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the display wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the villagers who endured the old days, Steinmeier remarked: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were witnesses of an inhuman split, which pulled families into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

Past Background

Even at its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Royal Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a royal family most famous for bestowing all its male descendants the designation Heinrich and numbering them sequentially by birth order. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the quirk was never an obstacle in the path of the inhabitants gathering in the same inn, going to the same place of worship and sending their children to the same learning center.

After the War Division

Next arrived the World War II. The moment they appeared, the Russians put up wooden posts by the stream. For a twelve months they took over the entire hamlet, establishing their command in a building on the Bavarian side, adorning it with a portrait of Stalin and a communist symbol. The US forces persuaded them to pull back across the stream. For a while, residents could still hop over, though as limitations tightened they were obliged to display identification, even though all knew who they were, and to come back at after dark.

Escalation of Boundary Controls

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the legal closing of the border. In 1966, as in Berlin five years earlier, a wall was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and watchtowers. The locals could continue to observe each other by ascending slopes, but on the Soviet side gesturing and calling out were banned. A local woman was placed on a Stasi watch list for answering “same to you” to a West German local who greeted her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Establishment

I was told stories such as these by Robert Lebegern, the head of the institution, who has devoted much of his occupational time developing it. Villagers were consulted early on about how what length of barrier they desired to maintain. They chose a stretch on the western perimeter, close to where one of their own managed to get away in the dead of night with a scaling tool, following which the frontier was significantly strengthened.

Preserved Structures

A pair of guard towers are preserved alongside a series of exhibits depicting the most significant events in the community’s past. As we stroll, Robert Lebegern lists the regulations: not a single person could come within 5km of the frontier. Rural residents had to obtain special permission to look after their crops; the husband or wife could use the combine harvester but not both, lest they attempted to flee. Military personnel stood watch.

Broader Background

The border between the Federal Republic and the GDR stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and memorialised the most frequently, but more than two times more individuals (more than 300) lost their lives seeking to cross it in countryside regions than in the metropolis. Robert Lebegern informs me that 95% of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Community Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or craftsmen, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between a pair of belief systems by avoiding attention and caring for their land. They did not backed the communist regime nor resisted it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For sightseers, however, the village became a kind of destination. Approximately 15,000 came to visit annually, binoculars in hand, to gawp – and then swiftly depart. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defense official.

Twenty five years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a imaginary community resembling Mödlareuth, caused renewed attention.

Present-Day Developments

The inauguration of the new museum – with a cafe, shop, movie theater and sizable vehicle area – is expected to