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A brook so narrow you barely got your ankles wet separated a community for in excess of four decades worth of time. By an accident of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a small village surrounded by evergreen groves, pastures and stunning scenery, found themselves at the center of the Cold War tensions. They had the misfortune to span the Bavarian region, in West Germany, and Thuringia in the Soviet sector, a border that was marked first by a enclosure and then by a barricade. US troops dubbed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

A few months after their own wall was opened, and before their nation had reunified in 1990, a group of villagers set about commemorating their heritage. The effort is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th anniversary of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the German-German Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Addressing the locals who lived through the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel division, which tore relatives into pieces and turned local residents into strangers.”

“You were witnesses of an brutal division, which pulled households asunder and turned neighbors into foreigners.”

Bygone Background

Right from its creation in 1810, the hamlet straddled the Bavarian Kingdom and the Principality of Reuss, a royal family most famous for bestowing all its male members the name Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by birth order. As Steinmeier informed the crowd, the oddity never stood in the manner of the residents drinking in the very same tavern, visiting the very same religious building and sending their children to the identical educational institution.

Following WWII Split

Subsequently occurred the World War II. Immediately after they came, the Russian troops erected timber poles by the creek. For a year they occupied the complete community, setting up their headquarters in a building on the western side, decorating it with a picture of Stalin and a red star. The US forces urged them to pull back back over the stream. For a while, locals could continue to jump across, though as controls became stricter they were required to show ID, despite the fact that each person understood who they were, and to go back at evening.

Escalation of Border Restrictions

Then, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official shutting of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was built, with landmines, anti-tank obstacles and watchtowers. The villagers could still observe each other by ascending elevations, but on the east side gesturing and shouting were prohibited. One woman was placed on a East German secret police surveillance list for replying “back at you” to a West German resident who greeted her “good new year”.

Museum Development

I heard narratives such as these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has spent a large part of his working life building it. Villagers were polled in the initial phases about how much structure they desired to keep. They chose a section on the Bavarian perimeter, close to where a local resident succeeded to get away in the middle of the night with a climbing device, following which the border was heavily reinforced.

Conserved Structures

Two guard towers are preserved together with a set of displays depicting the most dramatic events in the village’s past. As we walk, the director details the restrictions: not a single person could come within 5km of the border. Agricultural workers required specific authorization to tend to their produce; the husband or wife could work the combine harvester but under no circumstances the two, in case they tried to escape. Armed guards stood watch.

Wider Context

The frontier between Western Germany and the German Democratic Republic ran 1,400 kilometers, from the northern sea in the northern part to here in the south. Berlin is commemorated and documented the most, but more than two times more individuals (exceeding 300) lost their lives seeking to pass over it in provincial zones than in the big city. Lebegern reminds me that 95 percent of efforts to cross did not succeed.

Village Existence

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or artisans, who accommodated to residing in the grey zone between 2 ideological spheres by keeping their heads down and looking after their land. They nor did they endorsed the East German authorities nor fought it, Lebegern states.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the village became a kind of site of interest. Approximately fifteen thousand came to see annually, viewing tools in hand, to stare – and then quickly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was given a tour by the German defence minister.

25 years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a imaginary hamlet similar to Mödlareuth, caused fresh curiosity.

Modern Evolutions

The opening of the recently established museum – with a cafe, store, film screening area and large vehicle area – is likely to