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An creek so shallow you barely got your feet wet divided a settlement for over four decades worth of time. Because of a chance of landscape, the 50 residents of Mödlareuth, a small village bordered by coniferous woods, pastures and stunning vistas, found themselves at the heart of the Cold War tensions. They had the bad luck to straddle Bavaria, in Western Germany, and the Thuringian region in the East, a border that was demarcated first by a fence and then by a partition. American soldiers nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Memorialising the Past

Months after their own division was torn down, and before their country had become one in 1990, a group of villagers set about memorialising their past. The effort is about to be completed: on 9 November, the thirty-sixth commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will inaugurate. It was publicly opened by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the first part of October, but the exhibition wasn’t quite ready. Addressing the locals who experienced the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were bystanders of an brutal division, which tore households asunder and turned neighbors into aliens.”

“You were bystanders of an cruel division, which pulled relatives into pieces and turned neighbors into strangers.”

Bygone Background

Starting at its founding in 1810, the village spanned the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Reuss Principality, a noble lineage most renowned for bestowing all its men the name Heinrich and numbering them consecutively by birth. As Steinmeier informed the audience, the quirk never stood in the path of the residents socializing in the very same inn, visiting the identical place of worship and sending their young ones to the very same educational institution.

After the War Division

Next arrived the global conflict. The moment they came, the Russian troops installed timber poles by the brook. For a year they took over the entire hamlet, creating their headquarters in a dwelling on the western side, decorating it with a image of Stalin and a red star. The US forces persuaded them to retreat across the creek. For a time, locals could continue to hop over, though as restrictions increased they were forced to show ID, although each person knew who they were, and to go back at after dark.

Intensification of Border Restrictions

After that, in 1952, came barbed wire and the formal sealing of the boundary. In 1966, as in Berlin previously in 1961, a wall was constructed, with landmines, vehicle barriers and guard posts. The locals could still see each other by scaling hills, but on the Soviet side gesturing and yelling were forbidden. One woman was added to a East German secret police watch list for replying “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who wished her “prosperous new year”.

Museum Development

It was related to me stories like these incidents by Robert Lebegern, the director of the museum, who has devoted much of his professional career building it. Residents were consulted in the initial phases about how what length of wall they desired to preserve. They chose a stretch on the western fringe, close to where one of their own succeeded to escape in the middle of the night with a climbing device, following which the boundary was heavily fortified.

Conserved Installations

Two guard towers are maintained alongside a collection of exhibits depicting the most dramatic events in the village’s history. As we walk, Lebergen details the restrictions: no one could come within 5km of the frontier. Agricultural workers had to obtain special permission to look after their crops; the husband or wife could work the harvesting machine but under no circumstances the pair, in case they sought to make a run for it. Soldiers kept guard.

Broader Background

The frontier between Western Germany and the GDR ran 1,400km, from the Baltic coast in the northern part to this location in the south. Berlin is recalled and honored the most frequently, but in excess of twice as many persons (more than 300) lost their lives attempting to cross it in provincial zones than in the big city. the director tells me that 95 percent of efforts to cross were unsuccessful.

Village Daily Living

The greater part of Mödlareuth’s residents were farmers or skilled workers, who accommodated to dwelling in the uncertain territory between a pair of ideological spheres by avoiding attention and tending to their farms. They neither endorsed the socialist government nor resisted it, Lebegern states.

Visitors

For visitors, however, the village became a sort of site of interest. Approximately 15,000 came to visit every year, viewing tools in possession, to stare – and then rapidly depart. In 1983, the US president, George Bush, was guided by the national security head.

Twenty five years after unification, Tannbach, a TV series about a made-up hamlet like Mödlareuth, caused new attention.

Present-Day Evolutions

The opening of the recently established museum – with a restaurant, store, film screening area and sizable parking lot – is expected to