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A creek so narrow you scarcely got your ankles wet divided a settlement for over four decades. Because of a chance of topography, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a tiny settlement encircled by evergreen groves, fields and spectacular vistas, found themselves at the heart of the cold war. They had the unfortunate circumstance to span the Bavarian region, in Western Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was established first by a fence and then by a wall. United States military personnel called it Little Berlin.

Preserving the Past

Several months after their own division was breached, and before their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of local people started memorialising their heritage. The effort is soon to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, 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 show was not entirely prepared. Speaking to the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier stated: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

“You were observers of an brutal split, which tore relatives asunder and turned neighbours into strangers.”

Bygone Origins

Starting at its founding in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Reuss Principality, a princely house most renowned for assigning all its male descendants the title Heinrich and counting them in order by date of birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the oddity was never an obstacle in the way of the locals drinking in the very same pub, attending the same religious building and enrolling their children to the very same educational institution.

Post-War Division

Next arrived the World War II. Immediately after they arrived, the Soviet forces installed wood stakes by the brook. For a year they seized the whole village, setting up their control center in a building on the western side, adorning it with a picture of Stalin and a Soviet emblem. The American soldiers urged them to retreat to the other side of the creek. For a time, villagers could still cross over, though as restrictions tightened they were obliged to show identity papers, although all was aware who they were, and to go back at night.

Intensification of Border Measures

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the official shutting of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and observation points. The villagers could still see each other by climbing elevations, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were forbidden. A local woman was added to a East German secret police monitoring list for responding “same to you” to a West German resident who said her “good new year”.

Heritage Site Development

I was told accounts like these tales by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted a large part of his working life creating it. Villagers were polled in the initial phases about how what length of barrier they wished to maintain. They selected a stretch on the west perimeter, adjacent to where one of their own succeeded to escape in the darkest hours with a scaling tool, following which the frontier was significantly reinforced.

Maintained Structures

A pair of watchtowers are preserved alongside a set of exhibits illustrating the most impactful moments in the village’s chronicle. As we move, the director lists the regulations: no one could get closer than 5km of the boundary. Agricultural workers had to obtain specific authorization to care for their fields; the husband or wife could work the harvesting machine but never the two, for fear that they tried to flee. Soldiers kept guard.

Broader Perspective

The border between the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic stretched 1,400km, from the Baltic Sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is recalled and memorialised the most frequently, but in excess of double the number persons (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to cross it in rural areas than in the urban center. Robert Lebegern reminds me that 95% of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Hamlet Daily Living

Most of Mödlareuth’s locals were rural laborers or artisans, who adjusted to residing in the uncertain territory between a pair of political systems by keeping their heads down and caring for their farms. They nor did they backed the socialist government nor opposed it, the director clarifies.

Visitors

For sightseers, however, the hamlet became a sort of destination. Approximately fifteen thousand visited annually, viewing tools in their hands, to look – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was shown around by the German defense official.

25 years after merger, the TV show, a broadcast production about a fictional community like Mödlareuth, led to renewed attention.

Current Changes

The inauguration of the new museum – with a coffee shop, boutique, movie theater and sizable parking lot – is probable to