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An brook so shallow you hardly got your feet wet divided a village for more than four decades. By an accident of landscape, the 50 locals of Mödlareuth, a hamlet surrounded by coniferous woods, fields and stunning vistas, found themselves at the core of the Cold War conflict. They had the bad luck to cross Bavaria, in the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Thuringian region in the Soviet sector, a boundary that was established first by a fence and then by a barricade. US troops nicknamed it Little Berlin.

Preserving Historical Events

Months after their own barrier was breached, and before their nation had become one in 1990, a collection of residents started documenting their heritage. The project is about to come to fruition: on 9 November, the 36th commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Deutsch-Deutsches Museum Mödlareuth will open. It was officially inaugurated by the national president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in the beginning of October, but the exhibition was not completely prepared. Speaking to the locals who endured the old days, Steinmeier said: “You were witnesses of an cruel separation, which pulled households into pieces and turned neighbours into strangers.”

“You were observers of an cruel separation, which tore households asunder and turned local residents into aliens.”

Past Background

Right from its founding in 1810, the hamlet cut across the Bavarian Kingdom and the Princely State of Reuss, a noble lineage most renowned for bestowing all its male members the title Heinrich and labeling them consecutively by date of birth. As Steinmeier told the crowd, the peculiarity never stood in the path of the residents drinking in the very same tavern, visiting the identical place of worship and sending their young ones to the very same school.

Post-War Division

Next arrived the World War II. The moment they came, the Russians installed wooden posts by the stream. For a annual period they seized the whole hamlet, creating their control center in a dwelling on the Bavarian territory side, decorating it with a portrait of Stalin and a red star. The Americans persuaded them to pull back back over the brook. For a while, villagers could still hop over, though as limitations tightened they were forced to present identification, although all was aware who they were, and to come back at evening.

Intensification of Border Controls

After that, in 1952, came wire fencing and the official sealing of the frontier. In 1966, as in Berlin half a decade before, a concrete structure was constructed, with landmines, tank traps and watchtowers. The residents could still see each other by scaling slopes, but on the Soviet side signaling and calling out were forbidden. One woman was added to a East German secret police monitoring list for answering “back at you” to a Bavarian resident who wished her “happy new year”.

Heritage Site Establishment

It was related to me narratives including these tales by Robert Lebegern, the museum’s director, who has dedicated a significant portion of his professional career developing it. Residents were consulted early on about how what length of structure they desired to keep. They selected a section on the west perimeter, near where one of their own succeeded to escape in the middle of the night with a ladder, subsequently the boundary was heavily reinforced.

Conserved Structures

Two guard towers are conserved in addition to a set of displays illustrating the most dramatic events in the hamlet’s chronicle. As we move, the director lists the regulations: nobody could approach 5km of the boundary. Rural residents required special permission to care for their fields; the partner could use the agricultural equipment but not the pair, lest they tried to make a run for it. Military personnel stood watch.

Wider Context

The frontier between West Germany and the GDR ran nearly 900 miles, from the Baltic coast in the north to the south in the south. Berlin is remembered and documented the most, but more than twice as many individuals (well over 300) were killed trying to cross it in provincial zones than in the big city. the director tells me that 95% of efforts to cross failed.

Village Existence

The majority of Mödlareuth’s residents were rural laborers or skilled workers, who adjusted to dwelling in the ambiguous area between two belief systems by avoiding attention and tending to their land. They nor did they backed the communist regime nor opposed it, Robert Lebegern clarifies.

Tourism

For tourists, however, the hamlet became a kind of pilgrimage. Approximately 15,000 visited every year, binoculars in their hands, to look – and then quickly go away. In 1983, the American president, George Bush, was guided by the German defence minister.

Twenty-five years after reunification, the television series, a broadcast production about a fictional village like Mödlareuth, caused renewed interest.

Current Changes

The launch of the modern exhibition center – with a coffee shop, store, film screening area and sizable vehicle area – is probable to